NDACA at the Grundy Art Gallery: Anger and Rights from the Disability Arts Movement

NDACA at the Grundy Art: Anger and Rights from the Disability Arts Movement is an exhibition of artwork from across the UK’s Disability Arts Movement which, beginning in the early 1980s, is still thriving to this day. It is the first in a series of exhibitions and events that Grundy Art Gallery is developing and delivering as part of Access Fylde Coast.

Access Fylde Coast is a project led by Disability First, Blackpool and is funded by the Coastal Communities Fund.

NDACA (National Disability Arts Collection and Archive) is a Heritage Lottery Funded project delivered by SHAPE Arts. It is a digital and physical archive chronicling the history of the Disability Arts Movement in the UK. NDACA has digitised over 3000 deposits to provide an open, online and free to access archive, and a physical collection that can be accessed at The NDACA Learning Wing, at Buckinghamshire New University in High Wycombe.

The Disability Arts Movement brought together artists and creatives to break barriers, change the law, and produce art and culture about those struggles. Fighting for rights, visibility and a new way of seeing disability, the Disability Arts Movement included many artists and activists who originated and practiced in the North and North-West of England such as founder of NDACA Tony Heaton OBE, Liz Carr, Ruth Gould MBE of Dadafest in Liverpool, Julie McNamara, Eddy Hardy and others – several of whom are featured in or have contributed to this exhibition.

The exhibition features works by Tanya Raabe-Webber, Tony Heaton OBE, Eddy Hardy, Tom Shakespeare and Poppy Nash.

NDACA AT THE GRUNDY was curated by Liam Hevey (NDACA Producer) and Alex Cowan (NDACA Project Archivist and Collections Lead), in collaboration with Grundy Art Gallery.