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Creativity and Disability Pride

by Violet Saoirse

As a proud disabled and queer writer and collagist, I think there are many misconceptions about creativity and disability pride.

Creativity is a crucial part of Disability Pride.

A lot of people will say things like “I’m not creative”, but there’s a difference between being ‘artsy’ and being ‘creative’. Everyone is a creative being.

Every day, we are creative. We use our creativity when making breakfast, choosing what we will wear in the morning, applying makeup, making decisions and deciding what to eat for dinner. We are constantly creating things. Even when we’re dreaming at night our brains are being creative in our sleep!

‘Artsy’ might mean you enjoy making art and feel confident in your artistic abilities but when I talk about creativity, I’m not just talking about art. I’m talking about ideas, innovation and thinking outside the box.

For non-disabled people, disability pride might be understood as simply being proud of having a disability. But for many of us disabled people, it’s a lot more than that. For me, disability pride involves embracing our access needs and resisting ableism, ableist norms, inspiration porn and capitalism. It can be having pride not only in how we as individuals stand up for ourselves, but how our disabled ancestors have fought for our rights. It’s pride in our communities and our fight for Disability Justice. It’s our pride in how far we’ve come, while recognising we still have a long way to go.

Learning about disability pride changed my life.

I have always loved making art. In Kinder, when asked what I wanted to do when I grew up, my very ADHD answer was to be a dancer, a cook, a painter AND a teacher. With the cost-of-living crisis today, it’s not unusual for artists to juggle three or four different jobs.

I had so many big dreams about what I could become, achieve and do in the world when I was young. As I grew older, my anxiety became increasingly hard to manage in a neurotypical world, and not knowing I was autistic or an ADHDer meant I always felt there was something wrong with me.

I knew I had leadership skills though, and when I was in year 8, I desperately wanted to be a middle school captain. My special interest at the time was all things Fair Trade. I was excited about ensuring that the people who made our school uniforms and sporting equipment were paid a proper wage.

I wasn’t picked to be captain. I was really disappointed. I thought I met the criteria: good grades and a strong Christian faith, at my very Christian school. However, my anxiety was evident and I didn’t always come across as confident. I didn’t make it to a leadership position in senior school, either.

I had leadership potential, but ableism set me back.

Last year, despite knowing I was an ADHDer, severely asthmatic and having multiple mental illnesses, I wasn’t sure I could identify as disabled. I participated in a leadership program for young disabled people by Youth Disability Advocacy Services (YDAS). I learnt that disability can be defined as any condition that impacts your everyday life. I began to feel pride as a disabled person. I began to believe in myself and also started calling myself an artist and a writer. I realised I was autistic about a month later, and everything started to make sense.


As an autistic artist, I’ve always found making art and writing helps me identify and process my feelings. Art and writing has allowed me to express how I feel about ableism and the capitalist hellscape we’re living in. It’s allowed me to express myself, heal from trauma and connect with others.

Creativity is a part of disability pride because it encourages us to think about disability, ableism, oppression, capitalism, the body, the mind and ourselves in a new way. It disrupts the shame we are taught about ourselves and encourages us to be wholly ourselves, in a world that tells us to hide.

We use creativity to think of ways we can meet each other’s access needs, to create new mobility aids, find new ways of being in community and look after each other through pandemics, climate change and financial crises.

Creativity helps us to rewrite the narrative about disability- narratives that are not centered only around our pain and trauma. Disability pride centers our joy, hope, resistance, resilience, history and our fight.

It allows us to understand ourselves and other disabled people as multi-dimensional, deserving of our rights and a better world.

Disability pride positions disabled people as the main characters of our own stories – rather than the disabled side character. Disability Pride positions ableism, capitalism and systems of oppression as the enemies, not our disabilities.

Disability Pride enables us to write our own narratives. It helps us reframe the way society views disability and disabled people.

Disability Pride, when combined with Disabilty Justice, sets us free – from shame and from ableist narratives and norms.

Disability pride gives me, and all of us, hope for an accessible, liberated and creative future.

Violet Saoirse (fae/faem) is a queer disabled collagist and writer in Naarm. fae utilise art and writing to express and understand faemselves. Violet often explores themes of grief, disability, politics and nature through their collage and written pieces. you can find faer art on Instagram @violet.saoirse


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