As DaDa turns 40, Northern Soul writer and DaDa’s chair Rob Martin writes about the professional becoming personal.
In 2025, one of the North’s most important arts organisations turns 40.
But it might well be new to you, despite four decades of groundbreaking work, national and international collaborations, revolutionary artist development programmes, and a biennial festival which has taken place in and around Liverpool since 2001.
As a disabled-led arts organisation working with artists who are disabled, deaf and/or neurodivergent, DaDa has all too often been seen as an arts organisation by and for marginalised communities. This is unfortunate because much of its work is universal, by and for people who are disabled or, as their website provocatively states, ‘not disabled yet’.
Back when DaDa started, the world for deaf and disabled people in the UK was very different, and there’s no doubt that great advances have been made in terms of people’s rights, access provision and legal equality in terms of discrimination. And yet, the theme for this year’s festival is Rage: A Quiet Riot, one that has come from conversations with artists, audiences and the disability community about just how far there is still to go, and just how quickly things can change.
I first got involved with the organisation in 2017 when I was asked to work to support their marketing and communications as a freelance consultant. From there, I became a trustee and eventually the chair, a position I occupy currently. So, my involvement has been ongoing. But there’s more to my connection than just professional.
At a meeting a few years ago when we were checking the team’s access needs, given our remit of ensuring that 70 per cent of our staff are deaf, disabled or neurodivergent, it was pointed out to me privately, during a break by a colleague who knows such things, that many of my characteristics were indicative of something.
“Have you ever thought that you might be autistic?”
Initially, I dismissed the thought. But upon further consideration and a few conversations with my sister and my husband, I decided to look into it. Skip ahead a year and, in January 2022, I was diagnosed as having ‘significant autism’. To clarify, that means that autism has impacted every single aspect of my life.
It was a shock, but also an explanation – for me and for those close to me. As with many things, writing about it helped me to articulate my thoughts so I blogged on my website here.
Suddenly, my involvement with DaDa was even more meaningful than I had thought, its work more connected to me, its role as an arts organisation with a significant societal impact even greater. That’s when I became the chair.
At 40, it feels like DaDa and our festival are just as needed now as they were way back before the Disability Discrimination Act came into force in 1995, with both the scale and ambition of the organisation fully represented in the festival programme and theme, Rage: A Quiet Riot. It’s a theme reflecting the fact that, despite advances, deaf, disabled and neurodiverse people still have a fight on our hands in terms of true equality.
DaDaFest 40 launched on International Women’s Day with artist Cathy Mager’s Hand Ships Sail, a poetic conversation in British Sign Language in which two deaf women share their dreams for the future as they look out over the night sky. Aptly, it was beamed onto the side of the Cunard Building at Liverpool’s Pier Head.
Other festival highlights included a photography exhibition at the Open Eye gallery celebrating 40 years of some of the most influential disabled and deaf women in Liverpool, film screenings at FACT, the brilliantly subversive Pimp My Wheelchair featuring, well, pimped-up wheelchairs, as well as performances at Unity Theatre that included Midgitte Bardot, the alter ego of solo artist Tammy Reynolds, plus all manner of music, comedy and pop up events at The Bluecoat and elsewhere. Some 90 per cent of the festival programme was free.
Now, perhaps more than ever, as equity, diversity and inclusion are considered dirty words in some parts of the world that should know better, the quiet riot is essential.
