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We begin, as always, with questions of definition. What is Disability Arts? What constitutes Disability Arts practice? At first sight we can say that Disability Arts is art produced by disabled people - though this seems a little flat, too matter of fact a statement to make. For, like most things cultural, Disability Arts arose within a particular historical, social and political context and so tends to carry with it a heavy load of cultural baggage. This brings in many, perhaps wider questions, such as the biggest question of them all: what is art, how is art defined? We don’t have space or even the necessary intellectual stamina to go into these deeper questions, but in the present context we can distinguish between a purist stance that art is art and should have no necessary social utility whatsoever - and its opposite, which sees art simply as an instrumental tool. In this stance whatever value art may possess is subservient to its utilitarian value in the achieving of wider goals, such as community and social inclusion.

There is of course truth in both positions. Disability Art cannot properly be understood without reference to its cultural and social history, yet its practice should not be directly related to the need to reinforce the development of Disability Culture or Disability politics. Disability Art should not be agit-prop for the development of a Disability movement. But at the same time seeing it as a free floating cultural practice itself ignores its very real historical and cultural background. Undoubtedly therefore a synthesis may be called for which takes account of both polarities.

Disability Arts has been central to the entire programme of self-emancipation of disabled people that has emerged most significantly within the western world, especially within its Anglo Saxon parts of North America and the UK. Disability Arts practices were one of the chief channels through which this growing self-consciousness and self-awareness of disabled people came to the fore. Because of this, Disability Arts tends to be tinged with a distinctly public function: it is held to ‘address’ other issues such as social inclusivity. But, while this may be a good thing, it isn’t necessarily so.

Probably the best definition of Disability Arts is creativity rooted in Disability, with the emphasis on art as creativity in action. Such art may directly be an expression of the artists’ Disability experience; sometimes their work only indirectly touches on Disability. Think of Goya whose deafness was catalyst to his modern masterpieces, Toulouse Lautrec’s sharply observed studies of the inside of Parisian brothels, or coming up to date, Jean-Dominique Bauby’s brilliant memoir The Diving-Bell and the Butterfly. It’s impossible to think of Goya without his deafness in making this leap into modernity, yet the pictures themselves have no connection to deafness per se. Toulouse Lautrec’s paintings are only decipherable when we comprehend the artist’s isolation and estrangement, his disabled status perhaps increasing his observational powers. The experience of ‘locked-in’ syndrome may be central to Bauby’s experience of Disability, and gave him the motivation to blink his way through the alphabet to produce his existential masterpiece and with such superb prose style. None of these painters and writers were addressing Disability as such – with the possible exception of Bauby – and would probably have denied their disabled status had they been aware of it, yet we can see that their own experience of Disability has had a profound effect on their art nonetheless.

But coming down sharply from these select individuals operating at the highest level of art, we can observe what can be readily described as a Disability Arts movement, together with its unashamed political and cultural roots. Here we see multitudinous Disability Arts projects operating within a self-conscious Disability Culture. England has played the lead here, although Disability Arts is increasingly coming to the fore in Ireland. Public funding has played a vital role in stimulating this emerging scene, in particular the role of the Arts Councils in their various jurisdictions, although this funding has been predominantly for arts & disability culture rather than Disability Arts.

Disability Arts in the main has not made much headway in Ireland, either north or south. There are of course a number of Disability artists who could prove the exception to this rule, but the general picture is one of, if not exactly neglect then one of indifference – and this applies as much to disabled people themselves as to public bodies. The idea of a distinct Disability Culture seems far in the future, although the stirrings of a home grown Disability movement are now beginning to emerge after decades of passivity and acquiescence in our given lot.

For if disabled children were children of the nation they often were the children the nation forgot about, too. This is not to say that disabled people weren’t ‘cared for’ and given a privileged position in Irish society – indeed they were and are. I remember people of my parents’ generation telling me in a kindly fashion that I would get a straight ticket to heaven as I had already done my suffering here on earth… This was how Disability fitted into the Culture and indeed the everyday fabric of society, in a world dominated by the church and its ancillary organisations. Not altogether unsurprisingly this ‘closed culture’ begat a charity model within which disabled people were given special, privileged treatment - as long as they remained passive recipients of charity largesse.

But this world is itself changing under the intense economic and social pressures known collectively as the ‘Celtic Tiger’ and the concomitant growth of the state. The church’s dominance in Irish life, for so long taken for granted, has now been if not overturned completely then relegated to a subsidiary position. Irish society is fast developing a rights-based culture as it introduces a whole raft of legislation designed to bring Ireland into the twenty-first century and modernising its structures. Part of this attention is being paid to Disability rights, with a Disability Bill coming onto the statute book.

To some extent this is leaving disabled peoples’ expectations adrift. A lot of the older, charity model still informs how disabled people are treated in today’s Ireland. But there are many counter examples of how new thinking in Disability is stimulating a different self-conception among disabled people here. It’s certainly not an exact distinction and many practices involve both sets of thinking. However, as the legal and financial status of disabled people continues to grow, the balance is likely to shift decisively. Independent living is one such area and the emergence of local disabled people’s movements is another. The idea of Disability Culture is also starting to develop albeit slowly, and within it, the development of Disability Arts.

In Northern Ireland the position of disabled people is accidentally advantageous. For once being part of the UK has worked to disabled peoples’ benefit here. UK-wide Disability legislation, in particular the Disability Discrimination Act of 1995 onwards, has been applied without the emergence of any local Disability movement as such. The number of Disability activists in Northern Ireland can be counted on the fingers of one hand and the work of the local Disability organisation, Disability Action, has not exactly set the world alight so far.

But Northern Irish society has taken on a rights-based culture with enthusiasm. The winding down of The Troubles has engendered a renewed push of the equality agenda. Equality legislation, often derived from the working out of the Good Friday Agreement, (GFA) such as the setting up of the Equality Commission, have pushed Disability to centre-stage without any significant input from local disabled people. There is now a functioning disabled people’s unit within the Equality Commission and section 75 within the GFA guarantees equality. It seems disabled people have been surfing along on other people’s waves.

However all may not be as it seems. Society in Northern Ireland is still based on the ethno-religious community divide. What really matters is if you’re a Protestant/Unionist or Catholic/Nationalist. Disability politics and Culture has tended to fall between these two stools in the past, as have other ‘issue-based’ political movements – feminism, LGBT politics such as gay rights, etc. Up until a few years ago Disability politics tended to have been ‘squeezed out’ of normal – that is sectarian – political discourse. It was thought that with the ending of the Troubles from the mid 90’s onwards, these formerly undeveloped issues would move into the area of the new civic society. This has only happened in part however. Disabled people remain apathetic in the main, preferring cream buns at garden parties at Hillsborough Castle or pilgrimages to Lourdes, rather than any direct political engagement, or assertion of rights. Early enthusiasm for the new Northern Ireland now seems at best naïve, as the sectarian monster has proved hard to cage.

The new developments within Northern Ireland society have led, curiously, to an unusual top-down arrangement, where Disability politics, culture and Disability Arts are promoted in the first instance by public bodies and charities rather than by disabled people acting in a self-organised capacity.

Pioneering work by the Arts Council of Northern Ireland was principally responsible for the Arts and Disability Forum, which was developed through prolonged debate initiated and carried through by the Arts Council acting with similarly interested groups, such as Open Arts or ADAPT but only a smattering of disabled individuals. A similar position operates in the Republic. Groups such as Arts and Disability Ireland (ADI), Create and others are funded by Arts Council/ An Chomhairle Ealaíon, or are recipients of state funding. A Disability movement in the sense of a self-organised body or mass of disabled people acting together in a bottom-up, radicalised sense is still largely missing.

The Arts and Disability Forum emerged from lengthy discussion between the Arts Council of Northern Ireland and interested parties from 1993 onwards. It organised a one-day conference, The Way Forward, in May 1994. The outcome of this quickening activity was the formal setting up of the Arts and Disability Forum office in Belfast in 1997. The biggest success of the Forum to date has been the development of the Arts and Disability Awards, which later became Arts and Disability Awards Ireland. Originally, the scheme operated in Northern Ireland only, with a limited budget. Later it was decided to broaden the remit of the award scheme and make it more targeted to individual disabled artists, rather than groups. The award scheme has continued to grow, becoming an all-Ireland grant scheme in 2001, administered by the Arts & Disability Forum, with a decision-making panel made up largely of disabled peers. The backers of the scheme are now the Arts Council of Northern Ireland and An Chomhairle Ealaíon who together supply the funds to operate the awards scheme throughout Ireland, linking up with disabled artists from the South as well as from Northern Ireland.

In general there has been lots of activity within the scheme. What it has produced however is harder to discover. There are of course individual success stories – Peter Mooney, Padraig Naughton, Lois Davies, Samantha McKee, Hubert McCormack, and Ann Kennedy amongst others – but not the sort of far-reaching cultural change we in the Disability Arts Culture had hoped for. Arts and Disability in both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland have a strong representation in visual arts whereas creative writing has not been a noted feature. This seems to be going against the national trend in arts, which is dominated by literary achievement. Colin Hamilton is one artist who attempts to transcend this gap, through poetry linked to photographic images. Yet there is no follow through and Disability Arts remains cut off.

That there is little unity or common purpose for those who have already attained Arts and Disability awards is a common complaint. What is lacking is the development of a Disability Culture. Simply making individual Arts and Disability awards available, even if the value of the awards is ever upwards, is not going to be enough.

Much more work needs to be undertaken to develop a Disability Arts Culture in its widest sense, which is rooted in both Disability Culture and in mainstream culture. I feel that the Arts and Disability Forum’s approach to this question could be viewed as formal and bureaucratic, but owing to the funding system, their response has to be tight and project-based. What is needed is the creation of cultural space within which Disability Arts can flourish. More imaginative input is required, not just conventional responses as seen in the setting up of the Disability Artists Networking Group, but also more thinking on the provision of exhibition space to enable Disability Arts to reach a wider public, the development of a specific Arts market in which artists could both sell their work, and bring themselves to the attention of wider audiences. Another idea towards the building of community within Disability Arts would be the creation of specific locales, which could become a haven for Disability artists both nationally and internationally. The idea behind this would be developing an environment, maybe in the west of Ireland, where Disability artists could derive inspiration and so enable them to work creatively.

The future development of Disability Arts on the island of Ireland would necessitate some joint thinking between the main organisations involved. The Arts and Disability Forum, Arts and Disability Ireland, Open Arts, ADAPT, and Arts and Disability Ireland would need to get together, along with interested individuals, to develop the idea of Disability Arts Culture in Ireland, so vital to Disability artists here.

For this is an exciting time, with exciting challenges. The development of Disability Arts Culture in Ireland will not be on the lines of the ‘bottom up’ English approach but in a modified ‘top down’ approach, where the infrastructure may already be in place. The issue lies in encouraging disabled talent away from the general apathy and cultural disengagement that marks Disability Culture in Ireland. This is the challenge facing those of us already committed to Disability Arts. For it’s up to all of us in the Disability movement in Ireland, both north and south, to take steps now to ensure that a healthy Disability Arts Culture emerges in the twenty first Century.