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Colin Hambrook established Disability Arts Online in 2004. Since then he has been editing the journal. In his blog he comments on aspects of the work happening within the disability arts sector as well as specific arts programmes DAO is engaged with.

'Opening Up Creative Culture' - Colin Hambrook discusses audio-description and the work of the RNIB Cultural Inclusion department
25 April 2013

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cover image of the book Shifting Perspectives showing a gloved hand touching a bronze sculpture of a face

I have long objected to the idea - encouraged in art school - that visual artworks, should by definition, only be able to 'speak for themselves' - and that any written or spoken text interpreting a painting or a photograph simply 'got in the way' of the viewer's imagination. Words, when used creatively, and in an accessible way add layers enhancing the viewer's experience of the artwork, rather than telling people what to see. Yesterday, Zoe Partington, Cultural and...

Comments: 4

Colin Hambrook asks where do we find Disability Arts and activism?
15 April 2013

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colour image of shocking pink grab rails spelling out the word 'People' on a black background

The Disability, Arts & Diversity Symposium: 'From the Personal to the Universal' at Salisbury Arts Centre last week, promised to be "an in depth look at Disability Arts and activism from the viewpoints of artists, producers, presenters and policy makers." There are myriad implications for Disability Arts and its activist role in the wider social context, but to my mind the Symposium itself did little to address the issues. I wonder if somewhere along the way, the glory of...

Comments: 3

Liz Crow Bed's In at Salisbury Arts Centre to talk about disempowerment and discrimination
12 April 2013

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You would expect that a symposium on Disability Art as Activism will centre around the role that the arts play in addressing political issues. There is still time to get involved in disabled artist Liz Crow's live marathon public sleepover taking place in Salisbury Arts Centre. Liz takes centre stage in a large bed. Her purpose is to talk about what bed-life means for us as disabled people. She highlights the contradiction between the demands of the Benefits Agencies in making you present...

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Trish Wheatley invites you to take the DAO Reader Survey
3 April 2013

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Hand written multicoloured text reads: News Listings Reviews Blogs Interviews Galleries

The new look DAO has been live a few weeks now and we are keen to get your feedback on this and all aspects of DAO. We started doing an annual survey last year. It's really important that we hear from you so that we can continue to make improvements and deliver the content that really matters to you. We also use quotes anonymously from the survey as evidence of the need for DAO in our funding applications so good honest feedback really does help us to survive in challenging financial...

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Trish Wheatley attends the opening of the People Like You exhibition at Salisbury Arts Centre
8 March 2013

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photo of a group of soft sculptures of figures

In his book Future Perfect, Steve Johnson makes the observation that "as a news hook, steady incremental progress pales beside the sexier stories of dramatic breakthrough and spectacular failure". Here on DAO I believe we buck that trend. Whilst we plotted the highlights of the 2012 Cultural Olympiad we also, through our smaller news stories and ongoing blogs, aimed to cover those  incremental but no less significant steps in the arts world from a disability perspective. This...

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Colin Hambrook introduces the new look DAO and invites you to attend a symposium on disability art and activism at Salisbury Arts Centre
1 March 2013

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a pair of hand drawn wings, extended to the sky, white on dark blue.

We've been working hard during the last six months on the new design of DAO, which we launched earlier this week. Big thanks to everyone who has sent us feedback in the last few days. Responding to our last readers survey in March 2012 we decided to move away from the handmade feel and produce a bolder design which highlighted art form to make it easier to find features on specific topics within the navigation. We're working hard on identifying bugs in the older pages and tweaking...

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In a guest editorial Denis Joe asks 'Whither Disability Arts?'
28 January 2013

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painting of a bedroom interior with bare floorboards by Van Gogh

When I was in junior school I remember we were reading David Copperfield and the teacher used to break off from the reading to tell us something about Charles Dickens. I hated those diversions. I wasn’t interested in Dickens only in what he produced. To this day I still find it irritating that people feel the need to tell me about the man/woman behind the work as if this has any bearing on the end result. But I came to realise that this wasn’t merely a preference on my part. Whilst...

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A guest editorial from Q.S Is in response to Colin Hambrook's article on medication and mental health
7 January 2013

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a black and white drawing of a woman knitting

I read your DAO editorial Colin and found it very illuminating. I'm personally, not an advocate of medication either. Actually, I've been asked to write a book by an organisation called KAOS, based in Brussels, which will include essays detailing my own personal strategies and methodologies to deal with issues of the mind, along with accompanying artwork. I have no proof, but I think making art and writing helped me recover from psychosis and stopped a recurrence of episodes. I think...

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Here's wishing all DAO readers love and peace over the festive season from the Criptarts and all of us at Disability Arts Online
20 December 2012

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A festive seasonal message from disabled cartoonist Crippen, featuring the Criptarts cartoon characters

Trish and I would like to take this opportunity to wish all DAO readers a very happy, peaceful holiday and to thank all our contributors and trainees for their continued support and engagement this year. It's been an exciting 2012 with some fabulous work produced as a result of our Diverse Perspectives commissions from Crippen and John O'Donoghue, Ivan Riches, Liz Crow, Gini and Aaron Williamson. We had a tremendous time covering the work resulting from the Unlimited commissions and...

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Colin Hambrook responds to comments in last weeks debate, by those who don't see mental health as a 'disability' issue
10 December 2012

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I've been mulling over the range of comments that were entered in last weeks online debate as posted in DAOs editorial. In response I have to say, first off, that we have stop thinking of disability as a physical attribute. Disability is a state of inequality brought about as a result of oppression within society. This is often to do with physical barriers and lack of physical access, but it is also because of attitudinal barriers. What I would like to emphasise to those who would...

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Richard Downes discusses the debate on Disability Arts And Identity in last week's editorial
9 December 2012

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digitised image of an old clock



I am an old clock. Tick Tock Tick Tock
I call myself a disabled clock because the experience of impairments that I had over time is one of discrimination. The response of society to my impairments led me to a less than useful places where I was brutalised by watchmakers, not clockmakers, with callouses – later it meant restricted employment opportunities – and later still to mental health issues. Tick Tock Tick Tock
. I tried with varying shades of success to mainstream,...

Comments: 3

Colin Hambrook posts the debate from FaceBook group on disability art and Identity
5 December 2012

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ink drawing of several figures in a strange landscape

Last week DAOs FaceBook group was the site of a raging debate about disability, art and identity. Between 19-27 November members of the group posted something in the region of 15,000 words in 122 posts. Responses were passionate. It was a valuable debate testing the validity, or otherwise of Disability Art, a Disability Arts Movement and of definitions of being a 'disabled artist'. Many of the contributions question the social model ethic of 'self-definition' and the validity...

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Colin Hambrook attends the 21st Anniversary celebration of Survivors’ Poetry
9 November 2012

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screenshot of the homepage of the survivors poetry website

Last night was the 21st Anniversary of Survivors’ Poetry. It’s not difficult to fill the Poetry Café in Betterton Street, London, but it was a suitable venue for what was for me, an emotional occasion. Being involved with Survivors’ Poetry through the 1990s was instrumental in my getting involved with the Disability Arts Movement. Joe Bidder was then and remains to this day, an engaging mentor and advocate. Without him I would never have been able to move forward with...

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Colin Hambrook on Liz Crow's 'Bedding-In'
2 November 2012

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I often edit DAO from my bed. As someone with ME who has limited capacity for getting out and about responding to emails, publishing and sub-editing are frequently done between bouts of resting in bed. So when Liz Crow sent DAO a proposal for a Diverse Perspectives commission for an artwork involving a live bed-in I was particularly intrigued. Her intention for the live performance was to make a statement about the immense contradiction between the public face of the artist as someone with an...

Comments: 2

Colin Hambrook attends Simon Raven's 'Ghost Writer Party'
1 November 2012

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a young woman dressed in a black and white dress tentatively plucks a cheese on a stick from the head of a figure dressed completely in tin foil

I wanted to write a quick update on where I’ve been and what I’ve been doing. On 31 October Simon Raven produced a vibrant event at the Camden Arts Centre to celebrate the ending of his residency there as part of his Adam Reynolds Bursary awarded by Shape. There was inevitably a Halloween theme to Simon’s ‘Ghost Writer Party’. People were dressed suitably as Dorian Grey, Edgar Allan Poe and there were several Miss Havisham’s knocking around. Simon did a...

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Colin Hambrook on portrayals of 'disability'
24 September 2012

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painting by lowry of a post-war urban scene in Manchester

Earlier this month I attended a Disability Studies Conference at Lancaster University. One of the papers that has stayed with me was a piece of work-in-progress on ‘Disability in Cultural Spaces’ by Nancy Hansen from Manitoba University. She'd been to The Lowry Museum in Salford, where one of her favourite paintings 'The Cripples' is displayed. I've never been a particular fan of LS Lowry's work. I’ve always felt a certain discomfort with the atmosphere of...

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Colin Hambrook with an update on DAOs programme to cover Unlimited
18 September 2012

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Crippen's O'Crypes title frame cartoon introducing all the characters in the cartoon blog

It's been an eventful year for DAO so far, gathering responses to the Unlimited commissions by disabled and deaf artists that have been wending their way across the country, culminating in the Festival at the Southbank Centre which ended just over a week ago. Since then I've been at a Disability Studies conference in Lancaster University in which the ideas that originally spawned the Disability Arts movement are still celebrated - even though those ideas have perhaps become fragmented...

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Trish Wheatley looks forward to the Channel 4 film about the Great British Paraorchestra
8 September 2012

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photo of disabled musicians on stage at Glastonbury

Showing on Channel 4 at 5.25pm on Sunday 9th September 2012 is a documentary tracking the development of the Great British Paraorchestra. The idea for it was conceived by internationally renowned conductor Charles Hazlewood, inspired by his disabled daughter and the Paralympics. The initiative is described as "a global movement to recognise and showcase disabled musicians with extraordinary abilities. Its mission is to end the limitations placed on them, not by their physical ability...

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Colin Hambrook asks will the Paralympic opening ceremony provide more of a laugh than Katherine Araniello's take on the 'Superhuman' ideal being proselytised by Channel 4?
29 August 2012

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The London 2012 Paralympics, which will be broadcast in over 100 countries, with a count down to the opening ceremony being broadcast on Channel 4 tonight. After months of top level secrecy I got an email earlier from an excited disabled performer saying "it's all tantrums & tiaras back-stage". I can just imagine! All those 'superhumans' in the background getting ready to flex some bicep. Personally I find the whole malarky about how 'inspiring' we are - as...

Comments: 7

Trish Wheatley looks forward to 'The First Four'
21 August 2012

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Montage of Sally Booth's photographs of light through the windows at the Bluecoat, Liverpool

I was drawn into the world of Disability Arts four months after Adam Reynolds passed away. Consequently I never got to meet the man that lives on so fondly in the memories of his contemporaries. I worked at Holton Lee, where I saw his work displayed in the buildings on a daily basis. His major legacy, aside from his wonderfully insightful and at times humourous sculpture, is the Adam Reynolds Memorial Bursary. Its fifth recipient, Simon Raven is currently in residence at Camden Arts Centre....

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Colin Hambrook introduces The O’Crypes
20 August 2012

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Frame 1 (from the 6 frame Crippen cartoon strip that accompanies this blog)

The O’Crypes have whet the appetites of many DAO readers with over a 1000 pageviews since episode one which we published on 9 July. Many of you have left messages saying how much you’ve enjoyed the characters and have followed the dilemmas they are facing in the plight of dramatic cutbacks to services whilst huge amounts of money are being spent on the Olympics and the Cultural Olympiad. Each episode is set to represent a different storyline about each member of the family cutting...

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Trish Wheatley gets inspired at DaDaFest
19 August 2012

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Image of event programme reads: DaDaFEst 2012 presents an evening with Evelyn Glennie Saturday 18 August, 7:30pm with an image of Evelyn Glennie beating the drums at the Olympic Opening Ceremony 2012

What a cracking night for DaDaFest! One act from the Olympic Opening ceremony and one from the closing ceremony, it was as if it had all been planned! Ruth Gould, CEO of DaDaFest introduced it as the biggest night in the history of the twelve-year-old festival. Hosted by the iconic Liverpool Royal Philharmonic and sitting in anticipation to watch Dame Evelyn Glennie, Britain’s most successful percussionist, I totally agreed. I'm not going to detail the actual performance here, except...

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Colin Hambrook on the launch of DaDaFest 2012 at The Bluecoat in Liverpool
13 July 2012

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photo of the white brick wall of a gallery with a series of large black letters tumbling down near the bottom of the wall

DAO Editor Colin Hambrook has been getting about a bit lately. And care of a train journey sponsored by Virgin, he managed to make it to the launch of DaDaFest at The Bluecoat in Liverpool yesterday afternoon. There was hilarity in the air. A team of volunteers dressed in white coats and armed with clipboards mingled to ask whether or not we considered ourselves to be normal. Apparently they had been at it all day, outside Lime Street station, questioning Scousers about their view of how...

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Colin Hambrook on the launch of Unlimited at the Southbank Centre
11 July 2012

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red painting of an african woman

DAO Editor Colin Hambrook had the pleasure of visiting the launch of the Unlimited commissions yesterday at the Queen Elizabeth Hall at London's Southbank Centre. Bringing together all 29 Unlimited commissions, Unlimited: the Revelation starts here is a showcase for a platform of new works spanning dance and performance, visual arts, comedy, circus, music and theatre. The 11-day celebration is the finale of Southbank Centre’s summer-long Festival of the World, which presents projects...

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Colin Hambrook aks 'what price integration?' in response to the Headlining Disability conference
20 June 2012

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Crippen's freak show cartoon

DAO Editor Colin Hambrook attended Shape's debate on media representation of disability at the Southbank Centre yesterday. Predicated on the idea that there is a change happening… and that disabled people are leading in that process, an audience of 150 or so were treated to an afternoon of debate from some key disabled professionals within the world of arts, sports and media. The main attraction of the afternoon's event was a debate between University lecturer Mike Shamash and...

Comments: 7

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