Works such as: “Further Afield” (Milroy, 2024); “From The Ground Up” (Wysing Arts Centre, 2022 [3]); “Roova” (Coates, 2023); “Troggs” (Lulika, 2024); “Recovering Dorothy” (Atkin, 2022) show how crucial disability and rurality are to contemporary art. Despite this, disabled and rural cultures remain widely perceived as peripheral, unmoving and irrelevant. 

Research questions

In a direct challenge to notions of “nothing happens there”, I will examine the potential of rural and disabled cultures as dynamic, interconnected spaces. I will draw upon works that emerge in unusual, unexpected ways outside of capitalist, white, heteropatriarchy, middle and upper-class, non-disabled and urban models (Elson & Shirley et al, 2017; Fowler, 2020; Smith, 2023; Mills & Sanchez et al, 2023). 

I will ask:

• How do rural creative practices reshape the art world?

• What is the role of access—both physical and conceptual—in rural spaces?

• How can disabled creative practices enhance rural ones and vice versa? 

• How has Wysing approached access over the last 35 years? 

• What are the examples of rural art that don’t embody access; what are their success and failures?

• What are the structures and philosophies that mean disabled and rural cultures remain excluded from wider art?

• How can this research support the understanding of rural and disabled creative cultures without them becoming homogenised by the mainstream?