The performance of disability histories

Start date: 1 September 2008
End date: 31 August 2009
Funder: Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC)
Primary investigator: Dr Sonali Shah
Co-investigators: Professor Mark Priestley

The performance of disability histories: remembrance and transmission

This project grows out of a larger project, 'Time of our Lives', and longitudinal, biographical narratives of the life stories of disabled people born in the 1940s, 1960s and 1980s.

It brings together social sciences and performing arts academics and theatre practitioners in three workshops to look at disability history and culture through the relationship between performance and text.

The events will take place in London, which will focus on histories, biographies, performances, and Nottingham, which will deal with revising the text and devising histories.

The final workshop in Leeds will conclude the process by looking at performing lives and live performance. There will be videos of all three workshops, photographs and extracts of interviews: the video will deal with how performance works. The future interest is to take performances into school contexts and to create an international comparative project.

Dissemination Event

Time of Our Lives/Performance of Disability Histories1