Bristol disabled artists push beyond access to opportunity — SkimNews
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- Cathy Mager, a deaf artist, founded Spectroscope in 2022 after projecting British Sign Language images onto a neighbour's house during the pandemic led to commissions at the Arnolfini and Bristol Light Festival.
- Raquel Meseguer Zafe, a professional dancer from Easton with chronic pain, developed A Crash Course in Cloudspotting, where audiences lie down together and listen to audio of disabled people's experiences.
- Meseguer Zafe is currently working on Juliet and Romeo at Bristol Old Vic, a show that includes a resting space, BSL interpretation and audio descriptions.
- Jess Douek, lead singer of alternative metal band Mallavora who lives with fibromyalgia, has secured Arts Council funding to partner with the Exchange and create Bristol's first fully-accessible grassroots music venue.
- Douek's band broke the record for the number of wheelchairs at a fully-accessible gig at the Exchange in May, with quarterly gigs, networking events and a talent pathway at the new venue scheduled to launch in early 2027.
- Campaigners warned that government cuts to Access to Work grants — which fund transport and support workers — threaten the working lives of disabled artists, even as institutions like the Watershed and Arnolfini continue to provide accessible spaces.
Why it matters: Bristol's three featured disabled artists have each built concrete projects — Spectroscope's installations, Bristol Old Vic's resting spaces, and the Exchange's accessible venue launching in 2027 — that disprove the assumption disabled-led work lacks mainstream appeal. But the artists explicitly warn that Access to Work grant cuts could remove the transport and support infrastructure that makes those careers possible, putting momentum at risk.
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