About the Artist: Faith Bebbington
My artistic practice initially stemmed from having cerebral palsy, a disability that has made me curious about how people and animals move. I explore this through figurative sculptures playing with balance, the process of falling, and capturing sequences of movement whether human or animal.
In 2014 my artistic perspective shifted radically after surviving ‘terminal’ cancer! I stopped working with fibreglass resin as my main medium and focused on more sustainable, environmentally friendly ways of working, particularly re-using plastics by breaking the component parts down to then reconstruct them. I studied sculpture at Winchester College of Art, set up my Liverpool studio in 1993 and now work across the UK creating recycled public artworks and exhibiting my sculpture. My clients across the UK include Veolia, itv and Wembley.
Dr Sandra Hiett described my approach - “Faith's practice as an artist has embodied authentic and deep rooted commitment to celebrating her sense of self, with sustainability, disability, gender and social justice at the heart of her practice. As an artist working with community groups, schools and cultural organisations, Faith gives voice to people who are often unheard...”
You can see the range of work I’m involved with on my Instagram and my website
About the Artist: Janet Price
I am a disabled queer feminist, based in Liverpool, UK with links to Taranaki, New Zealand. I am a white woman, activist and writer, who has a commitment to using art as a way of building intersectional connections and communities across disability, gender, sexuality, race & class. I am committed to developing human-nature connections, through art that builds awareness of how, as embodied, sentient beings we are deeply implicated in both the ways our world is being destroyed by human-nature interactions – but also in the routes to the world’s rescue.
My love of art and commitment to activism led me to become a member of the board of DaDaFest, until 2023 where I built a strong commitment to and understanding of access in Disability Arts. Whilst there, I also worked with previous Chief Exec Ruth Gould to organise a visit of UK Disability artists with a coalition of disability artists/activists in India/South Asia. We had together a long term plan to build skills in organising Disability Arts Festivals around India, something I have continued to enable. As chair of the Arts Sub-Group I also worked with Ruth Gould to develop festival based themes and structure running over a decade, and I co-curated a University/DaDaFest event ‘Living with Dying’ along with Ruth Gould and Professor of Philosophy Gill Howie about the use of art and nature as a way of handling the stresses of living with impending death.
Over many years, I have been interested in and worked with textiles, creating fibre art pieces that relate to the depths of our natural world. Increasingly I draw upon the history and reworking of old textiles, looking to their origins in the wild and to colonial impacts upon fibre production. I am drawn to fibre art that challenges the injustice of power and its intersectional unwrapping.
About DaDa
DaDa is an award winning and pioneering disability arts organisation based in Liverpool with international reach and impact. Founded in 1984, we were one of the first disability-led arts organisations in the UK and an integral part of the campaign for greater equality and access for disabled artists across the arts sector. Find out more.