The Seven Strengths of Inside Out

Too often disabled and Deaf artists are not able to be part of a creative dialogue about the environment around them: an environment which is still for the most part tedious, deeply flawed and full of contradictions. This has to change!

AIO is a developmental project procuring Deaf and disabled artists to consider architecture and the environment for our delectation.

Disability arts and culture came into the fore in the early 1980’s as part of the emerging disability movement. Disability arts is not just about disabled people doing art but about disabled people's experiences and lives being expressed and interpreted by disabled artist in their chosen media. Disability arts came about through the need for a positive reaction to the negative images, stereotypes and perceptions portrayed in the media, charitable sector and the arts of disabled people.

1. ATTRACTING KEY DECISION MAKERS

AIO set out to explore lifestyles, inner perspectives, inner environments and opinions as well as focusing on spaces and places in the south east. Our aim has been to create dialogue between disabled people and educators, planners, architects and commissioning bodies that develop the built environment. It is widely accepted by organisations such as South East England Development Agency, Arts Council England South East and Arts and Business that creativity and innovation are seen as valuable, informative and a driving force that puts companies at the leading edge of their competitors. The organisations, educators, planners and architects involved in reshaping and developing the built environment are invited with our project AIO to work in partnership with disabled artists and develop more collaborative opportunities and ask the question, what is the added value of involving disabled artists and highlighting the significant contributions of artists to this arena?

2. INVOLVING DISABLED ARTISTS

This project has been developed to share and build on the celebratory and sometimes confrontational experiences of disabled people and disabled artists throughout the centuries. Disabled people and their viewpoint have often been ignored or overlooked or blocked by the very people that claim to support or create environments for 'them'. AIO is about how disabled people interpret and view the built environment internally and externally. It's about questioning what currently exists and documenting and creatively interpreting disabled people's negative and positive reactions to buildings, streets, signage, street furniture, transport systems and public art. You may well ask, 'What do I mean by all of this?' As a disabled person who lost their sight at 24, I was suddenly thrown into another dimension, a world where I didn't exist anymore, a world where my opinion and confidence was smashed, a world in which I could sink or swim! My identity and place in the world had radically changed. I started to think about my experiences in this world as being naked...'Naked Space'... It's that feeling you have as a disabled person in an inaccessible environment being disempowered: a feeling of being vulnerable, frightened, confused, not confident and excluded.

To give you an example, as a visually impaired person I often find that I have no points of reference in the built environment and I have to negotiate many trip hazards, paving that blends into roads, street furniture and public art that blends into paving, steps that have no clear defined edging, no delineation from the edge of the kerb to the road. This could simply be resolved by a more creative and functional approach and partnership with a visually impaired artist and by creating innovative street furniture with good colour and contrast to signify trip hazards ahead, sound sculptures to give you some reference to your location. These barriers in the built environment mean that disabled people have no chance to travel, shop, work or socialise independently. To radically improve and strengthen access in the built environment and increase the independence for disabled people to these environments and remove the dependency culture, you need the insight of disabled people.

3. CREATE IMAGINATIVE ENVIRONMENTS

A key challenge for AIO is to continue to build on the research, developments and experimentation of all the artists who have inputted into this project. We encourage you to view and listen to what the artists interpret on this website. It's the start of a new journey and programme to ensure that contemporary disability art, deaf arts, and art and disability can fuse seamlessly with the built environment and attract imaginative partnerships with educators, planners and architects. It demonstrates that we need to all re-think the way we conceive and build our environments. We know this can only be achieved by sharing and respect of alternative views and equal partnerships. As disabled people, all we want is access and independence and as put by Sue Napolitano,

'I want to live in the pulse-hot-thick-of-it, where the nights jive, where the streets hum'

Quote from a 'Dangerous Woman' by Sue Napolitano, a Disability Arts performance poet.

4. GENERATING OPPORTUNITIES

AIO is your opportunity to work collaboratively with us and ensure disabled people's voices are heard and respected, and our contributions and ideas included in shaping the built environment. If you work openly with disabled artists, access to the built environment will be enhanced dramatically for all users. If disabled artists are included and consulted within the creative approach, then designs, plans and developments will be unique and we can ensure that access to the built environment is not only addressed as an adaptation or functional requirement but as a creative integral part of the design and approach. If we move towards a shared and honest approach to our built environment then it will be more accessible to disabled people. If we work together to address these barriers then the environment will be more stylish, beautiful, vibrant and a positive experience for users. The built environment will be a more delightful, pleasurable and less stressful experience for all. If AIO can constructively improve access to the built environment and change perceptions and attitudes, than all the hard work and determination by the AIO artists will have been worthwhile.

Below is an eloquent, heart-wrenching story of a woman who is abandoned by her government and everyone else to a solitary, but dignified life and death in a nursing home. What is obvious to disabled people is that consistently disabled people's choices, rights and liberties are not seen as a priority and disabled people are denied freedom and access to the built environment and society. Disabled people's experiences are very valuable and provide insight into the everyday barriers we encounter. Disabled artists have a competitive edge on other artists because they have to be creative and find solutions every day of their lives to either get from A to B or to be acknowledged. I'm not going to apologise for these strong opinions, voices and statements because we face many layers of discrimination and disabling barriers in society, which confront us in every part of our lives. AIO stands as an unequivocal response to the appalling environments non-disabled people have imposed on disabled people. This can only change if we work together and include disabled people's perspectives. For many generations buildings have been used to contain and imprison disabled people.

'Josie was a wheelchair user spent 11 years inside, A short stay institution where she was banged up without trial, 11 years the white coats met and talked and analyzed, Dispensed the drugs politely until one day Josie died,

Not me said the social worker I was Josie's friend, She was our best customer I was with her till the end, Our boss said no resources were available at the time, And I'm just an employee can't put my job on the line'

Copyright Crescendo, Johnny. 1993. First published in 1993.

5. BUILDING ON CREATIVITY AND CREATION

AIO aims to promote the role that disabled artists can play in embracing creative ideas within the built environment with other professionals. It's about changing the way we all think and contribute to enhancing our environment through creative and informative practise. The built environment needs to reflect disabled people's needs and perspectives particularly as demographics show that people are living longer and disabled people will increase in significant numbers. Disability art and deaf arts provide a platform for disabled people to reclaim their identity, improve confidence and ensure they control what is being produced and seen. It is often the first step in challenging negative perceptions, such as notions of tragedy and worthlessness.

6. PROVIDING STRATEGIC AND ORGANISATIONAL EXPERTISE

Arts Council England South East, Diablo and DaDa-South in partnership with disabled artists, are well-equipped to engage with architects, educators and planners to develop equality in the built environment and more effective interaction and opportunities for expansion and development in the built environment. AIO is key to these developments of equality, success and the added value of involving disabled artists. We want people involved in shaping the built environment to support and embrace AIO, so in 2006 we can take it to the next level.

6. LEADERSHIP AND INNOVATION

Architects and planners are key to moving the frontiers of the built environment. Therefore, architects will always be at the edge of innovation and design. If architects are not aware of the needs of disabled people and this expanding part of the current ageing population then disabled people will still be excluded. The percentage of disabled people is always going to be significant and so their needs have to be noted and taken account of within any innovative development. People are living longer so consequently there will be more disabled people in the future. Increasingly the number and proportion of the population who need the expertise and skills of people undertaking built environment projects that are fully aware of all the consequences such changes bring, is expanding. While it is the law to make reasonable adjustments for disabled people. The law is of no consequence if the people who are applying it in the built environment are not fully aware of the consequences of what they are doing.

Architects, planners and educators have such a pivotal role in managing the way the environment is built and if they use the skills of disabled artists like they use other artists to enhance their work, they will become leaders in their field. Architects are creative enough in their own work and in the field of their own expertise to see the value of using disabled artists to broaden their area of expertise. Architects create the environments where we live, therefore architects manage the future of how we exist in these environments. Consequently, if architects are not aware of access for disabled people - if disability is not on the agenda for architects - then, as has happened in the past, disabled people are excluded from access to large parts of society and therefore cannot take their rightful place within it. My point is that I believe that architects in collaboration with disabled artists hold the key to full inclusion of disabled people and only by using the creative skills of disabled artists linked with the creative skills of architects can we provide full insight into how the key can be turned to lead and shape innovation in the built environment. AIO exists to engage with educators, architects and planners to develop equality, creativity and innovation.