Disability Research Journey - Menna Buss Go & See Microbursary 2025-26
03/04/2026 | Author: Menna Buss
This is a journey story of disability and textiles research.
This is a journey story of disability and textiles research.
I’m a Swansea-based participatory textiles artist with caring responsibilities. I design project frameworks and deliver sessions for communities to engage creatively. Limited to school day working hours, project prep time is often heavily weighted towards planning: emailing, budgeting, creating samples, packing materials. With financial as well as time constraints, my research is predominantly studio-based. It’s routinely confined to night-time reading and social media scrolling. For too long broader research has been ‘squeezed in’.
I trained in costume design in 2000 - seeing visual arts and performance was a huge part of the practice. After some years working and travelling, I truly learnt the value of study visits during PGCE training and the years of pedagogic practice that followed. I consider myself an advocate of experiential learning. But for the last 10 years valuable visits where I could experience talks, workshops, exhibitions firsthand have been either impossible because of pandemic or on the back burner due to factors like family responsibilities, distance and expense.
As an associate artist with Glynn Vivian Art gallery and HPL lecturer at Swansea College of Art, I encourage students and participants to visit galleries, museums, archives. While developing a soft sculpture with ‘Threads’ community textiles group for ‘Tigers and Dragons: India and Wales in Britain’ at Glynn Vivian Art Gallery in Spring 2025, I arranged a trip for participants to explore St. Fagan’s Museum textiles collection. Brilliantly hosted by curator Elen Phillips, the visit helped me to remember the power of artist research visits and it planted a seed…
September, the start of a new academic year, brings excitement and panic! Will workshop requests flow in? Will they fill my short working days, leaving precious little time to research for longer term projects?
As though the universe heard this, an Arts Council Wales Create grant was awarded to artist Jack Moyse who had written me in as textiles artist on his brilliant project dealing with disability and the welfare state. In the same week, WAHWN announced ‘Go & See’ grants available.
I applied and was delighted to be successful - this was going to enable project-focused, in-person visits and conversations which felt integral to the work. My depth of understanding of UK Welfare, PIP crisis and the disabled condition was only as good as the few articles I had read and conversations had. I advocate for my 10 year old son who has unilateral deafness since birth, but we have no experience of the benefits, claims bureaucracy.
In November 2024, I led textiles activity for a SAFE Foundation global citizenship trip to South India where young adults worked alongside Dalit women to co-create cloth cookbags. With us, artist Jack Moyse supported the group, leading on ethical photography practices. In a challenging environment - sewing by torchlight though a cyclone - Jack and I realised areas where our practices align. As he explained his condition, Facioscapulohumeral Muscular Dystrophy, I learned how Jack finds meaning through his practice as a disabled artist. So, interested in social practice and exploring textiles further, he invited me as collaborator on his powerful project, gathering personal stories and truth: ‘A Sorry State of Welfare’.
When Jack announced the project was going ahead, in collaboration with Jane Simpson at GS Artists, Swansea and the 9to90 group - vulnerable adults accessing the free art club in the city centre, I understood the need to expand my understanding of an array of life challenges. To me, ‘know your participants’ runs parallel with ‘know your process’. To design and deliver meaningful opportunities for participants to engage with personal responses to the Welfare State system through the medium of textiles, I needed a deeper dive.
‘A Sorry State of Welfare’ project statement: To create safe, accessible spaces for people to reflect on and share their experiences of the welfare system. We encourage people to respond creatively without fear of judgement.
The proposed outcome is a banner/quilt inspired by Wales-based textiles heritage.
From what I was reading online, ‘Design and Disability’ at the V&A would be the ideal opportunity to learn about disabled experiences in a gallery setting. I also read that William Morris gallery, Walthamstow was listed as ‘dementia friendly’ so I factored in a visit to ‘Women in Print’ textiles over the last 150 years by Liberty fabrics. By coincidence this same weekend, friends - performance artist, Mal Parry and writer, Ess Grange were hosting a launch at National Maritime Museum, Greenwich of ‘Queering Piracy’ which presented participatory opportunities as well as valuable discussion time with artists working across disciplines.
On return to Wales, I invited Jack to join me on a further disability and textiles research day facilitated by Elen at St. Fagan’s.
The practical knowledge and insights gained from spending time with Elen and Jack with leaflets, posters, quilts and banners are invaluable. All exceptionally well curated, responding to our request for items related to: disability, welfare and protest. Exploring archival documents and collection pieces not on public display is thrilling. Elen shared details about banner composition she learnt directly from Thalia Campbell - ‘there are shouts and there are whispers’. She also noted that, echoing landscape, Welsh quilts have ‘fields and borders’. These conversations have directly influenced my design of ‘Sorry State of Welfare’ community banner/quilt.
‘Design and Disability’ at V&A was a solo visit. Knowing there would be lot to take in, I left plenty of time to explore all displays. Many other visitors brought friends and were reliant on wheelchairs or crutches. Two people engaged in conversation - we shared a common appreciation for the exhibition curation and accessibility.
Many exhibits illustrated projects and innovative design that gave me insights into the disabled condition.
‘Deaths by Welfare’ a research project accessed via an iPad, presented deeply troubling documentation of how the UK DWP and austerity measures have contributed to suicides of claimants. This work makes visible the ‘slow violence’ of a failing system. These insights not only gave me a vital socio-polital context for the work on ‘A Sorry State of Welfare’ but left me raging for awareness.
Keywords: allyship, ableism, access, welfare, resist, soften, representation, community making, crip time, crip theory, claim space.
Though I was unable to connect with a William Morris Gallery representative in person to further understand access and their dementia friendly status, I’m keeping this on my agenda.
At ‘Queering Piracy’ trans artist Mal Parry, in collaboration with members of the Queer History Club shared their progress of the commission by National Maritime Museum - a community response to ‘Pirates’ exhibition.
They said, “every ‘tattoo’ is hand-stitched, each one a queer conversation, exploring connections between histories and narratives of piracy and queerness. The artwork imagines queer identity as a community project, manifested through acts of craft and care.”
Sitting on a throne in the museum’s large atrium space, wearing the silicone torso, Mal was inviting live participation - to take a threaded needle and stitch a response. I did this while we spoke about similarities in our practices. My commission from the Museum of Wales - ‘Calico Dress Cymru’ a folk costume canvas for community responses to Wales-based identity. We wondered how we might collaborate. Outcomes of this conversation are yet unknown, but sharing space and being a participant in this project have inspired ideas on performance, costume, narratives and histories that I’m certain will inform future projects such as one in development stages with Amgueddfa Cymru - Waterfront Museum, Swansea.
This support from WAHWN and ACW has lead to valuable learning for current and future projects, with gratitude.
Partners/Co-funders/Social Media/web links:
Arts Council Wales @celfcymruarts
GS Artists 9to90 creative community @9to90creativecommunity
Jack Moyse @notabrothel
Calico Dress Cymru @calicodress_cymru
Vam.ac.uk/exhibitions/design-and-disability
Wmgallery.org.uk/event/women-in-print/
Rmg.co.uk/whats-on/national-maritime-museum/pirates/em-parry-queer-history-club
