In 2024, Ellen Renton, was commissioned to explore and create new works in response to nationally significant disability archives and collections held within Buckinghamshire. The project was to be part of STORIES, Buckinghamshire Culture’s pilot season creating and exhibiting works inspired by communities, landscape and heritage.
Ellen’s desire was to work collaboratively with other disabled artists connected to Buckinghamshire, to create a Collective that might approach the archives from multiple perspectives and through different artistic mediums.
Archive Stories Collective
Ellen Renton, poet, performer & theatre maker
Arden Fitzroy, writer-poet, actor & producer
Guy Morris, artist
Jess Starns, artist & archivist
Noor-e-SeharAli, writer, sound artist, archival researcher
INVISIBLE CABARET
Exhibition 18- 30 Nov
Collage: Guy Morris. Original Images copyright: World Abilitysport
INVISIBLE CABARET was the culmination of a 6 month project that brought together individual and collective artworks that connected social and political representations of disability with the artists’ personal and intimate concerns. The Collectives’ work explored themes of categorisation, body mechanics, mental gymnastics, navigating the world through visual impairment, the weight of words, perceptions and misconceptions of disability.
The artists explore the history of the Paralympics through the first-hand accounts of disabled athletes, the ephemera of items worn and documents that chart the history of the paralympic movement. The Collectives’ work champions the artists who were instrumental in the early days of the disability arts movement and is also inspired by the radical power of the movement itself.
Archives Stories Exhibition images
Exhibition Guide Download HERE
Accessing audio descriptions and recordings
The exhibition was designed with the kind assistance of SHAPE.
Click on the link below to listen to audio descriptions of artworks, recorded poetry and the Archive Stories artists in their own words
Exhibition audio tour and playlist
Listen HERE to Disability Arts Online Podcast ep. 65 Disability and…Archive Stories
Disability Arts Online’s Founding Editor Colin Hambrook speaks to poet, performer and theatre maker Ellen Renton. Ellen talks about the Archive Stories Collective and creating work in response to both the National Paralympic Heritage Trust Archives and Collections and the National Disability Arts Collection Archive (NDACA).
Watch Guy Morris short experimental film using voices and kaleidoscopic imagery courtesy of World Ability Sport and National Paralympic Heritage Trust
Exploring Buckinghamshire nationally significant archives
In May, Arden Fitzroy, Guy Morris, Jess Starns and Noor-e-Sehar Ali joined the Archive Stories Collective with the aim of exploring two nationally significant disability archives held within the county: The National Disability Arts Collection & Archive (NDACA), based at Bucks New University in High Wycombe, the National Paralympic Heritage Trust newly recorded oral histories and exhibition based at Stoke Mandeville Stadium, Buckinghamshire Archives and Discover Bucks Museum Halton Collection and Milton’s Cottage.
The group then developed work in response to their research interests, both individually and collectively working in a variety of disciplines including; sculpture, printmaking, sound, radio, poetry, performance, mixed media and textiles. The opening of their exhibition at Waterside Theatre Promenade was an opportunity to share the results of their research.
Archive Stories Artist Biographies
Ellen Renton is a poet, performer, and theatre maker from Edinburgh. Since performing her own work for the first time in 2015, she has read at venues including The Scottish Parliament, The Roundhouse, and Leith Theatre, and at festivals such as Verve, and the Edinburgh International Book Festival. While always keeping poetry at its core, her work is varied and has included theatre, journalism, and multimedia collaborations.
“Moving, alarming and eloquent, this is a masterpiece by an astonishing new talent. Unmissable.”
— Quote from Morning Star on Within Sight
“Renton’s work evokes the slipperiness and joy of our senses beautifully.”
— Elspeth Wilson, Disability Arts Online
Arden Fitzroy is an award-winning actor, fighter, producer, and writer. They believe in experimentation and blurring the boundaries of genre, gender and art forms. They trained at Rose Bruford College. Credits include work with the Old Vic, Shakespeare’s Globe, the Arcola, Bestival, Roundhouse, the Hackney Empire, the Royal Opera House, and the Soho Theatre. They have sat on judging panels for the British Fantasy Awards and have also written for film, theatre, and audio. They are currently developing a play as a current Reach artist with CRIPtic Arts, and have recently been awarded the British Academy for Dramatic Combat’s prestigious William Hobbs Bursary for 2024.
Arden Fitzroy Instagram
Guy Morris completed a Fine Art degree at Northumbria University back in 2004 and is a mixed-media visual artist currently living and working in Aylesbury. His work often sits between reverie and irreverence as he seeks to create a language to help understand the world around him. Although a traffic accident left him with a spinal injury and dependent on a wheelchair – his art practice has remained a constant driving force in his life. Themes often deal with popular culture, masculinity and gender, disability and identity, social and political issues; all of this is done with a certain levity while questioning what it means to be a human living in today’s complex times.
Jess Starns’s creative process is participatory, collaborative, and inclusive with a focus on disability, neurodiversity or history. It is also multidisciplinary, with materials and approach informed by the theme of the project usually through museum and archive research. Jess has an interest in using digital technology creatively and finding new tools to create art. They are neurodivergent and due to their dexterity are always looking for new innovative ways to create art that is accessible to them and others. Jess studied photography and the MA Inclusive Arts Practice both at the University of Brighton. They were awarded a place on the Shaw Trust ‘Power 100’ 2018 list of the most influential disabled people in Britain and in 2022 they received the University of Brighton Alumna Award for their work founding ‘Dyspraxic Me’, a charity for dyspraxic young adults.
Jess Starns Website
Noor-e-Sehar Ali is a writer, DJ and archival researcher based in London. Interested in the role of story-telling, particularly utopian narratives; her practice incorporates weaving text with sound. Ali’s writing is predicated upon a desire to transform the esoteric into accessible; informed by her on-going research in practical ethics and disability studies. Recipient of the first Magnum Photos Writers in Residence award, she began her writing career as a philosophy columnist at The Founder, co-edited The Work Experience Revolution and was writer-in-residence Colin Higginson’s exhibition In The Manner in Which it Appearsin collaboration with Stroud Valleys Artspace. Ali has led creative writing workshops at the Barbican, Copeland Gallery, SVA, and has been published by Hoax Publication, RIC Journal amongst others. Most recently she has featured on album ‘The light was sharp, our eyes were open’ by Pablo’s Eye, released on Belgian record label Stroom.tv. Alongside her debut novel, she’s working on a collection of short stories narrated in dream-like soundscapes for radio as G830.
NPHT & Coventry University Research Partners
Archive Stories was supported in part through a research collaboration with Coventry University and the National Paralympic Heritage Trust.
The programme, Don’t Dis my Ability: Marginalised Voices From Sport, funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund Midlands and East focused on the development of an inclusive interview and engagement oral history format that sought to increase understanding of disability within British society as well as the impact of sport and the Paralympic Games on the lives of disabled people.
Six disabled people, including two Paralympians were trained in oral history, recording the stories of 16 disabled athletes. The Archive Stories Collective then explored those accounts during their residency and created artworks in response.
Special thanks to Archive Stories funding, archive and exhibition partners
Proud to be part of
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