Dispatches: Rising in Our Power
A chronicle of artistic interventions by disabled women artists at MIMA
February 2025
A chronicle of artistic interventions by disabled women artists at MIMA
February 2025
IN/Visible National Disabled Women's Collective
Artists from top left clockwise are: Lynne McFarlane, Pauline Heath, Honor Flaherty, Samantha Blackburn, JulieMc McNamara, Vici Wreford-Sinnott,Dolly Sen, and Michelle Baharier, with Caroline Cardus in the centre.
IN/Visible National Disabled Women’s Arts Collective are a group if nationally and internationally renowned artists in their individual practices from writing, film making, theatre making, visual art, public art, textiles, fine art, and writing. They are well established professional artists, all disabled women and all aged over fifty. Historically disabled women from all intersectional communities have been some of the most silenced, erased and excluded. Members of the collective are also activists for disability rights which means that they have campaigned for cultural space for decades. Many of them are founding members of the Disability Arts Movement in the UK and are motivated by social change and community.
After coming together in Covid-19 lockdowns to reduce the isolation of older disabled women artists, talking about both their varied and shared experiences, and informally creating and crafting, the collective has found an innovative model of practice for disabled artists spread across England, working in an online live studio each week. IN/Visible now has successful online digital exhibitions and presented their acclaimed All The Women We Could Have Been exhibition at ARC Stockton and Arts Depot London. Working with MIMA (Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art) represents another stage in their development as a collective.
"It’s a rare thing these days to have space for disabled artists to come together and share work face to face in this kind of setting. It was a joyous day and radical of MIMA to trust handing the gallery over for a tour of roving performances from seven of the artists in the collective. "
Colin Hambrook, Founding Editor Disability Arts Online
MIMA
MIMA connects art, people and ideas to empower creative lives and positively contribute to society. An international art gallery and museum, we commission, collect and re-think modern and contemporary art. We build and celebrate creativity and support change towards an open and inclusive future. As the artistic heart of the School of Arts & Creative Industries at Teesside University, MIMA is dedicated to collaborative learning, research and innovation.
MIMA has a civic mission to put art into action. We work with artists and communities on projects that raise debate, open discussion and generate new possibilities. Our artistic programmes address urgent issues such as climate change, migration, inequality, ageing, social isolation, wellbeing, and relations between people, and the world’s natural resources.
Projects have included a mobile market barrow swapping plants, hopes and memories; an artist-led community printing press, and an artwork from the perspective of bees imagined by primary school children.
MIMA has a civic mission to put art into action. We work with artists and communities on projects that raise debate, open discussion and generate new possibilities. Our artistic programmes address urgent issues such as climate change, migration, inequality, ageing, social isolation, wellbeing, and relations between people, and the world’s natural resources.
Projects have included a mobile market barrow swapping plants, hopes and memories; an artist-led community printing press, and an artwork from the perspective of bees imagined by primary school children.
"It allowed us to celebrate and raise the public awareness of disabled women,
disability rights, art created by disabled women over fifty and highlighting the lack of profile for women over fifty in the arts world."
disability rights, art created by disabled women over fifty and highlighting the lack of profile for women over fifty in the arts world."
Samantha Blackburn, Artist
Rising in Our Power
Rising in Our Power was a landmark interdisciplinary artistic project at MIMA by the IN/Visible National Disabled Women’s Arts Collective, that took place on Saturday 8 February 2025. There were performances, interactions, workshops and people made their own zines to take away. It was a celebration of community and the power of all of our voices, whoever we are and wherever we are from. We asked people from all generations, what one thing would you do to make the world a better place?
The IN/Visible Collective were absolutely thrilled to be working in close partnership with the amazing team at MIMA, inviting audiences and participants from local communities to get to know more about positive community action, activism, community building, sharing space for conversation and creating beautiful works of art. Then on 8 February audiences and participants were invited to share in a living work of art & insight into the world of disabled women’s creative activism through stories and performances that are seldom shared. The collective presented a series of performances & workshops throughout MIMA, showcasing individual artists, offering audiences a variety of different experiences. The performances were symbolic of the necessity for cultural spaces to be open to telling more than one story. An amazing audience followed a trail of performances in different spaces throughout MIMA, which are shared in more detail below.
Rising In Our Power reflects the journey the IN/Visible National Disabled Women’s Art Collective have taken beyond COVID lockdowns from their unique online studio. Bound together by lived experience, the artists have found innovative, sustainable ways to develop new work online, cross-pollinated by their diverse art forms & approaches. The pioneering collective worked together every week in their art studio, creating work, developing bonds and building community. The Rising in Our Power ‘takeover’ offers insight into lesser-known sides of disability culture –the deep roots grown in a space of friendship, humour, cooperation & solidarity. This culture was embedded into each activity; introducing the different methods marginalised women have used to make their voices heard, with generosity, fun and the warm spirit of community.
The IN/Visible Collective were absolutely thrilled to be working in close partnership with the amazing team at MIMA, inviting audiences and participants from local communities to get to know more about positive community action, activism, community building, sharing space for conversation and creating beautiful works of art. Then on 8 February audiences and participants were invited to share in a living work of art & insight into the world of disabled women’s creative activism through stories and performances that are seldom shared. The collective presented a series of performances & workshops throughout MIMA, showcasing individual artists, offering audiences a variety of different experiences. The performances were symbolic of the necessity for cultural spaces to be open to telling more than one story. An amazing audience followed a trail of performances in different spaces throughout MIMA, which are shared in more detail below.
Rising In Our Power reflects the journey the IN/Visible National Disabled Women’s Art Collective have taken beyond COVID lockdowns from their unique online studio. Bound together by lived experience, the artists have found innovative, sustainable ways to develop new work online, cross-pollinated by their diverse art forms & approaches. The pioneering collective worked together every week in their art studio, creating work, developing bonds and building community. The Rising in Our Power ‘takeover’ offers insight into lesser-known sides of disability culture –the deep roots grown in a space of friendship, humour, cooperation & solidarity. This culture was embedded into each activity; introducing the different methods marginalised women have used to make their voices heard, with generosity, fun and the warm spirit of community.
"I think that this is the first time in a forty year career that I was able to do what my work is really about in a place where my work needs to be seen. As a working class, disabled, Jewish woman I am dismissed, ignored, not invited or looked for at all. "
Michelle Baharier
Workshops and Communities
In the lead up to the take over, IN/Visible Collective created and delivered a programme of cross-generational arts workshops with the public, arts practitioners & MIMA staff, bringing new disabled-led work to existing MIMA audiences & new audiences to MIMA.
Rising in Our Power Art Trolley
The IN/Visible National Disabled Women’s Arts Collective created some treats to make on the Art Trolley at MIMA. In addition to MIMAs usual freestyling activities children took part in some of the special activities created to help us think about what we bring to our communities – our strengths, our qualities and our dreams.
Superpower Flags and Hoops and Dreams
Children thought about all their strengths and qualities – especially the ones that make the world a better place, they drew them, wrote them, stuck them – whatever they liked. There was a flag template to put on a mini flag pole and they could add designs to the back and front. To fly their superpowers with pride. There was also a hoop activity to connect ribbons, string and wool to which symbolise their superpowers.
Me And My Clan
We all know the colours of our favourite team, or our favourite bands. Celtic and Viking Clans all had their colours too. The Celts made coloured tartans to say which clan they were from. The children chose colours for their own clan’s tartan – they made it from fabric and craft materials or different papers.
Rising in Our Power Art Trolley
The IN/Visible National Disabled Women’s Arts Collective created some treats to make on the Art Trolley at MIMA. In addition to MIMAs usual freestyling activities children took part in some of the special activities created to help us think about what we bring to our communities – our strengths, our qualities and our dreams.
Superpower Flags and Hoops and Dreams
Children thought about all their strengths and qualities – especially the ones that make the world a better place, they drew them, wrote them, stuck them – whatever they liked. There was a flag template to put on a mini flag pole and they could add designs to the back and front. To fly their superpowers with pride. There was also a hoop activity to connect ribbons, string and wool to which symbolise their superpowers.
Me And My Clan
We all know the colours of our favourite team, or our favourite bands. Celtic and Viking Clans all had their colours too. The Celts made coloured tartans to say which clan they were from. The children chose colours for their own clan’s tartan – they made it from fabric and craft materials or different papers.
Protesting Puppets
Having a voice and speaking about the things you are passionate about is important. “Give Peace A Chance”, “Love is Love”, “Equality for All”, “Kindness to Cats” – what would your puppet campaign for? Making small hand puppets and mini-placards to have your say.
Magnificent Me Medal
Each and every one of us is unique and brings our qualities to our communities. We all deserve a medal for the good things we bring – the children were inventive in creating their own medals be for?
Having a voice and speaking about the things you are passionate about is important. “Give Peace A Chance”, “Love is Love”, “Equality for All”, “Kindness to Cats” – what would your puppet campaign for? Making small hand puppets and mini-placards to have your say.
Magnificent Me Medal
Each and every one of us is unique and brings our qualities to our communities. We all deserve a medal for the good things we bring – the children were inventive in creating their own medals be for?
"I look back over decades and realise how much we've had to campaign for cultural space. But there are lots of moments that sparkle and sing, and they are when I've come together with other disabled artists and we've created community. When we've celebrated each other and our work, there is nothing else like it. I'm proud that we've held Rising in Our Power at MIMA - there are memories that will stay with me forever. "
Vici Wreford-Sinnott
Working with The Club
Working with The Club, which is a mixed group of people from a range of communities, we thought about community building and how groups identify themselves and use their voices. Members were invited to think about the colours schemes of different clans and tribes – football teams, uniforms of places we need or love, bands or music movements, birdwatchers, people who love nature, tartan, Vikings and then decide on a colour scheme for The Club’s tartan. They then did try-outs on small paper with pastels as sketch versions of bigger works.
The next stage was members had large sheets of paper or card to do roller and ink/acrylic printing onto, in their chosen colours, using the backgrounds and lines of tartan as inspiration.
Everyone discussed local phrases and sayings about using your voice and encouraging others to stay positive:
The next stage was members had large sheets of paper or card to do roller and ink/acrylic printing onto, in their chosen colours, using the backgrounds and lines of tartan as inspiration.
Everyone discussed local phrases and sayings about using your voice and encouraging others to stay positive:
Happy heart
Shy bairns get nowt
Be strong, be happy
Don’t let the cat get your tongue
Chin Up
Speak now or forever hold you peace
Friends Not Enemies
This Is Me
Get the kettle on
The phrases were applied in lettering on the large prints.
Shy bairns get nowt
Be strong, be happy
Don’t let the cat get your tongue
Chin Up
Speak now or forever hold you peace
Friends Not Enemies
This Is Me
Get the kettle on
The phrases were applied in lettering on the large prints.
Doodle Sheets
MIMA invites visiting artists to create doodle sheets for visitors to the galleries to be inspired by. They’re a free artistic resource for anyone to come in and work on or take away to do at home. The designs vary. The IN/Visible Collective were invited to create two doodle sheets for the lead up to to the takeover day. Caroline Cardus designed an activists toolkit and Vici Wreford-Sinnott designed a placard slogans doodle sheet. Both doodle sheets were designed with community voices in mind and were an invitation for local people to consider how they would, and already are, changing the world. This complimented the work created during the IN/Visible Collective’s residency with the Family Art Trolley.
Assemble your own activists’ tool kit to change the world by Caroline Cardus.
Visitors are invited to think about how people have been activists in the past and how they have used their voices. These ideas provide agency and confidence that anyone can use their voice. Caroline has cleverly included references from a range of political campaigns – can you spot them? |
Changing the world one voice at a time by Vici Wreford-Sinnott.
Vici invited visitors to come up with their own ideas for simple things to change the world to add to the placards. Disabled people and people from diverse communities are featured to show that they are active members of society with agency and not passive pitiable stereotypes. |
Playlists
The IN/Visible Collective created a series of playlists for Rising in Our Power to capture the multiple strands and attitudes of community, activism, art and women's voices.
There are four playlists you can access here, collated by MIMA on Spotify
"RIOP was everything I hoped and more than I could have dreamed of. I didn’t have any idea what shape my contribution to RIOP would be. When “Revolution” popped up on my Facebook page, I clung onto that idea as my contribution. I’m a “shh-gently-slowly” revolutionary, and I believe I made a small difference to a small number of families with the Saturday Art Trolley workshops... I’ve grown in confidence. I’m putting myself forward for events and projects, and it’s OK when I don’t get chosen because that’s growth too."
Lynne McFarlane
Limited Edition Zine and Pop Up Exhibition
There is very little accessible, published material about disabled women artists, and about their approaches to activism, and yet there is a 50-60 year history of Disability Arts in the UK. Most of the publication of work by disabled artists has been created within the disability arts community. It remains viewed as a niche area of the arts despite its relevance to over 25% of the population, and the cultural value the work holds in its broadest sense. Disabled people are not a minority group but a minoritised section of society, causing the work to be viewed as 'less than' and 'other' due to the tacit biases held within both society and the arts. The IN/Visible National Disabled Women's Arts Collective created this zine with immense pride as a celebration of the voices of disabled women artists at a variety of intersections, all with very different experiences and perspectives but with a solidarity around having been neglected in art and culture.
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You can see the exhibits form the Pop-Up Exhibition here
Takeover Day Live Performances
Dolly Sen
Dolly Sen has a brain of ill-repute. Because of this she is a writer, artist, performer and filmmaker. Since 2004 she has exhibited and performed internationally. Her films have also been shown worldwide. Her journey as an artist has taken her up a tree in Regents Park, to California’s Death Row, to the Barbican, BFI, Tower Bridge, to sectioning the DWP, and up a ladder to screw a lightbulb into the sky. Dolly’s creativity aims to put normality over her lap and slap its naughty arse. Her most recent work challenged the narrative and archives of those labelled mad in her project Birdsong from Inobservable Worlds. She is working class, Queer, interested in disability and the madness given to us by the world. She currently resides in Norwich in Norfolk. She/They.
Dolly’s Performance
Dolly’s residence was in front of the lifts at MIMA, encouraging them to rise up with us. An impassioned clarion to self-belief and not giving in to discrimination. Drawing on the wisdom of Audre Lorde and Maya Angelou this was a powerful and witty performance piece, encouraging both lifts and audiences to rise up.
https://dollysen.com
Dolly’s Performance
Dolly’s residence was in front of the lifts at MIMA, encouraging them to rise up with us. An impassioned clarion to self-belief and not giving in to discrimination. Drawing on the wisdom of Audre Lorde and Maya Angelou this was a powerful and witty performance piece, encouraging both lifts and audiences to rise up.
https://dollysen.com
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Caroline Cardus
Caroline Cardus’s artistic practice includes public art installation, collage, painting, and performance, drawing upon her own and others’ lived experience of disabling barriers. She is known for her growing public art installation, The Way Ahead, which delivers powerful anti-ableist messages in the form of public UK road signs.
Caroline’s Performance
Caroline Cardus reflected on, and challenged, the space disabled women are and aren’t allowed to take up, subverting how they are perceived. Performing in MIMA’s huge atrium, she talked about expectations of her as a disabled child which she turned on their head. Cardus also talked of the inspiration and solidarity disabled women take both from each other and other artists. Disabled suffragette Rosa May Billinghurst occupied unexpected space by using her wheelchair and crutches as battering rams to get through crowds and challenge the police. Cardus reflected on German visual artist Rebecca Horn who used sculptural form as extensions of her own body, interpreting one of Horn’s works, Einhorn, Cardus used one of her crutches as a huge horn from her head, inviting the viewer to contemplate how it might feel to live in a world that doesn’t fit.
https://www.carolinecardusartist.com
Caroline’s Performance
Caroline Cardus reflected on, and challenged, the space disabled women are and aren’t allowed to take up, subverting how they are perceived. Performing in MIMA’s huge atrium, she talked about expectations of her as a disabled child which she turned on their head. Cardus also talked of the inspiration and solidarity disabled women take both from each other and other artists. Disabled suffragette Rosa May Billinghurst occupied unexpected space by using her wheelchair and crutches as battering rams to get through crowds and challenge the police. Cardus reflected on German visual artist Rebecca Horn who used sculptural form as extensions of her own body, interpreting one of Horn’s works, Einhorn, Cardus used one of her crutches as a huge horn from her head, inviting the viewer to contemplate how it might feel to live in a world that doesn’t fit.
https://www.carolinecardusartist.com
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Michelle Baharier
Michelle Baharier is an award-winning graduate of the Slade School of Fine Art and exchange student of the Städelschule Fine Art Academy in Frankfurt, Germany. She exhibits widely and her work is held in both public and private collections including digital portraits in the British Transport Museum. Michelle is a recipient of the Glaxo Smith Kline Impact Award and the Julian Sullivan Award for ground-breaking work in the arts.
Michelle’s Performance
Becoming an activist in childhood, due to being labelled, can be a way of navigating a world that isn’t accessible. Michelle took us on a journey, labelled as ‘mad’, she discovered similarities between herself and Middlesbrough’s, Red Ellen and Jewish suffragette Naomi Jacob. She created a historic asylum strong dress with turquoise wings of transformation revealed part way through the performance. The wings had an intricate design of the Middlesbrough Transporter Bridge, also known as the Dragonfly Bridge, sewn into them. Read more here
https://michellebaharier.co.uk
Michelle’s Performance
Becoming an activist in childhood, due to being labelled, can be a way of navigating a world that isn’t accessible. Michelle took us on a journey, labelled as ‘mad’, she discovered similarities between herself and Middlesbrough’s, Red Ellen and Jewish suffragette Naomi Jacob. She created a historic asylum strong dress with turquoise wings of transformation revealed part way through the performance. The wings had an intricate design of the Middlesbrough Transporter Bridge, also known as the Dragonfly Bridge, sewn into them. Read more here
https://michellebaharier.co.uk
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Vici Wreford-Sinnott
Vici Wreford-Sinnott is a disabled theatre and TV writer and director. Her award-winning theatre work has toured nationally and internationally. A punk at heart, she is an artistic trickster, her work playfully transgressing societal expectations of disabled women. She is artistic director of Tees Valley based Little Cog, a disabled-led production company. In 2021 Vici wrote and directed one of the first pieces of broadcast television drama by a disabled women led team, Hen Night for the BBC. Vici is the recipient of the North East Art and Culture Award for Outsanding Achievement in the Arts.
Vici’s Performance
Vici Wreford- Sinnott invited Jacqueline Phillips, Alice Faith Byrne, Sarah Crutwell to perform as Sheena and the Access Monitors who were punk disruptors in a loud intervention celebrating collective action and community in the face of discrimination. The Access Monitors were a provocation around notions of those in receipt of access and support, a rebellion against traditional imagery of disability as tragic and pitiful. Many disabled artists and activists found a home in punk in their early activism with its DIY spirit, and anti-establishment political campaigns.
https://www.littlecog.co.uk
Vici’s Performance
Vici Wreford- Sinnott invited Jacqueline Phillips, Alice Faith Byrne, Sarah Crutwell to perform as Sheena and the Access Monitors who were punk disruptors in a loud intervention celebrating collective action and community in the face of discrimination. The Access Monitors were a provocation around notions of those in receipt of access and support, a rebellion against traditional imagery of disability as tragic and pitiful. Many disabled artists and activists found a home in punk in their early activism with its DIY spirit, and anti-establishment political campaigns.
https://www.littlecog.co.uk
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Pauline Heath
Pauline Heath is a trained actor and writer and has worked with a number of theatre companies including Graeae Theatre, Edinburgh Theatre Workshop and Dance City. She has also written and performed her own work. Pauline performed in the 2012 Paralympic Games Opening Ceremony directed by Jenny Sealey; and in the Great North Run Million Opening Ceremony directed by Bradley Hemmings. She also works in dance and visual art.
Pauline’s Performance
Pauline’s performance took audiences down a rabbit hole of the brutal benefits maze, using humour, satire and audience participation. Dressed a little bit like Alice in Wonderland, Pauline Heath shares what it’s like to feel like a ‘reject’ from birth in your own country. But don’t worry she had pinatas for a party game! And the difference to Alice is that Pauline has the DWP logo printed on her dress and the phrase Personal Independence Payments. On her apron her PIP rejection letter is prominent.
Pauline’s Performance
Pauline’s performance took audiences down a rabbit hole of the brutal benefits maze, using humour, satire and audience participation. Dressed a little bit like Alice in Wonderland, Pauline Heath shares what it’s like to feel like a ‘reject’ from birth in your own country. But don’t worry she had pinatas for a party game! And the difference to Alice is that Pauline has the DWP logo printed on her dress and the phrase Personal Independence Payments. On her apron her PIP rejection letter is prominent.
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Samantha Blackburn
Samantha Blackburn is a creative maker, producer, and presenter of outsider arts, working across photography, textiles, embroidery, and live performance. In her work, she explores the themes of cultural identity, notions of ‘home’ and sense of belonging, mental health stigma and structural inequalities/oppression against working class people, disabled people, women, and LGBTQ+ communities.
Her creative practice is influenced by her lived experience of disability.
Samantha’s Performance
Samantha’s performance was inspired by the life of Elizabeth Packard (1816-1897), who was admitted to an asylum by her husband, losing her children. She fought to be released, got her children back and dedicated her life to law reform and rights for women. Samantha read as if from a journal in subdued lighting in Gallery 5 exhibiting historic rugs, dressed in period costume with various attachments on her belt symbolising different things about womanhood. Read more here
Her creative practice is influenced by her lived experience of disability.
Samantha’s Performance
Samantha’s performance was inspired by the life of Elizabeth Packard (1816-1897), who was admitted to an asylum by her husband, losing her children. She fought to be released, got her children back and dedicated her life to law reform and rights for women. Samantha read as if from a journal in subdued lighting in Gallery 5 exhibiting historic rugs, dressed in period costume with various attachments on her belt symbolising different things about womanhood. Read more here
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JulieMc Mcnamara
JulieMc McNamara is an award-winning playwright, performer and documentary filmmaker passionate about social justice. Feeling like an impostor, she is a recipient of a Miegunyah Award from Melbourne University, 2019; Three Picture This...Film Festival Awards, 2018 Best of Festival, Best Documentary and 2017 Best Performance on screen; a South Bank Show Award, 2010; and a DaDaFest Writers Award with ITV 2009. Her work has been produced on international stages, and she is published in anthologies and non-fiction collections.
JulieMc’s Performance
Politician, activist and reformer Red Ellen Wilkinson, inspired JulieMc’s performance when she looked into the stories of the 8th and 9th plinths memorialising noteworthy people in Middlesbrough. Red Ellen was overlooked but speaks large in this powerful monologue and imagined connections. The piece is about the brutality of poverty, the traumatising inhumane treatment of disabled people in austerity Britain, invoking the political spirit of Red Ellen rallying audiences not to accept the dehumanisation of fellow citizens. JulieMc sang the political song Bread and Roses.
https://juliemc.com
JulieMc’s Performance
Politician, activist and reformer Red Ellen Wilkinson, inspired JulieMc’s performance when she looked into the stories of the 8th and 9th plinths memorialising noteworthy people in Middlesbrough. Red Ellen was overlooked but speaks large in this powerful monologue and imagined connections. The piece is about the brutality of poverty, the traumatising inhumane treatment of disabled people in austerity Britain, invoking the political spirit of Red Ellen rallying audiences not to accept the dehumanisation of fellow citizens. JulieMc sang the political song Bread and Roses.
https://juliemc.com
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Lynne McFarlane
Lynne McFarlane (she/her) is an experienced poet and spoken word artist with an MA in Creative Writing from The Open University. She is a pioneer of disruptive kitchenalia and an age positive campaigner promoting age positivity in writing, performing and visual imageries. Ableism and disability terminology that seeks to define older women is rarely talked about and she is keen to open the conversation in a safe space where women can feel empowered and supported. Lynne is a founding member of LESS is MORE’s New Wave company, and in December 2024 occupied the main stage in Middlesbrough Town Hall with the soundscape “A Winters Chill”.
Lynne’s Intervention
Lynne's intervention reflected that activism comes in lots of forms and that people take part in different ways, all of it as relevant and powerful as each other. She put the theme of love into R'EVOL'ution and for her zine and pop-up exhibition piece Lynne made a beautiful knitted scarf with pockets with love hearts on them. She sent a twin scarf to Baroness Tanni Grey-Thomspon who popped in to thank Lynne during the takeover day. Loving activism is sitting, together, belonging, talking and making things is about community space making, reaching people and providing connections. Although Lynne did this on the day of the event, she also did it for five weeks in advance with both the MIMA Family Art Trolley and workshops with The Club. Read more here
Lynne’s Intervention
Lynne's intervention reflected that activism comes in lots of forms and that people take part in different ways, all of it as relevant and powerful as each other. She put the theme of love into R'EVOL'ution and for her zine and pop-up exhibition piece Lynne made a beautiful knitted scarf with pockets with love hearts on them. She sent a twin scarf to Baroness Tanni Grey-Thomspon who popped in to thank Lynne during the takeover day. Loving activism is sitting, together, belonging, talking and making things is about community space making, reaching people and providing connections. Although Lynne did this on the day of the event, she also did it for five weeks in advance with both the MIMA Family Art Trolley and workshops with The Club. Read more here
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Honor Flaherty
Honor Flaherty is a disabled Irish writer, living in Leicestershire. She writes for stage and screen. She has worked in theatre, film and radio, and has a penchant for comedy and camp musicals. She is in development with her next play She’s The King, about a female Elvis impersonator. And currently writing her new play The Good Girl, about the struggles of being a young carer with Leicester’s Curve Theatre. She has a MA in TV Script Writing. She has worked with DANC, Little Cog, Theatre 503 and recently completed a Sketch Writing Comedy Lab with Soho Theatre. * Weird fact about Honor is that she is a Guinness World Record Holder as one of 50 writers on a movie called 50 Kisses with London Screenwriters Festival.
Honor was unable to join us at MIMA but she is a full and vital member of the collective. She worked together with us weekly in the online studio, created embroidered artwork for the limited edition zine, exhibited in the pop-up exhibition, and did an incredible interview with legendary American disabled artist and activist Riva Lehrer for the zine. An experienced and highly regarded writer Honor created an incredible character with all costume, set and props in place but personal circumstances prevented its premiere. We hope that will be possible in a future iteration of Rising in Our Power.
Honor was unable to join us at MIMA but she is a full and vital member of the collective. She worked together with us weekly in the online studio, created embroidered artwork for the limited edition zine, exhibited in the pop-up exhibition, and did an incredible interview with legendary American disabled artist and activist Riva Lehrer for the zine. An experienced and highly regarded writer Honor created an incredible character with all costume, set and props in place but personal circumstances prevented its premiere. We hope that will be possible in a future iteration of Rising in Our Power.
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Feedback
"What did RIOP mean to me?
This opportunity to be a part of IN/Visible saved my life when I was at the lowest ebb. I had the chance to make work again, creative work that is socially engaged, relevant and fired by speaking truth to power. This is essential right now in a world where our own government is mounting a war on Disabled people and adding to the already heavy burden of austerity measures on the shoulders of one of the most marginalised sectors in our communities.
RISING IN OUR POWER needs to be fully funded to continue the cultural work, to raise the profile of older Disabled women - one of the most neglected groups amongst our citizens with 'protected characteristics'.
NO SURRENDER!"
JulieMc McNamara
This opportunity to be a part of IN/Visible saved my life when I was at the lowest ebb. I had the chance to make work again, creative work that is socially engaged, relevant and fired by speaking truth to power. This is essential right now in a world where our own government is mounting a war on Disabled people and adding to the already heavy burden of austerity measures on the shoulders of one of the most marginalised sectors in our communities.
RISING IN OUR POWER needs to be fully funded to continue the cultural work, to raise the profile of older Disabled women - one of the most neglected groups amongst our citizens with 'protected characteristics'.
NO SURRENDER!"
JulieMc McNamara
You can download a PDF copy of Dispatches: A chronicle of artistic interventions by disabled women artists at MIMA February 2025.
Acknowledgements
The IN/Visible National Disabled Women’s Arts Collective would like to sincerely thank all of the artists who took part and shared incredible work. Your work is important and has a place in the nation’s cultural landscape.
Special thanks go to the MIMA team for collaborating with us on this incredible, pioneering programme of work, especially to Claire Pounder, Learning Curator, who was our main contact for the project and to Elinor Morgan, Artistic Director, for her insight and support. We had an amazing support team around us including Alex Dechbamrung and Ruth Laidler from Little Cog, and Karis Richardson, Katie Matthews, and Madelyn Husted who came in board as our trusted ‘runners’ for 2 days.
The families and community members we met during our workshops on the Family Art Trolley and in The Club, sustained us, welcomed us, created fantastic art work, were great fun, with all of you leaving us with memories we will treasure. Huge thanks to Poppy who supervises the Art Trolley for being a fantastic help to our team.
Big thanks to our Production Manager Ben Clarke, and sound engineer Trev Fairclough who really did save the day technically!
We were lucky to have amazing photographer Kev Howard with us for our rehearsal and performance days so thank you to him for capturing the event so brilliantly. And huge thanks to Black Robin for videoing the live performances as they happened at MIMA.
Our sincere thanks to MIMA, ARC Stockton, Little Cog and Arts Council England for their funding and in kind support of the project.
As we launch this Dispatches Chronicle, we are delivering three online events where the artists will all share a film of their live performance and give a talk on what ignited the ideas for the work they created.
You can contact Vici Wreford-Sinnott at [email protected]
