I suppose ‘Someone Else’ is quite right in their comment in yesterday’s entry. They point out that disability art has been on the rise for years and it is just my personal awareness of it that has recently grown. To be honest that is a perfectly valid point: until now I have been largely ignorant of the disability arts scene. However, I still feel that at the moment the need for disabled people to express themselves is greater than ever, given that we as a community are probably going to become more ostracised than we have been for a long time. We need to (forgive the phrase) stand up, show people we are here, we are human, and we are suffering because of the cuts.

Disability arts has to become an artistic movement of protest. It has, of course, always been such a movement from it’s genesis in the seventies; yet I think it is now time for it to reclaim it’s anarchic, in-your-face roots. That is not to say some people are not already stepping up a gear: from what I saw on Tuesday night, poets like Penny Pepper really are out there, proud, angry and strong. I am also proud to send you here, to Lyn’s new video for her ‘Love Me’ track. What we show to the world does not necessarily have to be overtly political, as long as it is seen.

What do I mean, then, when I write about wanting disability arts to step up a gear as an artistic movement of protest? Truth be told, I have yet to work that one out fully. With 19,000 disabled people facing imprisonment in ‘care homes’ and/or neglect when ILF funds go in 2015, it is clear something must be done, but what? We need to let as many people know what is happening to us as possible. Of course, organisations like disability arts online are leading the way in this, and I forgot to mention on Wednesday that Tuesday night’s event marked the end of Disability History Month, which had seen many such events. I suppose it is a sign of my ignorance that I am writing about this as if it were news, and I am rather ashamed that I am so clearly out of touch. Perhaps it is just me who needs to get more involved in the existing arts movement, rather than sitting here in my ivory tower arguing for the reinvention of the wheel. Nevertheless I do feel we need more poets like Pepper, more singers like Alan Holdsworth (surely the crip answer to Bob Dylan). The time has come to get pushy and forceful, to make it apparent in the most direct, immediate way possible what nineteen thousand of us will soon have to suffer.

Yesterday I wrote that we shouldn’t become too abrasive, but on second thoughts perhaps a little confrontation is in order. We need to be banksy rather than Monet; radiohead rather than rachmaninov; Godard rather than Spielberg. It is time to get vulgar, time to hit people harder than ever before. To be fair, I feel television programmes like ‘I’m Spasticus’ are a step down this path, but it could have gone much further: what we really need now is ‘I’m Spastcus’ squared.