I am a Queer Disabled South Asian Muslim artist working in higher education and funded community art projects nationally and internationally.
There are many many times, too many to count, where institutions have failed to support me as a Disabled Artist, but failed to meet basic needs for any Artist. As a result I wrote the Disabled Artist/Artworker contract manifesto in 2021 for an event at the ICA London, to make visible the demands of a safe working environment for any artist/artworker/educator whose labour is extracted by institutions. I’m sharing this as a note on positionality, as also as a prompt for my artefact, to ask how students might think about what constitute safe working conditions. How can we build non hierarchal dialogic spaces with students that will help equip them with dealing with institutions now at university/art school and beyond in their careers.
My Positionality as a disabled lecturer. I have Rheumatoid Arthritis, Fibromyalgia, hyper-mobility, depression and complex PTSD. I often feel invalid, or unable to function in society because of the ways disability shapes my everyday life. I feel incompatible with the outside world. I battle internalised ableism daily.
My first experience of coming to study UAL as a disabled student on crutches was a very traumatic time. And as such this unit has been extremely triggering to think about my positionality and memories of being so disabled in London and at UAL. It has been difficult remembering how students treated me and spoke to me as if I was lesser-than somehow, because I was visibly disabled, I was South Asian and from Manchester. Which was at odds with what I had to say. I was a mature student and it had taken a lot to get here. To speak my voice.
I remember struggling with pain and my mobility yet when talking to UAL disability services back 2010 they stated they had no provision for me as a physically disabled student, they only supported learning disabilities. I had to fight with them to get the taxi support to get me into uni after complaining. I missed an entire year of university and worked entirely from home that year because of the racism, the classism, the ableism. I missed out on so much simply because the world I lived in disabled me because of my mobility needs.
Ironically I have now come to realise that I am probably quite dyslexic. I struggle with reading, writing, deadlines and comprehending time. This has impacted me most of my academic career and at school. I was severely disabled with Rheumatoid arthritis most of my time in secondary school and did not actually attend many lessons. This has meant I have shame and fear of writing despite being told I was an A+ capable student. I feel I am not good enough or academic enough, because I was never able to achieve those grades. Instead I studied art and textiles at foundation and circumvented needing A levels/G.C.S.Es to get into university. I as a disabled person, never thought I would get into university. I never thought I would have aspirations to teach and support other students in this way.
Many disabled people feel like this, like we aren’t good enough, that we don’t deserve careers. That we lost time out at school/university (if we did go at all) and thus feel we are not as equipped in basic skills as others, even though we have much lived experience and tacit knowledge. But anyone who had a difficult early years experience, will feel like this also, invalidated by the institiution, and we can see how our experiences of disability, race, faith and gender/sexuality combine and inform each other. Many queer and trans people are more likely to suffer from mental health conditions as a result of society invalidating the queer and trans experience, and many Black/PoC Trans and queer people are disabled. We see this also in the Diaspora, where children of colour do not see their experiences, values and references reflected in curriculums or popular culture, and grew up with continued racist micro aggressions that pathologized their ethnicity or racial background. To feel erased is to feel like you are nothing.
This never stops, it is continual into Further Education and Higher Education. I can see now how the Art school reinforces these beliefs, rather than create a supportive, exploratory and creative environment that encourages diverse thought. My positionality and experiences inform how I want to support other disabled and intersectional marginalised students. I want to keep on learning, and understand how my class background and South Asian racial background can be complicit in replicating institutional/racist/classist/ableist thinking.
We are all capable of this, and we have to unlearn the way university drums into us the way we need to teach, that often purposely excludes and disseminates knowledge in a particular way. Paulo Friere talks about the banking method theory, and how this purposely reinforces power relations between students and teachers, where students are fed facts and have to keep reverence to the professors, instead of a more mutual reciprocal approach to transforming pedagogy. I see how harmful it is to have these ways of thinking seep into my practice, just because I have been placed within an institution. I want to resist this. I have started my work on my decolonizing textile education (which was my original artefact back in 2021) and received £3000 in funding from an UAL EDI fund. We are going to use this to bolster our approaches to textile education methods that prioritise student agency, student knowledge and embodied making processes that allow for collective thought and sharing student diasporic knowledge and indigenous tools from their diverse textile heritages. In this way we begin to breakdown the assumption that students coming to Chelsea to study textiles, should only value the Western European knowledge that it puts forward. I feel this project didn’t engage fully with social justice so I am no longer going to document it as my artefact.
My positionality as someone who was educated in the UK. I come from a middle class background, my parents both came to the UK in the 1960s and had university degrees from Bangladesh before they met later in Manchester. They both independantly studied further in UK institutions. When my mother’s first husband died and she was widowed with three children, she went back to night school to study a Masters in sociology. My mum became a social worker and worked in domestic violence support centres for immigrant Bangladeshi women in Oldham, supporting them with interpretation and access to safe housing. She also worked at Manchester City council as the first woman of colour to work there in the 1970’s at the first Race Relations department in Manchester. We were a double income family – unusual for the 70’s/80’s. My dad had a HND in computer science from Salford and worked for an energy company in the 1980’s. He was never promoted in the 25 years he worked there because they deemed his speaking English to not be good enough. My parents are both feminist, socialist, liberal and anti racist. My positionality of having South Asian educated parents that supported me, my queerness, and my disability is a unique one.
Throughout my teens as having rheumatoid arthritis – which comes from trauma of being bullied for being gay at school – my parents were there. I fully understand the way intersectional oppression operates, I am living proof of it. And because of my positionality I have been able to somehow navigate the educational system, despite not having been the best at formal education.
A Disabled artist/Art worker contract
This is my Disabled artists art worker contract
I am tired and frustrated at having to explain, each and every time I work with a new client/employer/contractor/gallery/museum/university,
There is a brick wall to be negotiated. It is further labour having to discuss, relay and communicate, my access needs and fundamental working environment as a Disabled artist. For these requirements to be disclosed, recognised, upheld and respected.
“All artists are teachers, all labour is art labour, all art labour is labour.
Including time to rest. Resting is a labour I pour into myself to be able to function.
No such day as a sick day when you are a freelance art worker/artist/lecturer.”
Sick days are unenumerated
Sick days are unpaid – it doesn’t pay to be sick,
For a Disabled Artist/Art Worker contract
Pay us for the work we do, for you, that makes us sick.
Pay us for days we are sick, from the work we do, for you
That makes us sick
For a Disabled Artist/Art Worker contract
Pay us for having days off, which are not holidays.
Pay us for rest days. Resting properly takes time. Pay us for the time it takes for us to fully rest
If not, Pay us for the extra time, for the time it takes for us to get sick, if we cannot rest.
For a Disabled Artist/Art Worker contract
Pay us for having food as a part of the budget
For a Disabled Artist/Art Worker contract
Always build in a fully accessible taxi allowance
For a Disabled Artist/Art Worker contract
Assume we need assistance, an assistant on hand or two to help, build it in into the budget
For a Disabled Artist/Art Worker contract
We need the conditions of work to reflect how sick we might get from carrying out this work
For a Disabled Artist/Art Worker contract
Don’t assume your timeline is the same time line, don’t assume time is universal
For a Disabled Artist/Art Worker contract
I want us to be paid for the days I can’t move
Can’t cook
Can’t eat
Can’t work
For a Disabled Artist/Art Worker contract
Pay us for the extra labour responding to all your emails whilst we are sick, from you demanding our art labour for you.
For a Disabled Artist/Art Worker contract
We deserve to be paid for our sick days as standard, for that to be built into the project, budget, timeline, adjustments. We will get sick. We know our bodies.
For a Disabled Artist/Art Worker contract
Pay for us to have the time to cope
Pay for the extra hours it takes for us to emotionally recover from having our labour extracted from
ARTS FESTIVALS
ARTS MUSEUMS
ART GALLERIES
ART SCHOOLS
ART RESIDENCIES
For a Disabled Artist/Art Worker contract
Let us have full ownership of our work, ideas, pedagogy and methods,
Trust we know what we are doing
You cannot control us.
We do not wish to be institutionalised.
For a Disabled Artist/Art Worker contract
You cannot profit from your proximity to us,
For a Disabled Artist/Art Worker contract
We refuse to break our boundaries of safety to complete any kind of work
For a Disabled Artist/Art Worker contract
We are allowed to refuse. To pause. To break. To step away without fear of retribution. And Without shame.
For a Disabled Artist/Art Worker contract
Building in time for emotional access needs is not unprofessional.
Working without a disabled artist’s safety plan is dangerous.
For a Disabled Artist/Art Worker contract
Listen to our needs, They are not malleable.
For a Disabled Artist/Art Worker contract
Assume and build in assistance into all and every budgets, we are not super human, and non disabled artists aren’t either.
We are Mothers and carers also, build in time and availability for childcare and caring responsibilities.
For a Disabled Artist/Art Worker contract
Pay us properly for our expertise and knowledge.
We are not grateful to help you with information extraction.
All labour is art labour
All art labour is labour
Raisa Kabir 2021