VX Labs: Decolonising Disability Report
1 Oct 2025
We are delighted to share findings from Vital Xposure's VX Lab on Decolonsing Disability which we collaborated on earlier this year. This blog was written by Vital Xposure and originally published on their website.
This report sheds light on how can disabled artists from the Global Majority be supported to bring their whole selves to their career.
Its findings can be useful to both organisations and artists. Besides, for true change to come, these cannot be separated.
Why did we want to deliver this Lab?
Since initial conversations about the Lab’s programme, there was recognition of the unique position of double exceptionality whereby artists had lived experience of two distinctive ‘characteristics’, which meant they operate at an intersection, in this case being both from the Global Majority and disabled.
Being at this intersection comes with even more barriers and experiences of exclusion. It felt important to untangle what these experiences of double-exclusion mean and how to address them.
How did we do it? We consulted and brought people with this intersectional lived experience to create the safe space they wanted, to lead and deliver all workshops.
What did we learn? Intersectionality requires more than representation. Sometimes even the word ‘inclusion’ is not enough: systemic generosity is needed, not mere accommodation. Acknowledging colonial legacies and personal cultures that have been shaped in other countries is also incredibly important.
For real change to happen, we need spaces designed with care, generosity, and cultural understanding at their heart. This Lab showed us what’s possible when disabled Global Majority artists are able to bring their whole selves to the room.
Dr Mandy Precious, VX Labs Project Manager
What happened next? Once the Lab was completed, Lab artists formed a collective to ‘reflect, pause, celebrate each other and continue the promise that we made to each other’, while two of them were selected to be 15 artists from the whole of the South West of England to participate in a 6 week fully funded Culture Biz Connect Incubator.
We can’t keep retrofitting access or asking artists to fragment who they are. Disabled Global Majority artists are leading the way in showing us what inclusion really looks like, expansive, generous, and transformative.
Josh Elliott, VX Artistic Director
This report and its recommendations provide essential reading for anybody interested in interrogating the way in which we work inclusively in addressing intersectional inequities across the industry.
Ben Atterbury, Literary Manager, Bristol Old Vic
Vital Xposure will be sharing our findings from these labs later this year. Watch this space! We hope that these findings can help organisations make their processes more accessible, and offer theatre makers ideas to support their own practice and journey in the sector.
Further VX Labs in 2025 include a Children and Young People’s Lab in collaboration with Z-arts.
