Crucial Conversation Provocateurs - The Progress We've Made

We are delighted to announce that the first of our Crucial Conversations provocateurs is the eminent artist activist Caroline Cardus, who has created ground breaking disability art for over 20 years. She works collaboratively as well as individually, to tell stories of lived experience from disability and feminist perspectives. The first in the Crucial Conversations series - The Progress We've Made - takes place online on Monday 8 April, 6.00-7.30pm.

Based on Caroline's experience and her approach, we've invited her to provide us with a provocation about the progress we've made as disabled artists. It’s a preservation approach to avoid spiralling into the usual negatives we know and experience daily, but to take a breath and take hope from the progress we’ve made as individuals or as a movement - perhaps reflecting on key moments in our community's history. 

As disabled artists there are so few meeting points to come together to get a sense of community and reduced isolation, so Crucial Conversations are created as a space to do just that. We're conscious that both our social and political backdrop is incredibly challenging, and that working in the arts can feel harder and harder.  These issues need addressing on a national and systemic scale and usually its over to us and our labour to do that. That's not what this conversation, on this occasion, is about though. It's to give us space away from that.

It feels rebellious and radical, but we're going to revel in our successes, individual, personal, and communal. In spite of everything, we are amazing and all the change that has happened for disabled people is because of our community's dogged determination. 

So if you're fed up of the overwhelming negativity we experience, this is a space to remind ourselves of our strength and power. What hope can we take from this going forward? How do we sustain ourselves? It's important to reflect in this way  to gather strength and remind us of our value, especially to each other but also to the wider cultural landscape, to create personal manifestos of hope to move us forward. 

About Caroline Cardus
Caroline Cardus created her ground breaking protest art piece The Way Ahead, provocatively launching it on 1st October 2004 when new anti-discrimination legislation was introduced in the UK. Since then, the exhibition has been continual demand as a Disability Art protest piece. It is now part of the National Disability Arts Collection and Archive (NDACA). Caroline has been artist in residence at BALTIC in Gateshead as recipient of the Adam Reynolds Memorial Bursary, and more recently has worked with Tate Modern,  the Wellcome Foundation and was part of 30 disabled artists taking part in a nationwide DaDa intervention in galleries called We Are Invisible, We Are Visible (#WAIWAV) funded by DASH Arts. Her intervention, FED UP, was shown at Milton Keynes Gallery.  She is a member of the IN/Visible Disabled Women's Arts Collective and also works as a creative producer, advocate and mentor for other artists. You can find our more about Caroline here Bio — carolinecardusartist.com

Booking for Crucial Conversations - The Progress We've Made
Crucial Conversations are disabled only spaces - please do not book a space if you are not a disabled person. 
​Disabled artists can book for this event on Eventbrite here. Crucial Conversations - Disabled Artists: The Progress We've Made Tickets, Mon 8 Apr 2024 at 18:00 | Eventbrite

Access 
Please book as soon as possible if you have access requirements and do tell us what you need in your booking form on Eventbrite. Thank you. 

You can find out more about other Crucial Conversations and provocateurs on our website here. ​Knowledge Action Change - LITTLE COG