DaDa are delighted to announce that you can now watch and enjoy the Rushton Lecture 2024 on our YouTube channel. Award-winning theatre maker, activist and writer Kaite O’Reilly delivered the moving lecture at the waterfront from the Museum of Liverpool on Tuesday, 3 December from 1-3pm. The lecture was presented in conjunction with Disability Arts Online and was streamed online on the day, and now the lecture is available on demand.
The annual event, held on the United Nation's International Day for People with Disabilities, is named after the Liverpool poet, bookseller, activist, abolitionist and disabled man Edward Rushton.
Context
Kaite O’Reilly speaks about ableism and audism in ‘RAGE ON: The Uses of Anger’ which connects her talk to DDFI40, which had the core theme Rage. She describes ableism and audism as the discrimination of and social prejudice against people based on the belief that other bodies, senses and neurology are superior, thereby giving the right to dominate, patronise and try to ‘fix’. The assumption that disabled, Deaf and neurodivergent people are lesser, require medicalisation and normalisation, or be made to disappear.
Kaite advocates the importance of righteous rage - knowing when there is nothing left to do but rage because the injustice is so great, drawing from her own experience of growing into a maturity of knowing when turning your rage into quiet action is more likely to influence change and to benefit in the long run.
O’Reilly adds: “As an artist and an individual, my reaction to ableism and audism? Rage. We learn of how best to mobilise feelings of rage into active forms of activism, how best to grapple these feelings of anger into change. How can rage propel change forward?
Kaite reflects on works such as The War on Disabled People written by Ellen Clifford which reflects the scapegoating and marginalisation of disabled people that has evoked a vibrant movement of disabled activists and their supporters determined to hold systems and system-makers to account – making the slogan ‘Nothing About Us Without Us’ more apt than ever.
The keynote social justice lecture this year kickstarted the discourse around disabled rights (or lack thereof), injustice and activism ahead of DDFI40 , which we hope will continue into onwards.
O’Reilly is joined by an incredible selection of panellists, award-winning playwright, performer and documentary film-maker Julie McNamara, Red Ladder Theatre Artistic Director Cheryl Martin and former DaDa Artistic Director Ruth Fabby MBE, to discuss the topic. The panel was chaired by independent cultural consultant Lara Ratnaraja.
Conclusion
The inaugural Edward Rushton Social Justice Lecture was held in 2015, and previous guest lecturers have included actor and comedian Liz Carr talking about ‘Death, Disability and Issues Around Assisted Suicide’, theatre-maker Nickie Miles-Wildin on ‘Disabled Women in Arts and Culture: Who’s Calling the Shots?’ and Falklands War veteran Simon Weston CBE on ‘The Impact of Being Disabled’. Last December, neurodivergent multi-disciplinary artist, writer, researcher, activist and curator Ashokkumar Mistry spoke about ‘Reclaiming Nonchalance’. We look forward to celebrating our tenth year of Rushton Lecture's in 2025!
A text only file of Kaite's lecture can be downloaded here: