My poems provide a gateway for me to have my say, to share with all those others, to keep strange thoughts at bay. Inviting other nutters to join me if they will, to sing our song of difference, the music never still but winding out in spirals, expressing all we are, that being mad's a journey in a psychedelic car. Its easy to forget that there are others just like me, and the words that I keep writing can help them all to see that they're not alone and struggling, that they're not...

Grave-digging was hazardous work back in the 1960s. There was very little machinery: graves were still largely dug by spade. There were no Health-and-Safety rules. Opening up a grave, after however many years, to inter a new member of the family, was anything but healthy or safe. The typical gravediggers who I met were hard men: ex-Marines, night club bouncers, bare-knuckle boxers. But I am physically small, and have struggled all my life with epilepsy and dyspraxia, which got me sacked from...

Landscape
Of a crazed mind

Wherein truth
Lies

Hid from all
But those who seek out
The unspeakable
and speak up.

Settling People Like You into the Lighthouse Gallery space was not without problems, compromise and pain, but for me all of that paled into insignificance on discovering that Mirka's beautiful bowl had been damaged somewhere between being wrapped up and packed in Salisbury and being unwrapped in Poole - the day before the exhibition was due to open. The large chip on its rim is a complete puzzle, and the sadness is pervading. The bowl was part of a collaborative installation with ceramic...

Beautiful sun, blue sky, I'm late practicing today got distracted reading facebook, been thinking about a link Sophie Partridge posted about Mary Laver www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/proud-disabled-hero-mary-lavers-1862499 a disabled woman who is contemplating hunger strike to beg David Cameron to listen to concerns about the closure of the Independent Living Fund. It's going round my head and I try to imagine what it must feel like to have decisions about the quality of every aspect of...

Here I am wondering out loud on my cello, connecting with the blue sky, the cherry blossom and freshly painted walls. Something got taken away when support staff turned up unannounced mistakenly citing legal agreements to do with compulsory meetings and my tennancy. I have never signed such an agreement nor am required to do so. All sorted now and with these sounds I'm reclaiming my living space, feeling relieved (it's the third time this has happened in five years and the other times...

Ground-breaking Graeae returns to Greenwich+Docklands International Festival (GDIF) this coming June, for the fifth year with its world premiere of The Limbless Knight - A Tale of Rights Reignited, which reunites the creative team behind The Garden and Against The Tide.

Lisa Simpson is seeking funding to  support disabled choreographers using new technology developed by Adam Benjamin. Lisa and her colleague, Ray Rooney, have set up a social enterprise company to help disabled dancers and their teachers unlock similar potential. Sheila McWattie reports on the initiative

Now in its 18th year, the 2013 International Family Film Festival was held (May 1st - 5th) at Raleigh Studios in the heart of Hollywood. Creative Bucks project Driving Inspiration entered an animation created last year and came first in the Youth Animation Class.

Is it possible to make compelling theatre out of a cardiac arrest? John O’Donoghue went to see Doug Devaney’ show, part of Brighton’s Five Pound Fringe.

COnscription explores the call-up to military service for people who don't 'fit the mould'. The four-channel film is on show at the Old Truman Brewery, London until 18 May. Joe McConnell reviews a multimedia installation which follows the stories of four individuals who meet at a military hospital - three subjects under assessment and their doctor.

A gripping celebration of the forgotten lives of women who survived long term institutional incarceration.  Julie McNamara's 'The Knitting Circle'  (a Vital Xposure production currently on national tour) reviewed by Joe McConnell

Playwright and long-term advocate of positive change in the mental health system Julie McNamara tells Sheila McWattie about her profound experiences of unearthing untold stories of patients and staff from long-stay institutions

Juan delGado tells Joe McConnell about an exciting ongoing project which started in Palestine 3 years ago.

Sarah Hirst is currently in her 3rd and final year on a fine art degree. The theme of her work is about exploring the masks we wear in everyday life. Her gallery of Dream Watercolours represents work that came out of a project making work about experience of hallucinations.

Niamh Clune, Founder of Plum Tree Books sent out a call across Facebook, announcing that she wanted to do an anthology on All The Lonely People... poems, art, prose focussing on the subject of loneliness. DAO presents a sampler from the online anthology.