"A revealing account of the arts industries' attempts to exclude Disability Arts. Readers will be astonished by the potential of disabled artists to refresh the arts world with a new honesty and insight in this wonderfully illustrated anthology. There is a wealth of extraordinary material. Paddy Masefield's observations are touching, scary, funny, but above all human." -- Liz Lynne MEP, Vice Chair of the European Parliament's All Party Disability Intergroup.
This remarkable book is the first to focus on disability arts. It eschews the historical, charity-based, patrician assumptions about disabled people and the barriers and prejudices that have kept them invisible in education, the arts and every day life. Instead, it offers readers the excitement and diversity of disability arts and the artistic expression of formerly excluded sectors of society, such as people with learning disabilities and survivors of the mental health system. It is concerned not with their medical impairments, but with the insight and originality of their art works that are beginning to fill a space on the canvas of arts history that has too long been blank.
"Strength" is intended for disabled and non-disabled people, arts professionals, teachers, and students of the arts, sociology, and humanities--from school to university level. Its wit, warmth, and passion will also appeal to a general readership. No college of art, drama school, or music conservatoire can afford to ignore its unique material and depth of knowledge.
Liberally and strikingly illustrated, this anthology will appeal specially to those accessing the subject of disability arts and the social model of disability for the first time. Drawn from over fifty speeches commissioned nationally and internationally from the author by bodies as diverse at the Arts Council of England, the British Film Institute, Central Television, and the Foundation for Community Dance, it is an unusual mix of fact, shock, humor, reason, and storytelling.