Artwork by Caroline Cardus
The IN/Visible National Disabled Women's Arts Collective Take Over MIMA
Rising in Our Power is a landmark interdisciplinary artistic takeover at MIMA, by the IN/Visible National Disabled Women’s Arts Collective, on Saturday 8 February 2025, 11.00 am -3.00 pm. There will be performances, interactions, workshops, and a mini procession from the family art trolley, and you can make your own zine to take away. It is a celebration of community and the power of all of our voices, whoever we are and wherever we are from as we ask people from all generations, what one thing would you do to make the world a better place?
We are absolutely thrilled to be working in close partnership with the amazing team at MIMA, for the IN/Visible Collective invite audiences & participants to share in a living work of art & insight into the world of women’s creative activism, community & equitable community space-making. The collective will present a series of performances & workshops throughout MIMA, showcasing individual artists, offering audiences a variety of different experiences. The event also includes a publication made by the artists to take away as a tangible reminder of the event.
In the lead up to the take over, IN/Visible Collective will create and deliver 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 reflects the journey the IN/Visible National Disabled Women’s Art Collective have taken beyond COVID lockdowns. Bound together by lived experience, the artists have found innovative, sustainable ways to develop new work online, cross-pollinated by our diverse art forms & approaches. The innovative collective work together every week in an online 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 will be 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.
About 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.
The IN/Visible National Disabled Women’s Art Collective are grateful to the team at MIMA for their belief, passion and support of the collective's vision. We would also like to thank Arts Council England for funding this project, and thank you to ARC Stockton for supporting the collective since we began.
Follow us for more information as the project develops and we start to reveal more information about the takeover.
We are absolutely thrilled to be working in close partnership with the amazing team at MIMA, for the IN/Visible Collective invite audiences & participants to share in a living work of art & insight into the world of women’s creative activism, community & equitable community space-making. The collective will present a series of performances & workshops throughout MIMA, showcasing individual artists, offering audiences a variety of different experiences. The event also includes a publication made by the artists to take away as a tangible reminder of the event.
In the lead up to the take over, IN/Visible Collective will create and deliver 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 reflects the journey the IN/Visible National Disabled Women’s Art Collective have taken beyond COVID lockdowns. Bound together by lived experience, the artists have found innovative, sustainable ways to develop new work online, cross-pollinated by our diverse art forms & approaches. The innovative collective work together every week in an online 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 will be 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.
About 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.
The IN/Visible National Disabled Women’s Art Collective are grateful to the team at MIMA for their belief, passion and support of the collective's vision. We would also like to thank Arts Council England for funding this project, and thank you to ARC Stockton for supporting the collective since we began.
Follow us for more information as the project develops and we start to reveal more information about the takeover.
The IN/Visible Collective
After coming together in Pandemic lockdowns to reduce the isolation of older disabled women artists, talking about 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.
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. Sound Moves, in the Tate sound archive. 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 art addresses the many barriers that she and others face, some due to disability discrimination and prejudice. Her powerful paintings are vibrant, creating emotionally charged pieces, that encourage the viewer to have a dialogue with the images as seen in her recent highly acclaimed solo portraiture exhibition, How Do I Make You Feel?, at The Foundry Gallery in London 2023 which arose from portrait commissions from Disability Arts Online, as was her solo show in 2021 at Sprout Gallery. Michelle was commissioned to paint Baroness Tanni Grey-Thompson and seven other Paralympic athletes for Hoxton’s art wall in 2017, with ‘Vison’ a group of learning-disabled artists. Michelle is best known for founding CoolTan Arts, an arts and mental health charity, famous for its Largactyl Shuffle Walks of which she was the co-founder. She ran Midnight Walks that took the audience on a vivacious live performance of myth and fact, from the powerhouse to the madhouse. Michelle is working with the Transport Museum again. She has been commissioned to paint the portraits of members of staff who are disabled, creating the first collection of disabled people’s contribution to the Museum’s work. Michelle regularly gives workshops and talks and is available for commissions. Michellebaharier.co.uk |
Samantha Blackburn
Samantha is a creative maker, producer, and presenter of outsider arts, working across multimedia including photography, textiles, embroidery, line drawing, live performance including music.
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. |
Caroline Cardus
Visual artist Caroline Cardus’s multi-disciplinary art practice includes public art installation, collage, painting and performance.
Cardus draws upon her own and others' lived experience of disabling barriers. Her work focuses on creative activism sited from the point an individual is denied equitable participation in society, inviting the viewer to contemplate how it might feel to live in a world that doesn’t fit. She is known for her still-growing public art installation, The Way Ahead, which delivers frank, irreverent and powerful messages from disabled people in the form of UK road signs. |
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. This is Honor’s very first piece of performance art in a gallery setting (and she’s both excited and nervous in unequalled measures!) * 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.
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Pauline Heath
Pauline Heath is a trained actor having gained a Degree in Performing Arts in Newcastle and subsequently training and touring with Graeae Theatre Company. As part of Tyneside Disability Arts (TDA), Pauline worked on a number of productions with Get Off Our Backs Theatre Company, including the development of her idea for the play Feckless. Her poetry was published in two anthologies by Disabled writers, Sub Rosa and Transgression. Pauline was mentored by choreographer and dancer Caroline Bowditch to create a piece of physical theatre Hangin’ Around For A Man With A Pulse to open the month long disability arts Mimosa Festival in the North East. It led to cabaret and stand-up performances. She toured Scotland in Theatre Workshop Edinburgh’s production of Marat Sade; performed in the Paralympic Opening Ceremony directed by Jenny Sealey; and in the Great North Run Million Opening Ceremony directed by Bradley Hemmings. More recently Pauline crated a solo performance called NeverNeverland and her play Occupation was performed with an original music score by professional actors and a community chorus at ARC Stockton. Her visual art work has been exhibited across the country and online. Pauline was recently commissioned by the mental health charity Mind to deliver her Messages in a Bottle workshop at Peerfest in London, and she was an access advisor for Surface Area Dance Theatre.
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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 will occupy the main stage in Middlesbrough Town Hall with the soundscape “A Winters Chill”.
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Juliemac McNamara
Julie McNamara is an award-winning playwright, performer and documentary filmmaker passionate about social justice. 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 her favourite - a DaDaFest Writers Award with ITV 2009. Her work has been produced on international stages, and her poetry and essays have been published in anthologies and non-fiction collections. And she still wakes up feeling like an imposter.
JulieMac is a survivor of the mental health and criminal justice systems, lives with a brain injury and a ridiculous sense of humour. When asked about her creative work, JulieMac said: 'I've written 18 plays and several monologues that have been staged, but I'm not finished with any of them. Nothing's perfect, it never will be, I start with my most desperate mistakes and then go for the jugular, fearlessly. You've got to stay curious, stay awake, stay alert and expect the unexpected. I'm currently writing about the art of failing spectacularly, in plain sight, with stigmatised ageing flesh and f**k 'em all attitude. |
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. www.dollysen.com |
Vici Wreford-Sinnott
Vici 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, and exploding, the so-called normal, particularly around societal expectations of disabled women. Her work aims to populate the cultural world with ground-breaking disabled protagonists living life on their terms. She is artistic director of Little Cog which is a North East based disabled-led production company, working across a range of artforms. 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. She is a leading figure in the UK Disability Arts Movement and has campaigned for the cultural equity of disabled people for over thirty years.
Vici has always championed new platforms for disabled artists, creating commissions and longer opportunities including Staging Our Futures, Crucial Conversation series of discussions, Funny Haha Comedy Writers Room, Disconsortia Disabled Artist Collective and is a founding member of the IN/Visible National Disabled Women’s Arts Collective. She also supports organisations and festivals to develop their knowledge and confidence around disability equality practice, promoting strategic artistic practice as a route to equity and visibility for disabled people. Vici was recently awarded the North East Art and Culture Award for Outstanding Contribution to the Arts and is currently undertaking PhD Research at Teesside University into Radical Acts – Disabled Women Performing, reflecting her expertise in the representation of disabled people in theatre and the arts. She will be touring her show UNRULY in spring 2025. |