Disrupt Disability Arts Festival is a vibrant celebration of disability art, curated by and for the disability community. The festival had its inaugural year in 2024 and completed it’s third iteration earlier this year. Disrupt continues to grow as a platform for disability-led artistic expression.
The festival includes theatre, dance, literature-based performance and visual arts, all delivered through a range of accessible formats in relaxed spaces. This unique festival is designed to deepen the understanding of and appreciation for the richness of experiences and perspectives that define disability in Ireland. Disrupt Disability Arts Festival actively dismantles barriers to artistic engagement, faced by both artists and audiences with lived experience of disability.
Guided by the principles of the social model of disability, Disrupt Disability Arts Festival is a disability-led and disability-focused event. It foregrounds quality artistic practices while challenging prevailing notions about disability. Disrupt Disability Arts Festival is a space for connection between the Irish disability community and wider society, opening dialogue and creating shared experiences.
The festival’s hybrid events (in-person and online) open up the programme to wider disability communities, but also to carers and national arts audiences who may face economic or geographical barriers.
The Creative Access Production Programme offers mentorship, training, support and work placements to 6 individuals over 14-18 months.
Disrupt Disability Arts Festival advocates for accessible arts engagement and breaks down barriers to cultivate a vibrant cultural life in Ireland. Through past festivals we hired several independent disabled arts workers in assistant producer roles to work with our festival artists from diverse disability arts communities. This highlighted the need for the Creative Access Production Programme.
The Creative Access Production Programme is funded by The Arts Council / An Chomhairle Ealaíon Funding The Arts.
Created to upskill over 45 access personnel across Ireland in a wide array of creative and embedded access skillsets. This support has enabled Disrupt to deliver 4 workshops and additional training. Workshops and training included; Embedded Access with UK’s Stopgap Dance Company; Creative Captions with Ben Glover and Daniel Hughes; Visual Movement with Chisato Minamimura; a day long industry training on Access, AI and New Technologies and Irish Sign Language Classes with The Irish Deaf Society.
Funded by Rethink Ireland’s Disability and Participation Awareness Fund 3.0
Disrupt Disability Arts Festival is funded by The Arts Council of Ireland‘s Festivals Investment Scheme and Dublin City Council, and supported by Project Arts Centre, Unlimited, RTÉ Supporting the Arts and Europe Beyond Access.
Disrupt Disability Arts Festival’s Embedded Access Training Programme is funded by Rethink Ireland‘s Disability Participation and Awareness Fund 3.0 and supported by Safe To Create, Fire Station Artists’ Studios and Dance Ireland.