Nothing About Us Without Us

by Zoe Partington

Image Description: The wording reads on the art work. 'Nothing About Us Without Us',- in dark blue neon lights in a stylised handwritten font The neon words are framed inside a transparent perspex box.

Medium: neon glass tube lights/ surrounded by a Perspex box with electric plug in.

Depth: 80mm, Height: 690mm, Length: 1685mm

Weight: 42lbs (19.05kg)

Installed at Palm House, Sefton Park

This slogan was adopted by disabled people in the UK and took its inspiration from the anti- apartheid movement in South Africa. Apartheid was a deeply discriminatory legal and political system which deprived Black citizens of their rights (including voting), and enforced segregation in housing, transport, employment and virtually all other areas of life.

“Disabled people had identified with such experiences of oppression and noted our common ground.” The underpinning principle of “Nothing About Us Without Us” is self- determination; within disability rights, Choice and Control dominated as key concepts from the early days of our movement. We felt that we had no voice and decisions about our lives were made by people who allocated resources and took away our power — for example, Social Workers insisting on institutionalised living. Seizing our power and controlling our own communication became vital expressions of freedom, captured perfectly in the phrase “Nothing About Us Without Us”.

Conversation from Unit London and Barbara Lisicki.