Doing Disability Futures welcomes you to We Build Other Worlds, an exhibition that centres and showcases the voices, art, imagination, and living experiences of queer and trans disabled people of colour and migrants.
ABOUT
This exhibition grew from creative practice workshops we ran in 2025 (in London and online with participants based across the UK) that asked the question, ‘What would a world grounded in disability justice look like, and how might we get there while keeping each other safe?'
We worked closely with 14 participants across online and on-site workshops over three months. Participants who took part in these workshops identified not only as disabled, but also as:
Queer, Lesbian, Bisexual, Pansexual
Latinx, Black British Caribbean, Indian, Bengali, Asian, Black African, Brown, Turkish Cypriot, African, Arab and Kashmiri,
and were aged 18 – 69.
Here we share the stories, reflections and created artwork from workshop participants. Each piece contains multitudes and speaks to hope and violence. We ask that you view this material with care, to sit with the uncomfortable, and recognise the power of these creations and gifts.
We ask that you take whatever time you need.
We ask that you be present as much as is possible.
And if you have capacity, we ask that your imagination knows no bounds.
Part 1: Disability Now
Doing Disability Futures brought participants together for three workshops, where each person was asked to bring two artefacts to help to express their experiences and thoughts.
The first artefact was to represent experiences of disability now – existing and resisting in a world not designed for us. The second, to connect, hold, imagine, and inspire disability futures: worlds grounded in community, magic, and joy.
Using the artefacts, participants shared stories to find connections and interactions held across time and space. Battles and fights. Stories grounded in the histories of oppression faced by queer and trans disabled people of colour and migrants. Struggles that spread across geographies, connected to ecocide, genocide, Palestine, Sudan, and Congo, were intertwined with design justice, bodily autonomy, resistance from the margins, and imagined and liberatory futures.
As a collective, workshop participants discussed how their struggles were shared and how they were not alone in the fight for liberation. Echoing so many disability justice activists, they held onto the notion that ‘none of us is free until we are all free’.
“I guess, [its] about practicing witchcraft, so finding spiritual guidance through plants, crystals and more, and it talks about other things, like taro crystal walls. I guess the point of this book is how to draw a deeper connection with nature. And I feel capitalism really disrupts that, and nature can be a very healing thing.”
— MAR
“So I got my keffiyeh...it's not necessarily the future I want, though I do want to see definitely more international solidarity with disability, especially as we're seeing so much conflict, for example, in Palestine has disabled so much of the population. But I think Palestine has really shown us how much, even though you had the International Criminal Court issue [its decision on] Israel, that's not really done as much as the communities have done for themselves. And I think it's been a really beautiful show of how Palestinian people are just really looking after each other.”
— SAM
“So, first, of things to do with this [calendar] is that I'm just thinking, how to get a diagnosis... to have some deadlines, some sort of accountability professionals. Which means that they are the ones looking at the calendar and not us being like, oh, okay, it's been, like, how many months now since this one symptom has just been there? ...The other reason I bought a calendar because right now things that are disabling me that we get so much lesser time than like everyone else, which not everyone always understands. So just I would like us to be able to have more time.”
— SHASHI
“So the item I brought in is actually the clothes that I'm wearing today. But...I can put something on... this thread, and it's just a commentary on, I guess, in an ideal world, it ties in so intimately with the concept of time and how being queer and being disabled and being a place that is not your home being a migrant...we just have so little time, so much less time than everyone else, and our time is to be used in ways that are more often than not, taking care of ourselves and taking care of yourself.... In an ideal world, I'd be able to do the things that I love most. I'm a tailor, I'm a designer, I'm a seamstress...I can sew this dress myself. I create things, and I like mending things, which is why this is also important. It's mending... those things. We're just not really in a world that, even for a neurotypical, normal person who is not disabled and white, has no time to do these things. So how the fuck do I find the time to do that?... So, yeah, I bring the things that I've made for myself in the very little time that I've done to do so, because in a world that is ideal for us, I think we deserve more time to be doing the things that we love and things that help us mentally. And so to demonstrate the mending that we're doing of the things that we love, it's important.
— IRIRANGL
Acknowledgement
This exhibition was created by Kylo Thomas, Ingrid Young, Donna McCormack, Richard Kahwagi and Lynne Zakhour. It is based on workshops co-designed by DDF project members Ingrid Young, Kylo Thomas and Donna McCormack. They were facilitated by Kylo Thomas and peer facilitators.
We would like to thank all the workshop participants for their time, for sharing their stories and experiences with us, and for letting us show their artwork to others. All names in this exhibition are pseudonyms.
This work has been supported through funding from the British Academy (Award reference number KF7100272)