Vital Xposure, a leading disabled-led theatre company, has unveiled the findings from its latest ‘VX Lab’: Disability Decolonisation, exploring how disabled artists from the Global Majority can be supported to progress and bring their ‘whole selves’ to their artistic careers.
The lab was born out of research which suggested that the disabled arts community is not representative of the diversity of the UK’s population, with many disabled, Global Majority artists reporting feeling constrained to express themselves through a single lived experience or characteristic, despite being far more complex than that. Additionally, growing research highlights that theories of disability and approaches to disabled inclusion are often based on Western cultural understandings.
Artists who are both disabled and from the Global Majority often experience “double exclusion.” They are rarely recognised in their full identity and frequently feel pressured to fit into one box or another. This Lab was designed to untangle those experiences.
Dr Mandy Precious, VX Labs Project manager and researcher, explains:
“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.”
Research and exploration
The four-day residency in Bristol, supported by Bristol Old Vic, was designed and led entirely by Global Majority disabled facilitators. Six artists took part, sharing their lived experiences, reflecting on the challenges of the industry, and building confidence in their own creative futures.
One artist described the Lab as transformative, noting: “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.”
Decolonising Disability Lab findings
The Lab revealed that inclusion must move beyond tokenism. True access requires systemic generosity, not minimal accommodation. Many existing disability frameworks, rooted in white Western perspectives, fail to reflect the lived experience of Global Majority artists and need to be reimagined.
Safe spaces proved essential, enabling participants to dream big, build confidence, and establish new connections. The impact of creating these spaces is tangible, artists who took part in the Lab have since seen new doors open, leading to exciting opportunities, recognition, and platforms to develop and share their work. One reflected, “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”
Out of the residency, artists formed a new collective, ‘Aggressively Civil’, which continues to support its members, stating “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.”
What also emerged was not only a space of healing and affirmation, but also a powerful call for change across the sector.
Josh Elliott, Artistic Director of Vital Xposure, said:
“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.”