Vital Xposure, the disabled-led theatre company known for championing marginalised voices, has unveiled the findings of its latest VX Lab: Decolonising Disability, a groundbreaking initiative exploring how disabled artists from the Global Majority can be empowered to bring their full identities into their creative practice.
The four-day residency, held in partnership with Bristol Old Vic, was designed and led entirely by Global Majority disabled facilitators. Six artists participated, sharing their lived experiences and exploring the challenges of navigating the arts industry at the intersection of disability and race.
The Lab was born out of research that revealed the disabled arts community does not reflect the UK’s full diversity. Many Global Majority disabled artists report feeling pressured to express only one aspect of their identity, despite their multifaceted lived experiences.
Dr Mandy Precious, VX Labs Project Manager and researcher, said:
“Intersectionality requires more than just representation. For real change to happen, we need spaces designed with care, generosity, and cultural understanding at their heart. This Lab showed us what’s possible when disabled Global Majority artists are able to bring their whole selves to the room.”
One participant described the Lab as transformative, saying: “It was the first time I could really look at myself and believe in myself as a person from the Global Majority and an artist with a disability.”
The Lab’s findings call for a shift from tokenistic inclusion to systemic generosity. It highlights that many existing disability frameworks, rooted in white Western perspectives, fail to reflect the lived experiences of Global Majority artists and must be reimagined.
Safe, culturally aware spaces were found to be essential in enabling artists to dream big, build confidence, and forge new connections. Since the Lab, participants have accessed new opportunities, including developing solo shows and engaging with media platforms like Ujima Radio.
One artist shared: “Through the Lab and the incubator programme, I am writing, devising and producing my one woman show and have also been asked to be interviewed as a disabled artist from the Global Majority for a radio show on Ujima Radio, Bristol’s multi award winning station, with a view to co presenting in the future.”
The residency also led to the formation of a new artist collective, Aggressively Civil, which continues to support its members. “We have built an amazing growing community that will be each other’s biggest and best cheerleaders as we move forward in our creative practice,” they said.
Josh Elliott, Artistic Director of Vital Xposure, commented:
“This Lab has been hugely insightful. And asks us to rethink how we support artists. We can’t keep retrofitting access or asking artists to fragment who they are. Disabled Global Majority artists are leading the way in showing us what inclusion really looks like, expansive, generous, and transformative.”
Ben Atterbury, Literary Manager at Bristol Old Vic, added:
“Bristol Old Vic was delighted to host and collaborate on VX’s Decolonising Disability Lab and this report is representative of the depth and breadth of the vital exploration that the lab enabled. This report and its recommendations provide essential reading for anybody interested in interrogating the way in which we work inclusively in addressing intersectional inequities across the industry.”
The report urges the wider arts sector to adopt inclusive practices led by those with lived experience, particularly Global Majority disabled artists. It calls for emotional, structural, and financial support, flexible budgeting, and training to dismantle barriers.
It also advocates for the decolonisation of disability frameworks, recognition of emotional labour, and a re-examination of power structures to unlearn colonial dynamics. The overarching message is to embrace a mindset of expansion — or as the artists put it, to “make the tent bigger.”
VX Labs is a three-year research and development programme supported by Arts Council England and delivered in partnership with the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama and regional theatres. It aims to spark sector-wide change through disabled-led innovation in access and performance.
More information can be found here.
