DaDaFest Reveals 2025 40th Anniversary Programme

Award-winning DaDa has announced its 2025 festival programme which marks the Liverpool-based disability and Deaf arts-led organisation’s 40th anniversary. A busy line-up of film, including large-scale projection, performances, visual arts, workshops and talks are promised at this year’s DaDaFest International 40 (DDFI40) which runs from 8-31 March.

With 90% of events open to the public for FREE the organisation is encouraging supporters to help it to keep it that way through donations.

Events include a significant new photographic exhibition at the waterfront Open Eye Gallery, a stunning poetic film installation screened on the outside of the Cunard Building, thought-provoking live theatre and a special Bluecoat Weekender at DaDa’s city centre home.

DaDa, founded in 1984, develops and presents excellent disability and Deaf arts through an artistic programme that includes high quality festivals, interventions and events, fed in to by a year-round programme of engagement work with developing and established artists, young disabled, Deaf and neurodivergent people, their families and the wider community.

DaDaFest, which was launched in 2001, showcases the work of disabled, Deaf and neurodivergent artists.

The festival theme for 2025 is Rage: A Quiet Riot! which was chosen after speaking to artists about the work still to be done to achieve full equity.

Events take place at venues across the city centre and beyond as well as online.

Film

In the Film DDFI40 programme, artists showcase different shades of rage – bubbling, building and bursting in a Quiet Riot.

Launching DDFI40 on International Women’s Day, 8 March, Bristol-based artist and curator Cathy Mager’s Hand Ships Sail is a poetic conversation in British Sign Language in which two Deaf women share their dreams for the future as they look out over the night sky. It will be beamed on to the side of the Cunard Building from 8-10pm on the day.

A co-commission between DaDa and Culture Liverpool, Movement Megaphone is an original dance film by Patrick Bannon, an associate artist at RAWD, which explores turning up our voice through dance. It will be screened at Open Eye Gallery on Mann Island from 8-10 and 17-31 March.

And on 18 March there will be an evening of films at FACT which reflect on the festival theme including a screening of shorts created by disability artists Dolly Sen, Dora Colquhoun and Amina Atiq.

Live Performance

Artists Faith Bebbington and Janet Price unveil their visual commission Pimp my Wheelchair at Sefton Park Palm House on 9 March with a special launch event which will feature a thought-provoking catwalk-esque procession. Their exhibition features crutches, chairs and hearing aids ‘pimped up’ with sculptures inspired by plants which have natural defence mechanisms which express rage against attack.

It runs until 30 March and ahead of that on 28 March there will also be an informal event to mark the end of the exhibition and celebrate DaDaFest International 40 – Rage: A Quiet Riot including a live performance from Dora Colquhoun as well as music.

Midgitte Bardot is the alter ego of solo artist Tamm Williams. Shooting From Below, staged at the Unity Theatre on 21 March, is a work-in-progress sharing of a new show which explores people’s regressive attitudes to those with dwarfism and poses the question – who is really dwarfing who?

Then on 22 March, join the brilliantly bold Not All Your Circus Dogs at the Unity where they present Not F***ing Sorry. Co-produced by The Hale and Access All Areas, the show promises ‘shameless sexy punk crip cabaret’.

Meanwhile The Bluecoat Performance Space is the venue for Rage Reactor on 22-23 March. Open from 11am to 5pm each day, the event sees artist Zack Mennell working with an archive of NHS and DWP letters and with family photos to create a commissioned installation alongside three performances over the two days which combine poetic explorations of childhood trauma with the trauma the civil nuclear industry enacts on the land.

And The Bluecoat Garden sees an interactive performance from Dora Colquhoun on 22 March, where the fictional National Bureau for Sitting (NBFS) will assess members of the public to see whether they can take a seat in a very comfortable Chesterfield chair.

Deaf author Natalie Denny will lead a special DaDaFest International 40 Storytime at The Bluecoat Festival Hub on 22 March where she will share her much loved ‘Keisha Jones’ series.

Amina Atiq will present Pop Up Poetry in the Bluecoat Garden and Courtyard on 23 March, with specially developed work reflecting on the festival theme RAGE performed alongside some of her existing poems.

Then on 28 March, Eat Me and Preach – a collaboration between DaDa and Liverpool’s original drag dinner cabaret and club night - comes to District in the Baltic Triangle, promising a raucous evening of performance and protest.

And on 29 March, artist and performer Patrick Bannon and choreographer Alice Lapworth will host a free open dance workshop at Open Eye Gallery to learn some of the moves in Movement Megaphone, followed by a one-off live performance.

Visual Art

The visual art strand of DDFI40 opens with a new exhibition titled Rage, Riot and Revolution at the Open Eye Gallery on Mann Island. Over four decades, disabled women in Liverpool and the North West have been powerful agents of change locally, nationally and internationally, reshaping their communities and the way society views disabled people.

Launched on International Women’s Day and running until 31 March, the exhibition – featuring photography by Jan Williams of the Caravan Gallery - celebrates their resilience, ingenuity and impact.

DaDa Chief Executive and artist Zoe Partington will be Painting in Light at venues across the Liverpool City Region including, Sefton Park Palm House, Williamson Art Gallery and The Bluecoat and more to be revealed. Running from 8-31 March, the light sculptures convey stories, messages and insights into disabled people’s struggles in a world where society still excludes them from the mainstream.

The exhibition will also be available to view online with audio description and a podcast discussion to capture the story behind it.

DaDaFest @ Bluecoat will see an archive exhibition, running from 8-31 March, which charts festivals, events and exhibitions hosted at the School Lane arts centre.

Meanwhile DaDa Fellow Chris Shapiro creation Koishii (the Japanese word for ‘I miss’ in the sense of yearning), an interactive game experience will be available on the DaDa website from 8-31 March.

Matt Allen presents his new digital commission It’s Not You, It’s M.E. at the Bluecoat and online on 11 March.

Allen is an artist whose practice explores dreams, reality and anxiety and draws upon autobiographical material to create interactive artworks. He is a recipient of FACT’s 2024 Digital Artist Residencies programme, and this new work about ME and chronic fatigue is supported in partnership with DaDa.

Disabled curator Gill Crawshaw and YEP (Young Everyman Playhouse) Producers present a DaDa @ 40: Dive into Our Archive at the Liverpool Everyman theatre bar from 19-31 March. Utilising some of DaDa’s extensive archive of material and memorabilia, Crawshaw is working with the young people to share a snapshot of disability arts history from a younger perspective.

Talks and Workshops

Drop in to the DaDa Festival Hub at the Bluecoat on 9 March for A Wee Riot with Edinburgh Fringe Society, a chance to chat with members of the society’s artist services’ team about all things Fringe ahead of a new year-round artist hub which is due to open in the Scottish capital in 2026.

Liz Crow, ZU-UK and Dora Colquhoun come together in partnership with Metal Culture for a very special event at Edge Hill Station on 15 March. How f*cked are we? A Long Table discussion about the climate crisis will explore climate change and disability from local and global perspectives, using artist Lois Weaver's Long Table format.

DaDa is thrilled to be working with ZU-UK and Maria Oshodi and co-hosting a closed Research Lab at FACT on 16 March, one of the international elements of DDFI40.

An Ignite Artists round table takes place on Zoom on 17 March, covering the topic Using Creative Workshops to Imagine Better Futures of Care for and with People with Energy Limiting Conditions. Artists Khizra Ahmed, Khairani Barokka, Julian Gray, Mish Green and Louise Kenward will discuss a research project they are involved with which is led by the University of Liverpool and Liverpool Hope University.

Meanwhile Disability Arts Online and Telepresence Stage present a Seminar and Screening at FACT on 19 March.

In the morning, two of the UK’s leading disabled-led theatre companies, Birds of Paradise Theatre Company and CRIPtic Arts, will give presentations and hold a panel discussion on the possibilities and benefits of unique online and hybrid performance outcomes they have developed. While later in the day there will be a practical workshop.

Then the Bluecoat Festival Hub is the venue for Ignite 1:1 Artist Advice Sessions with Arts Council England on 23 March, with Deaf, disabled or neurodivergent creatives or organisations able to access the in-person advice from an ACE Relationship Manager.

There will also be an Ignite: First Time Arts Council Applicants Session on Zoom on 24 March with the webinar including an introduction to the Arts Council, its National Lottery Project Grants, developing your creative practice and tips on applying for funding.

And on 26 March Australian artists Amy Claire Mills and Bedelia Lowrenčev lead an online workshop, Sweat the System, which invites participants to move and shake their bodies through sweat and play.

Bluecoat Weekender

DaDa has called the Bluecoat its home since 2008 and has welcomed many disabled artists to the historic Liverpool arts centre during that time. Disabled people asked for a space in a cultural fun venue to meet as often disabled people are segregated

The Bluecoat Weekender on 22-23 March brings together a host of events and activities including Painting With Light, Zack Mennell’s Rage Reactor, Dora Colquhoun’s Would You Like a Seat? storytelling with Natalie Denny and pop-up poetry with Amina Atiq.

There will also be a DDFI40 Festival Hub and Quiet Space open on the weekends of 8-9 and 22-23 March which will be open to both artists and audiences for networking, informal meetings or simply to take time out.

DaDa’s chief executive Zoe Partington says: “DaDa has a rich powerful history of pioneering disability arts, and shifting culture within the arts when it comes to representation of disabled artists and the value to society of including disabled artists is immense and changes negative stereotypes.

“The impact of this work has become even more evident in the conversations we’ve had in planning our 40th anniversary festival, with venues like The Bluecoat telling us, since DaDaFest first took place there, they have revolutionised representation of disabled artists and audiences within their venue as a direct result, and with DaDa’s influence they now work regularly with disabled artists within a venue where they have invested heavily in disabled people being present and continue to improve access.

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