Not a Lotto for Arts Archive

A national archive in Dorset will highlight the work of the UK's most talented disabled artists, so why didn't it receive lottery funding? asks Lucy Howard.

The National Disability Arts Collection and Archive (NDACA) is the first project in the UK to create a national collection focusing on the work of disabled artists. It will include an interactive website and online database which will be a “virtual” archive, called NDACAweb. But hopes of lottery funding were dashed in September.

The NDACA project has been developing since the late 1990s, and is based at Holton Lee, overlooking Poole Harbour in Dorset.

Holton Lee holds exhibitions and conferences, runs studios and workshops and provides accessible accommodation.

The project aims to be a comprehensive record of disability arts from the beginnings of the disability arts movement in the early 1980s to the present, bringing together artworks and information from around the UK.

The artworks will include paintings, sculpture, film, literature, dance and drama.

The project will also be linked with a new master of arts degree in disability arts at the Arts Institute in Bournemouth, due to begin in 2008.

The total cost of NDACA will be around £1 million and it is about halfway to its target, but the project has been refused funding from the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF), although it has received an Arts Council grant.

Tony Heaton, artist and director of arts and environment at Holton Lee, laments the lack of recognition of and support for NDACA, saying it was “a real lost opportunity”.

The lottery funding rejection mirrors the current feeling of discontent in the disability arts movement that the work of disabled artists is often undervalued.

Colin Hambrook, artist and editor of Disability Arts Online, says: “Disabled artists historically have had to hide disability as a factor within their work. Any artist making a statement about their disability is bound to be marginalised. It is important for me to know that I have work in a permanent display that expresses how the mental health system has dominated and shaped my life and led me into the ranks of disabled people.”

Ju Gosling, adviser and artist-in-residence on the NDACA project, also defends the project in her online blog, where she says NDACA “is intended to document a living, vibrant, international fine art movement. It is not intended to be a coffin”.

•To find out more, tel: 01202 625562; email: archive@holtonlee.co.uk; www.holtonlee.co.uk Disability Arts Online, www.disabilityarts.org Ju Gosling’s blog, www.ju90.co.uk/blog