Please contact the Lead Artist, Jeda Pearl Lewis, jedapearllewis@gmail.com with any questions or if you require support to complete the form.

You may register your interest by completing the form below or by emailing an audio or video to jedapearllewis@gmail.com.

Please use the form below to register your interest to participate in a project to co-create a series of creative responses to the provocation: "How can organisations and institutions integrate more inclusive practices to benefit communities through platforming disabled artists?"

You will be contacted when the project has been funded and to apply to the Open Call. There will be a separate form for this.

💻 You will need access to the internet and a mobile phone, laptop or tablet to meet online to discuss, share and co-create a piece of work. The work will be jointly owned by the creators.

🌱 Payment: all artists will be paid a fair fee (amount approximately £250+ TBC, dependent on funding). Funding for access requirements will be covered in addition.

Artforms accepted include:
- visual arts (including digital)
- performing arts (music, dance, or drama)
- contemporary arts
- multi-disciplinary arts
- literary arts: prose, poetry, spoken word and storytelling

⭐ Using the social model of disability, the term 'disabled' includes:  
- artists who identify as disabled
- artists who are D/deaf or hard of hearing
- artists who are blind or visually impaired
- artists who are neurodiverse, for example, autism, AD(H)D, dyslexia...
- artists who are chronically ill, for example, lupus, MS, ME, fibromyalgia...  
- artists who live with impairments, for example physical, learning, cognitive, sensory...
- artists who have mental health conditions

Jeda understands that identifying as disabled can still be taboo or seen as shameful - she hopes this project will help to contradict these notions. The social model of disability proposes that what makes someone disabled is not their medical condition, but the attitudes and structures of society. It is a civil rights approach to disability.

About the project:
4 or more disabled artists from different countries working in different artforms will be paired to create artworks on the topic of inclusion. The artistic outcomes can be whatever we decide together but needs to be available online, for example a captioned video or an audio with transcript or an essay or a series of images. The pilot project project, 'An Ocean of Patience' is complete and Jeda is seeking funding for extending this project.

Watch and/or listen to and learn about 'An Ocean of Patience' here: http://www.jedapearl.com/an-ocean-of-patience/

You may have an idea of what your inclusive world would look and feel like or the “new normal” you hope to experience. Or you may not know what you want to say but you want to explore the topic of inclusion and collaborate with another artist who is also disabled.

About the lead artist, Jeda Pearl Lewis:
Jeda is a disabled Scottish-Jamaican poet and writer based in Edinburgh, Scotland, UK and the Co-Director of the Scottish BAME Writers Network. Her work often explores the 'in between', identity, belonging, hidden histories and survival. She is inspired by folklore, science fiction, her Scottish-Jamaican heritage and shared history, and her experiences as a Scottish 'mixed-race' person of colour, parent and disabled person.

In 2019, she was awarded Cove Park’s Scottish Emerging Writer Residency and shortlisted for the Moniack Mhor Bridge Awards. Jeda has performed at StAnza, Event Horizon, Inky Fingers and Hidden Door. Her poems and short stories are published by Black Lives Matter Mural Trail, New Writing Scotland, Open Book, Not Going Back to Normal, TSS Publishing, Tapsalteerie and Shoreline of Infinity.

Find out more about her and her writing here: http://www.jedapearl.com/writing/