Let's Amplify Disabled Peoples' Experiences of the Arts

You have to check out this film from a live event by The Quips aka Cutter // Nash. I'm unashamedly biased because they kindly invited me to be involved and the other artists featured are just mega-brilliant. They put on a five star event!

Gareth Cutter and Gemma Nash held an artistic research project into how disabled artists and audiences are feeling about life in the arts now, after the whole world seems to think we can just go back to how it was before the pandemic. They invited artists to be interviewed and others to create artistic responses to the experience of the pandemic.

The Quips culminated in a live radio broadcast which was an hour-long programme of pop and experimental music, political poetry and insightful interviews drawn from the queer and disability arts community which is now available here to tune in to. 

The live event was shared on YouTube through the Disability Arts Online Channel and you can see the buzz it created in the comments.  There were interviews and artistic contributions from amazing people like Quiplash, Karl Knights, R. Dyer, Ruth Malkin, Sonia Allori and George Parker. And Cutter // Nash created some phenomenal sound and visual pieces in response to the experiences of the pandemic. 

Sonia Allori commented in the chat, "Being here is like collectively exhaling pent up anxiety saved up by us all for the last 2 years" and I would echo that. It felt like a very special event but I wonder who is listening to us. This subject and this work deserves a much greater audience. So please do share it - everyone in the arts needs to hear these voices and experiences. I can't speak more highly of Cutter // Nash for this - we really need to get people in the arts talking and thinking about these important themes too. 

Cutter // Nash were inspired by broadcasts such as the 1947 French radio show, ‘La Tribune de l’Invalide’, and ‘Gaywaves’, the 1980s British radio programme run in the era of Section 28, its a space for queer and disabled voices to explore the changes, challenges and opportunities brought about by the Covid-19 pandemic, and send a message out to the rest of the world about queers disability narratives. More radical radio is needed - let's turn the volume up!