Freewheelers company members place themselves in front of a Victorian camera lens to highlight issues surrounding disability and challenge how people with disabilities have been portrayed over time.

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​The aim:

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The Us and Them project set out to explore how historical images of people with disabilities can be reinterpreted to challenge past and present stigmas. Bringing together eight disabled artists from Freewheelers Theatre and Disability Company with Dr Alana Harris from King’s College London, award-winning portrait and social documentary photographer Emma Brown, oral historian Laura Khan Mitchison and the Surrey History Centre, the powerful collaboration creatively re-imagines 19th-century asylum photographs to provoke questions about ableism, mental health, and representation.

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​The organisation:

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Freewheelers are a diverse and creative company of people with disabilities based in Surrey. They work alongside directors, producers, composers, artists and writers, to co-create and produce engaging, thought-provoking, funny, joyous and highly entertaining theatre, dance, film, and music.​

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For over thirty years, Freewheelers has been challenging perceptions and defying expectations.

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The activity:

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Us and Them is inspired by nineteenth-century archive photographs of patients taken on admission to the ‘Epsom Cluster’ of psychiatric hospitals. The hospitals also housed people with learning disabilities, epilepsy and Down’s Syndrome, which were classified in the same way as mental illness at that time.

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These photographs, along with hospital records, were discarded when the hospitals closed in the 1990s but, thanks to Julian Pooley and colleagues from the Surrey History Centre, thousands were rescued and restored over many years. They are now part of an archive at Surrey History Centre that is believed to be the largest collection of mental health and learning disability records in the English language.

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For this pilot project, which received funding from King’s College London, disabled artists from Freewheelers explored the recovered Surrey hospital asylum archives, identifying and aligning themselves with images of former patients.  This led to a series of recorded discussions about pose, costume, gesture and identity guided by oral historian Laura Khan Mitchison from On the Record.

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Working with photographer Emma Brown and using a traditional Victorian wet-collodion technique, the Freewheelers artists then co-created self-portraits exploring visual representations of physical disability in Surrey, past and present. By using the same processes as those used in Victorian times, a level playing field was established, enabling a reading of images over time.

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The project culminated in the Us and Them exhibition at The Horton, Epsom (1st -14th December 2023). The new portraits of Freewheeler Company members were provocatively paired with the original Victorian photographs, highlighting the diversity of disabled artists and celebrating commonality.  The exhibition stimulated public conversations about discrimination and how disability is understood, especially through visual representations.  

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Significantly, The Horton Arts Centre is located in the former Chapel that served Epsom’s historic 1000-acre psychiatric hospital site. 

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The results:

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For the disabled artists from the Freewheelers Theatre Company, the co-creation of their portraits gave them both visibility and a voice. The project built their confidence and self-esteem, allowing them to document the entire process through film and audio, which will be used in future work.

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The project also fostered conversations that helped deepen understanding of each other’s disabilities and abilities, and laid the groundwork for future creative projects, including a possible theatrical production.

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For the other collaborators, including the photographer, oral historian, and curators, the project provided valuable insights into their professional and creative practices. They gained a deeper understanding of the ethics of portrait photography and how it intersects with disability representation.

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The process also highlighted the need for accessibility in areas like audio production (accounting for speech difficulties), hanging exhibitions (with consideration for wheelchair users), and working with historic visual source materials. These insights not only improved the collaborators’ work but also enhanced their ability to communicate the history of disability and mental health to the public.

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The Us and Them exhibition at The Horton Arts Centre was very well received by visitors, many of whom left thoughtful and reflective comments praising the exhibition’s sensitivity, curation, and the powerful comparison between the lives of the Freewheelers and the historic asylum residents. Over 300 people visited the exhibition during its two-week run, and 60 people attended a public discussion event hosted by the project team.

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The project has empowered participants but also made meaningful contributions to academic discussions on disability, mental health, and visual representation.

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Building on this pilot project, expectations are raised for a larger, co-produced project that explores more of the archive and includes more disabled people, which Freewheelers hopes to deliver in 2025.

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Tips:

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• Keep it simple: The initial idea for Us and Them was and is a very simple one and something that can be explained in a sentence. 

• Flexible approach: Allow enough flexibility to allow the project to follow its own creative course. Often the unplanned, unpredictable occurrences offer the best and most valuable moments. 

• Mutual respect and equal partnerships: This project was an equal collaboration between Kings College London, The Surrey History Centre, Emma Brown, On the Record and Freewheelers Theatre and Media Company. Each partner had a clear role and purpose within the project and the project simply could not have happened without all partners being present. Perhaps a marker of a successful partnership is that each partner (rightfully) claims the project’s success as their own.