Disability Arts Online's magazine as audio

Writer Matt Alton reappraises BBC sitcom, Ghosts, which ran from 2019-2023, which follows a young couple who inherit a haunted estate. He finds eerie parallels between the ghosts being housebound, longing for their past lives and the groundhog-day nature of their existence, and the lived experience of chronic illness. Read the article here.

In light of the National Year of Reading 2026, a Department for Education initiative to ‘help more people discover the joy of reading’, Keira Brown considers the importance of access to library spaces for neurodivergent and disabled communities in the context of ongoing cuts and closures. Read the article here.

We Contain Multitudes is a group exhibition featuring work by Andrew Gannon, Nnena Kalu, Daisy Lafarge and Jo Longhurst on display at Dundee Contemporary Arts (DCA). The exhibition has been developed from the collaborative project of the same name – delivered in partnership between DCA, Collective and Lux Scotland and funded by Paul Hamlyn Foundation – which aims to create systemic change in the Scottish arts sector for disabled visual artists, arts professionals, and audiences. DCA commissioned disabled researcher and curator Rachel Boyd to reflect on the show's themes. Read the article here.

Multidisciplinary artist Anna Li reflects on 'I need to be more than a lesson you learned,' the first internally curated exhibition for Disability Arts Online's virtual gallery, dis_place. The exhibition explores embodied disabled experiences of access in relation to ableist approaches to diversity and inclusion and features the work of nine disabled artists, including three new commissions. Read the article here.

Multi-disciplinary visual artist, Anna Li charts the history of the use of absurdist art as a form of protest. In particular, she looks at how disabled artists – including the Disabled Avant-Garde, Colin Cameron, Johnny Crescendo, and her own collaboration with Simon Raven – have used absurdist methods to push back against normative systems and ways of doing things. Read the article here.

Pete Carr reflects on a recent experience at the exhibition opening of I’ll Tell You Later, a D/deaf photography project. Whilst there, Carr discovered two important and related facts: they are deaf and the enforced silence provided a level of access for their neurodivergence that is usually sorely lacking at in-person events.

Diana Amma-Gyankoma Abankwah, an interdisciplinary artist working across dance film, movement and sound, draws on experiences where aspects of marginalisation including race and disability are used extractively and performatively by arts organisations and the wider sector, without meaningful engagement. This powerful reflection is both a indictment of current diversity and inclusion efforts and a call to action for better ways of centring artists with lived experience. 

Journalist Caroline Butterwick shares a deeply personal account of how creativity helped her navigate a recent hospitalisation on a psychiatric ward, grappling with the ongoing tension of truly representing – and the risk of romanticising – her experiences. Incidentally, the experience meant she had to pull out of writing a separate article for DAO's magazine, so this contribution, in some ways, comes full circle.

Matt Alton gives an account of a day in the life of a disabled writer, discussing favourite and not so favourite books, and reading and writing through a body in pain. Article here.

I Swear is the true-life story of Tourette Syndrome campaigner John Davidson following his adolescence and early adulthood in 1980s Britain. Alison Wilde critiques the context and impact the film has made. Review by Alison Wilde, read by Kate Stephens. 

Beyond the Visual at the Henry Moore Institute in Leeds claims to be the ‘UK’s first major sculpture exhibition in which blind and partially blind practitioners are central to the curatorial process and make up the majority of participating artists’. It features work by 16 artists alongside creative approaches to audio description. Gill Crawshaw ponders if the show has something for everyone. Written and read by Gill Crawshaw.

Disability Arts Online (DAO) has received a £249,607 grant from The National Lottery Heritage Fund to support a major project which will save the stories of the Disability Arts movement from being lost and share them through a digital archive, interactive timeline and podcast series. 

DAO was saddened to hear of the death of Nabil Shaban, disabled activist, actor and writer who was co-founder of pioneering disability-led arts organisation Graeae Theatre Company. Simon Mckeown, Disability Artist and Professor of Art at Teesside University sent the following tribute to his comrade-in-arms. Read the article here.

This year's Shape Open exhibition takes up the expansive space of High Wycombe's Brunel Engine Shed featuring work by 12 disabled artists alongside archival protest photography from Keith Armstrong. The works respond to the political backdrop continuous cuts to disability benefits and the ongoing fight for disabled people's rights in the face of oppression. Written and read by Sonia Boué. Content note: this article contains references to death and themes that may cause distress. Read the article here.

Molly Joyce is an American performer and composer whose work explores disability as creative material. Her latest album, State Change uses surgical records as musical lyrics and utilises various adaptive music technologies. Written and read by Kin. Read the article here.

ActionSpace artist, Nnena Kalu has made a splash by being nominated for the 2025 Turner Prize as a learning-disabled artist. Mark Sheerin reflects on the significance and brilliance of her Turner Prize exhibition at Cartwright Hall Art Gallery, as part of Bradford City of Culture. Read by Mark Sheerin. Read the article here.

DAO editor Colin Hambrook gives an appraisal of the power of Benedict Phillip’s artwork ‘the agender of the agresiv dislecksick’ on the 30th anniversary of having first published the activist manifesto in Disability Arts in London (DAIL) Magazine. Read the article here.

Disabled writer and journalist Haneul Lee delivers an impassioned call, inspired by conversations with Julie Farrell and Ever Dundas, fellow writers and publishers of the Inklusion Guide, a resource aimed at making publishing more accessible. Haneul shows appreciation to all the disabled writers who keep creating in spite of barriers, who do so unapologetically, who write like their lives depend on it. Written and read by Haneul Lee. Read the article here.

Edgecity: Monologues from the street is a series of texts reflecting life from the margins and on the streets, written by gobscure and performed alongside Jason Williamson, the frontman of Sleaford Mods. It played exclusively at Newcastle’s Live Theatre 25-27 September. Written and read by Joe Turnbull. Read the article here.

The Starlight Rebel is a spellbinding space-age adventure which hums with a quiet manifesto for our times. Kate Lovell reviews Lisette Auton’s latest novel for children and young people. Read by Kate Lovell. Full article here.

Liberty Festival 2025 brings a celebration of disabled artistry to Wandsworth from 24–29 September. This year, disabled-led company CRIPtic Arts is curating the programme. Artistic Director, Jamie Hale tells Haneul Lee that audiences should expect creativity, conversations and above all, a sense of connection. Read by Haneul Lee. The article is available here.

BFI Southbank's We Crip Film Festival during this year's Disability Pride Month promised to be 'a reclamation by the disabled film community to champion our strength, creativity and ingenuity as we survive and thrive.' We Crip Film is BFI's 'intersectional disability advocacy group'. James Zatka-Haas reflects on its significance. Read by Joe Turnbull.The article is available here.

Artist and filmmaker Richard Butchins visits the Design and Disability exhibition at London’s V&A Museum. Promising to put disability on the map in the history of design, the show champions inclusion and accessibility – but does it offer anything more? The video review is available here.Design and Disability is at V&A, London until 15 February 2026. Free to disabled visitors, £16 otherwise.

Watch Us Lead is a new permanent exhibition by Christopher Samuel at Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, combining interviews with disabled people of colour based in the region with stained glass and drawings by Samuel which bring the stories to life. Written and read by Ashokkumar Mistry. Read the article here.

Outside In provides a platform for artists who encounter significant barriers to the art world due to health, disability, social circumstance, or isolation. Gill Crawshaw visits their national open exhibition at The New Art Gallery Walsall. She finds diverse interpretations of the theme of Shelter, ranging from safety and home comforts to the dangers and insecurity that result when shelter is absent. Written and read by Gill Crawshaw. Read the article here.

Fiona Moon’s one-woman Fringe show explores the shame, pain and grief of a neurodivergent life alongside a tapestry of furious stimming, facts, audience participation, and a small pink squishy brain companion. Written by Oren Shoesmith. Read by Rabindranath X Bhose. Read the article here.

Finger Talk is a new installation by Cathy Mager which foregrounds BSL as a living, evolving language with a rich cultural history, bringing together archival films, contemporary performance, animation and sound. Mark Sheerin went to experience the work at the Wellcome Collection. Read by Mark Sheerin.

The Dan Daw Show uses kink and theatricality to reclaim power and explore disabled sexuality in a way that is rarely seen on screen or stage. Elspeth Wilson experienced the show at Edinburgh International Festival in a way that put her bodymind at ease, despite the at times discomforting subject matter. Written and read by Elspeth Wilson.The article is published here.

Sonia Boué and Ashokkumar D Mistry interpret Southampton’s archive of the story of 4000 Basque children seeking refuge in Las Gemelas: ‘Arrival (a lexicon of unmaking)’. Colin Hambrook went to see the show, currently on exhibition at the John Hansard Gallery, Southampton. Read by Colin Hambrook. Read the article here.

Colin Hambrook reflects on Claire Cunningham’s latest show Songs of the Wayfarer, bringing a world of hillwalking and Mahler together under one roof with her signature aesthetic and caring approach to audiences. Read by Colin Hambrook. Read the article here.