Meet the student curator:
Hello, I’m Angharad, a third year integrated masters Biology student. I am Disabled, and since coming to University I have really enjoyed carving out a queer, Disabled, neurodivergent community for myself. I hope that my curation, which will include interactive elements, furthers a sense of belonging within the York Disabled community. I aim to highlight art, literature, film, and media made about us, and for us, focusing on joy and liberation to uplift Disabled voices, which are so often left out of the conversation. I also want to encourage non-disabled staff and students to engage with art and media made by Disabled people, and challenge any preconceived notions they may have.
Reframing the conversation
I believe focusing on Disabled joy and community is increasingly important in the wake of recent events.
Changes to Personal Independence Payment (PIP) by the government are dehumanizing and ignorant at best, with the Department for Work and Pensions stating PIP fraud is 0.0%, resulting in Disabled people being used as political football.
This has emboldened think pieces and hate on social media, with people questioning the validity of random strangers’ disabilities, and framing a person’s worth by whether they can work in a broken, ableist, capitalist system.
On the other hand, more ‘positive’ Disability representation is often from the angle of inspiration and ‘overcoming’ their disability, focusing on Disabled people for non-disabled people to marvel at.
Crip Kinship by Shayda Kafai tells the story of Sins Invalid, a disability justice and art activism performance project. Reading this was incredibly inspiring to me; it stresses Disabled, queer, nonbinary, bodyminds of colour existing in a space for themselves is radical in and of itself. Our joy is a form of resistance.
Reading how members of Sins Invalid support and accommodate each other was joyful, and my aim with my curation is to evoke that emotion in the community here in York.
The importance of Disabled visibility and joy
Those who aren’t white, cis, or straight have an undeniably different experience of Disability to those who are, and are often at the forefront of the Disabled joy and radical acceptance movement. Platforming voices often marginalised and underrepresented is incredibly important, and something I aim to do with my curation.
Only a few weeks into my curation, I have found so many examples of Disabled joy which I am excited to share. I already feel more part of the community, and empathise with Alice Wong in her book Disability Visibility, talking about how she collected stories of Disabled people in clippings in newspapers; “In surrounding myself with these stories, I found and developed my own voice.” Alice founded the Disability Visibility Project, an oral history collection of Disabled people. She writes that the stories she collected do not seek to explain, inspire, or provoke empathy, but to just show Disabled people existing, including with joy.
This encapsulates just how important it is to see Disabled people existing unapologetically and demanding accommodations, rather than fitting into uncomfortably abled boxes. With this curation, I hope to amplify Disabled joy, and foster a sense of Disabled community within the University.
In the meantime, I hope that you find some Disabled and neurodivergent joy in these titles, which are already available in the library, and will feature in my curation once it is published.
