An after-party event for Ireland’s first Disability Pride and Power Festival will take place this Friday at Cloughleigh Community Centre.
Members of Clare Leader Forum, together with native Clare members of Disability Power Ireland’s committee, have organised the event.
The organisers will show their own new film made by Grey Heron Media, runs for 20 min, then Ukraine singer, then Los Paddy band, and then a samba disco. Open to all.
The Festival ran throughout the month of July and was the first official celebration in Ireland of Disability Pride Month, an international phenomenon which began in the US in the 1990s. It was also Ireland’s first cross-impairment festival for disability, and the first festival to celebrate disability arts and the disabled community.
The festival opened on July 1st with the Online Launch of Disability Power Ireland, and featured guest speakers Sarah Fitzgerald, Eileen Daly, Blessing Dada and Emilie Conway, all disabled activists.
The festival programme featured a wide mix of in-person and online events, with everything from comedy, theatre, and dance, to workshops on art, storytelling and wheelchair and mobility aid decorating, to panel discussions on disability rights, history and disabled pride with international guests from England and Chicago.
Disability Power Ireland and The Festival
Disability Power Ireland (DPI) is a new national, cross-impairment grassroots Disabled Person’s Organisation (DPO). This means that we are run and led entirely by disabled people.
DPI was formed in early 2022, and have hit the ground wheeling by organising Ireland’s first Disability Pride and Power Festival 2022. This is Ireland’s very first festival for disability, and it aims to unite and celebrate the diversity of impairments and identities within the disabled community.
DPI focuses particularly on the arts and culture as powerful vehicles for changing public perception about what it means to be disabled, and cementing positive disabled identities. We want this festival to be a national platform to make disabled people VISIBLE in our society and culture.
DPI aims at all points to challenge the standard medical, charity and tragedy models and representations of disability and promote disabled people’s dignity and self-worth as upheld by the social model and human rights models.
DPI is run entirely by disabled people, without any funding or donations and entirely on our own initiative. For more information on our ethos, values and manifesto, see our website: disabilitypride.ie
The Festival
The full programme of past events is available on our website disabilitypride.ie- scroll down this page to see a list of the events that took place.
In-person events included:
A Live Comedy Night in Bow Lane Social, Dublin
A Play with Smashing Barriers disabled theatre company
A live-streamed Dance performance featuring wheelchair dancing (available to view here)
A theatre workshop with Irish Aphasia Theatre
A wheelchair and mobility aids craft and fashion workshop, followed by a mobile filmmaking workshop to show off creations.
Online events included:
A Panel Discussion in partnership with Clare Leader Forum, organised by Roisin Fitzgerald, an intellectually disabled woman from Clare. This event was called “A Beginner’s Guide to the UNCRPD ae UNCRPD.
An Art Workshop on the theme of “Disabled Joy”
A Storytelling Workshop
Panel Discussions on Disability History, Disability Rights and the UNCRPD, and the Disability Pride Movement with guests from Chicago Disability Pride Parade.