Disability and Community: Dis/engagement, dis/enfranchisement, dis/parity and dissent - aka The D4D project

Disability and Community: Dis/engagement, Dis/enfranchisement, Dis/parity and Dissent (aka the D4D project) will investigate the evolving ways in which disabled people express, perform, experience and practise 'community'. The work will be informed by critical disability theory, and it will foreground the knowledge and lived experiences of disabled people. The project team brings together academics from a range of disciplines, community investigators with expertise in performance and arts practice, and community partners (including Shape, Accentuate and DRUK). Our goals are to learn from participating communities, to build understanding, to generate opportunities for connections, solidarity, resilience and activism, and to create meaningful legacies for the communities and partners involved. D4D will explore aspects of the historical, clinical, institutional, political and technological construction of disabled communities, and trace the ways in which community members have contested, rejected and embraced these varied possibilities over time. The project will facilitate agency and empowerment among participants, facilitate knowledge exchange and professional development, and create new spaces for dialogue and intervention. D4D's research question is: In what ways are disabled people connected/disconnected to/from surrounding communities, and how might they trouble existing affiliations, re-situate themselves, and re-shape communities around them? The team will explore this question while drawing on disability studies and community research literature, and engaging in continual collaboration and reflection (on issues of power, ethics and research practice, for example). There will be 8 work streams: WS1 - will explore issues of integration and marginalization, focusing on two settings: mainstream schools and the work-place. It will explore lived experience of 'inclusion'. This work will combine ethnographic studies, with a series of cultural animation workshops through which disabled participants will articulate and explore aspects of inclusion and marginalization. WS2 - will explore the ways in which technology might impact on or facilitate experiences of social belonging, by focusing on play. The steam will support methodological development, as it will involve exploring the ways in which new technologies can support the agentic participation of non-traditional research participants. WS3 - will examine the origins, development and future of the Disability Arts community. In particular, this will involve exploring the tensions within 'identity arts' movements regarding issues of affiliation and community. WS4 - this strand will explore how participants form, experience and express alternative community, as well as how they manage their (dis)placement and disqualification by mainstream society. This research will also support disabled communities critically responds to clinical practice. WS5- In this strand, arts based research will drive an investigation of past, present and future disabled communities. In particular, through the creation and exhibition of an interactive art-piece, 'Evolution', mainstream audiences will be asked to consider disability perspectives on such matters as eugenics and genetic screening. WS6 - Playful Bodies, Technology and Community will address technologies, social change and the body, and identify the implications for disability and community, while drawing on player studies, social media research, collaborative game design, and public play. WS7 - Ethics, reflection and learning for participation will inform all the above activities and support the practices and professional development of all those taking part. WS8 - Will provide a forum for skill sharing and knowledge exchange across all streams, and work to maximize impact across and beyond the academic.