Transcript of ‘disabled joy and empathy, ableism and attraction with bella milroy, steph niciu and laura yates – part 1’

LY: In this podcast series you will hear lovely discussions between Bella Melroy and Steph Niciu facilitated by me, Laura Yates, one of the producers of the At the Library programme.

Bella is an artist whose work explores how we touch and make contact with the world around us. With the handheld being of a particular significance. She makes work about making work, and being disabled and not being able to make work, and being disabled.

She’s interested in the duality of everyday existence, and how things can be both beautiful, painful interesting, and dull.

Steph is a writer and journalist who has a great mind and a special grasp on empathy. She’s currently working with the Swan Centre in Bootle who support women in a variety of ways and as a podcasting volunteer for the Human libraries programme, supporting Laura and the team to develop interesting audio content relevant for our communities. We touch on disabled joy and empathy and many, many other aspects of life led as female artists and writers with a disability.

LY: Good Morning! Thank you for joining me both. This is the first recording for Bella Milroy’s Soft Sanctuary Programme podcasts. We’ve been talking about doing them in lockdown, it’s very exciting to do it today with Bella and Steph Niciu.

SN: Yes, hi my name is Steph Niciu and I’m a freelance journalist currently for Disability Arts Online. So that’s a disability arts magazine, I’ve been doing that since 2017 in my spare time. I also volunteer for Human Libraries doing podcasting and also for Swan Women’s Centre aswell, doing marketing and befriending.

LY: Swan is a great organisation isn’t it, it’s a women’s charity Bella, there are a few. Another is Venus.

SN: Yes that’s right. Swan is such a fantastic place. It’s a charity that helps women with their mental health and has loads of different services women can take part in and get the help that they need. They also have a really good counselling service. All for free.

LY: It’s amazing isn’t it, let’s face it counselling should be free. So Bella, would you mind introducing yourself. And maybe you could say a few things about Soft Sanctuary as well if you didn’t mind just at this moment?

BM: Yes. My name is Bella Milroy I’m an interdisciplinary artist based in Chesterfield, North Derbyshire. Most of my practice is essentially about how we make contact with the world around us, mostly in the form of archive and found material. I’m very interested in the handheld in that way, that informs a lot of what I make, process is very important to me in my creative practice. I’m continually concerned with the domestic, particularly in all the different facets that the domestic appears in our lives publicly and privately and I think that’s why Soft Sanctuary is such an interesting project for me that way because it takes these private experiences of domestic settings and puts them in these very communal public spaces of the library and allows ritual to elevated in a way that is very connective with other people. That’s essentially what the programme is about, the whole premise of what At the Library commissioned me to create was a one day which has turned into many days for people in the library to turn up and have a nice time. For me as an artist that’s just a really, really exciting jumping off point to work from, it’s just not something we ever get to focus on and have that as a driving force of what we want to achieve. It’s been a snowball of events which included a free community lunch, artists led workshops and a kind of series of conversations and pieces of writing exploring the premise of engaging with one another in this community setting, talking about the things we do outside of those spaces. The cherry on the top of all of this has been that I am able to work exclusively with disabled artists. Like for example the Sick Day Banquet is something that is commissioned from a disabled artist to design a lunch based on their ideal sick day foods. It’s been a really great way of drawing out these often uncomfortable things and mold them into these really celebratory connective experiences for people in the library spaces. So, that’s the premise of the project really but it’s developing into this much more fluid thing than just the library space now. It’s very special, many different meeting points coming together. So you have the library itself as a catalyst for all of that to happen. It was almost like coproducing with the volunteers, library goers, with people who just turn up because the lunch is free and it’s really nice. There is this constant amalgamation of different meeting points which is really exciting. To be able to take these privately experienced moments and put them in this exciting celebratory space it’s really cool. I know in the notes Steph you were talking about the Social Model in relation to disability. Perhaps you could talk about the Social Model and what it means? And how the context of the library supports that maybe?

SN: I worked for Dadafest in 2016 as a Live Streaming intern for them, I helped to Live Stream some of the events during their 2016 festival.  That was actually the first time I came into contact with the social model and understood what it was. Essentially, what it is is that your disability isn’t the issue. It’s society that is the issue. It’s society that creates the barriers for disabiled people. So, it’s about trying to empower disabiled people and give them agency over themselves, their identities and their own lives. Would you agree with that Bella?

BM: Yes definitely, I know so many disabled people who have come to find the social model and it is this totally life changing concept that allows them to totally redefine themselves, where they sit in society, that sense of agency. It’s a really, really powerful tool. I think for me personally, there are lots of overlapping elements of it because my disability comes from my illness so I’m continually excited by the social model and what it means for disabled people like as you say it’s society that needs to get its act together to change not us. At the same time, there are things that my body just simply cannot do. So, it’s really interesting to talk about it and expand on it because it’s a fascinating exploration of this kind of concept of how your body fits into that.

SN: Yes, exactly. As you said about how that relates to the library if you think about At the Library and your project in particular (Bella) it’s about helping people actually take charge of their own mental health and wellbeing, it’s something they can take responsibility for and say actually I don’t feel that great at the moment that could be due to anxiety and depression. At the Library is a great way to sort of teach you to take responsibility for that in different ways and to actually look at yourself and see that you are more than just a mental health issue or a disability, you are yourself at the end of the day. I think that’s important.

BM: I think it’s really about allowing for these experiences of illness and disability to coexist in the many facets of what you are. As disabled people we are continually asked to be ‘fixed’ in the most well meaning ways, continual prompts if you try this or do that you will not have these problems, quote unquote problems, what is really exciting about the programme and these explorations is that we put these experiences in this place that allows them to just be and have a greater understanding of how they fit into our lives rather than a problem to be solved. Having a body that is a problem to be solved is really, really horrible.

LY: It’s also about permission, having permission to feel your feelings and to admit when you are not well or when things aren’t going great in your life. It’s the first step to emancipation. I notice it a lot with people I might work with whose whole life has been about benefits sanctions or family breakdowns or people telling them they are this and that or whatever. That narrative drums into peoples heads and they feel broken but actually you are not broken you have just been given the wrong narrative. A lot of the At the Library Programme is like this but Soft Sanctuary really epitomises it in the sense that it’s about coming together with people you’d never normally sit down with and giving yourself permission to enjoy something nice, to colour in or whatever it is you want to do for a couple of hours in what can essentially be very, very difficult lives. If you have communities that are economically suppressed lots of things go with that, sometimes that’s disability. There was a culture where a lot of people were put on sickness payments in the 1980’s and now we have this Universal Credit situation it’s a stranglehold around people’s freedom. To be able to come next door to the library after you’ve just had a horrible experience in the place you go the Labour Exchange is really wonderful.

SN: That is what I have found, being in the library as a befriender for the Swan Centre I’ve actually brought some of the women that I support to At the Library because it’s such a relaxing, positive place. A place where you can just forget about the problems and issues you have been having in your life, I think that’s beneficial and more positive for yourself and your mental health.

BM: That must be a really powerful exchange that happens in that way.

SN: Yes it is, you can see that these women have been struggling with different issues and to introduce them to something like At the Library it can just change their perspective or help them to reach a goal that they have. For example, if they would like to become more independent or socialise more then At the Library is a really good way to do that. You meet people from all different walks of life and they enrich you a lot.

BM: Yes, definitely. One of the facilitators of that engagement is that none of the Soft Sanctuary Programme or At the Library Programmes are driven by a productivity or outcome meter, there is no start and end point, it’s this completely fluid thing, all you have to do is turn up and all of a sudden your engaging in some creative thing, doing a bit of cooking or whatever or just listening. I think it’s really special when people just turn up to be in the room with other people. To know that that is really valid, to know that your body is simply enough, you’re turning up, that’s really powerful. So often these kinds of focuses on engagement in this way require an outcome.

SN: Such a holistic approach with Soft Sanctuary and At the Library, they see each person as a whole and look at you as a person instead of focussing on one particular thing. A lot of people who engage with At the Library and Soft Sanctuary like that about those programmes and those activities.

LY: When you say they turn up, they might stumble across Soft Sanctuary and end up doing something mad they have never done before. I have to say, people are very open to it though! They might end up weaving or something and they’re like what am I doing here?! I only came in to use the computer! ‘Now I’m eating sweet potato and colouring in! I suppose it’s that out of the ordinary, produce a space for conversation, I suppose Soft Sanctuary is part of that. For me a bit of a dream project because there are no barriers.

BM: I love the demographic, it remains a library. I love that about it. It’s not At the Library and by association the Soft Sanctuary is not trying to make the library a different thing, it’s simply utilizing this amazing cultural community asset, that is what is so amazing about it. Like I said, there are kids running in and out of the space, and people trying to get online coming in and out. The audience is very participatory in a very different space than what a lot of creative spaces try to do. It’s like you said, a gallery already has quite a defined cap on who is going to engage. It is very difficult to engage with if it’s not a familiar space. The library is so familiar and safe and you don’t have to put a different hat on to engage with that space.

These are Part 1 and 2 of a podcasting series created by Bella, Steph and Laura as part of the Soft Sanctuary Programme 2020. We suggest you listen to iterations 1 and 2 of the conversation between Bella and Steph and welcome your comments and thoughts. At the Library is a programme delivered and developed by Rule of Three Arts in partnership with Sefton Libraries Service. The work is funded by Arts Council England and the National Lottery. You can join our mailing list by emailing hello@ruleofthrees.co.uk or follow us on Instagram and Facebook (@we.are.at.the.library) and Twitter (@the_libraries)