Ruth

Ruth

Director at Disability Arts Cymru

About

Disability Arts Cymru is a charity that works to put disabled, D/deaf and neuro-divergent people at the heart of Wales’ arts scene, by breaking down the barriers that often make it harder or even impossible to take part.
We support and promote disabled artists and promote their work, work with arts companies and venues to make them more inclusive and accessible, and use the arts to challenge perceptions of disability.
We use and promote the ‘social model of disability’. This means that we believe that negative attitudes, exclusion and other obstacles are what disable us, and it is these factors that we must focus on changing, not our individual impairments.
Formed in 1982, we are the country’s lead organisation for disability arts. Disabled and deaf people lead our work, and their life experiences are at the centre of everything we do.
We’re a registered charity with a headquarters in Cardiff and staff located across Wales. We have members of the team dedicated to supporting different types of artist: performance, creative word, visual arts, community and youth, creative technologies and combined arts.
We want Wales to be a creative and equal country. Join us, and be part of making that a reality.

Disability art is radical and powerful. Through its diverse structures, perspectives and innovations, disability art has the power to transform our society by changing thought, challenging assumptions and prejudices, and creating new form and process. Work of excellence led by artists identifying as Deaf or disabled is at the vanguard, able to confront inequality, privileged hierarchies and the systemic ableism in our institutions and palaces of culture. Disability art can change not just the narratives, perspectives, content and form – it can change our institutions and culture itself. Kaite O'Reilly