D4D: Electric Bodies - poetry and interview content

D4D (Disability and Community: Dis/engagement, Dis/enfranchisement, Dis/parity and Dissent) was a four year AHRC Connected Communities project investigating issues around disability and community.

Electric Bodies was one of the eight project strands. It explored the relationship between the disabled artist and the disability arts community through a series of extensive life history interviews edited into transcription poetry cycles.

The interviews were conducted by Allan Sutherland who also wrote the transcription poetry. The eight participants were Katherine Araniello, Mat Fraser, Colin Hambrook, Tony Heaton, Julie McNamara, Robin Surgeoner, Jess Thom and Vici Wreford-Sinnott.

The poems have been published by Disability Arts Online in the book 'Electric Bodies: Travels in Life History' (2020).

As part of the program Mark Hetherington made a series of animations, using drawings by Colin Hambrook inspired by Allan Sutherland’s transcription poetry cycles. The animations are linked below.

Electric Bodies was also action-based research into what constitutes disability arts practice and how artists who have lived experience of disability come to recognise themselves as part of a community. As part of this, Vici Wreford-Sinnott worked to establish a collective of disabled artists in the North East region, who came to call themselves Disconsortia. This content is not contained within this collection but various related articles are linked below.