“Nothing about us without us” is the slogan of the global disability rights movement, and today we mark International Day of Persons with Disabilities by sharing some pioneering work from the Sensing Climate project.

Launched in 2019, the United Nations Disability Inclusion Strategy calls for the right for persons with disabilities to actively shape the conditions of their lives. This mantle has been embraced by the Sensing Climate project, which is placing disabled people at the forefront of the climate crisis – embedding their expertise in new strategies to navigate a changing world.

Over the summer, the Sensing Climate team worked with people in Bristol who are disabled, d/Deaf, neurodivergent, and those living with long-term health conditions, to highlight what needs to change in efforts to tackle the climate emergency.

Artist Andrew Bolton of Community Murals CIC captured these ideas in a huge panoramic mural, created in collaboration with everyone involved in the project. Dr Sarah Bell and Dr Rebecca Yeo have written this blog post to explain how the mural came together, originally published with accessible transcripts on the Sensing Climate site here.

Situating the mural

The mural is on the wall of Easton Community Centre in Bristol. It interacts with elements of an existing mural on the wall, developed in collaboration with disabled people subject to immigration controls and in the wider population.

The new mural highlights how the issues are all interconnected. The original mural was made up of a brightly coloured rainbow on the far left, with visions of how a more just society could be built. The rainbow is repeated three times. Each time it loses colour until the rainbow on the right is made up purely of shades of grey. Under the grey rainbow there is a memorial to Kamil Ahmad, a Kurdish man who was murdered in Bristol in 2018.

The new mural uses these rainbows to show the crisis that we are currently facing under the grey rainbow and to contrast this with the potential for a world of sustainability and justice that we could create under the colourful rainbow.

An edited mosaic of the full mural © Mark Simmons.

A world of climate chaos

On the right of the mural, under the grey rainbow, there are images of current injustice and the catastrophic future that awaits us if policies and practices are not changed.

A bare, leafless tree is depicted in black silhouette, surrounded by military weapons. The arms trade kills and disables people, destroys the environment and diverts resources from the services and support needed for a caring society.

To the right of the weapons, a gaggle of stencilled Monopoly figures are running to a rocket to take them away from climate chaos and off to the moon, which has been ‘sold’ to them. The steps leading up to the rocket symbolise its inaccessibility to many disabled people.

Two disabled people are struggling to keep up with the Monopoly figures. This highlights the flaws in focusing on the goal of inclusion in the mainstream agenda. Many disabled people will always be left behind if people are valued solely according to economic contribution.

Meanwhile, underground, beneath the money men, is an empty bed, depicting the lives already lost, as well as people with invisible impairments and the ways in which disabled people are made invisible in prominent responses to the climate crisis.

Black and white stencilled figures from the game, Monopoly, run with bags of money towards a rocket © Mark Simmons.

Forging a path to an alternative world

The mural is not, however, without hope. Underneath the grey rainbow, somebody is holding a colourful rainbow umbrella. One mural contributor commented that there are many paths that go from A to B, but what if we don’t want to go to B?

People are helping each other underground. This community of people, including wheelchair users, long cane users, and a person lying down, are forging a path towards the colourful rainbow on the left-hand side of the mural, in the opposite direction to those of the money men.

On the left of the mural, this community are shown helping one another up from underground to the colourful rainbow. Here, there is a flourishing environment, with leafy trees, green grass, and a deep blue lake. The roots of a tree spell out the word ‘CARE’. This side depicts the world as it could be if we follow a path shaped by care and solidarity.

Beyond inclusion

We cannot create a just and sustainable future simply by being included in business as usual. The scope for disabled people to be leading the creation of alternative paths is not intended to glorify struggle. However, in one of our initial workshops we asked what we learn from experiences of disability.

People spoke of empathy, solidarity, the value of rest, caring for each other and of recognising our interdependence. They reflected on the experience of different ways of seeing the world and of valuing what matters. These attributes are all critical to resisting the mainstream path that is currently destroying the world.

Together we can create a world of justice, sustainability, and care for each other and the planet.

You can find out more about the mural in this short film created by Redweather Productions.