Drafts

In the face of prevailing austerity, we are proud to recommit ourselves to leading change.

Launched in August 2025 via a simultaneous digital release across eight partner organisations, including DASH, Drafts brings together the individual and organisational voices of directors and curators from seven influential contemporary visual arts organisations across England to create a constellation of vision and mission statements for the Future Curators Programme (FCP), a consortium and residency programme for Disabled curators within seven visual arts institutions across the UK.

[soft liquid keys chime nostalgically]at the beginning of the film, setting a textured tone of liquidity, reflection and softness.

Following the director’s rough cut and a conversation about the sound of language with Jade Foster, Axel Kacoutié, an award-winning audio artist and poet, produced a responsive score based on their intuition and gut knowledge. Disabled and queer-led working group Carefuffle in London then penned the captions in an ebb and flow collaborative process—communicating the nuance of Kacoutié’s vision. Their creative captioning, throughout the work, responds to musical texture, voice, non-verbal communication, and visuality. It incorporates animations, symbols, directional changes, as well as variations in typeface, colour and rhythm. This approach builds from the methodological bedrock developed for Drafts by Collective Text, a Glasgow-based, Disabled and Deaf artist-led organisation.

Following a young Black masc in rural England, we come across new growth amongst browned leaves as we spiritually enter Spring. Just as language attempts to resist capture through its opacity, so does the boi, whose future is ahead of him if only the sector would allow it. You know, if the industry doesn’t try to split him—forcing apart melanin and disability—like trying to separate leaves from soil.

Split.

Splinting between experience and articulation.

Hands call to us; call out and reground us. The hands of the teenager, Muslim, British South Asian, Deaf actor Sahera Khan, and Black Deaf actor David Ellington remind us to show up for the living and the future. Their hands are followed by those of Heather Peak (DASH), reciting their‘ draft’ as a synesthetic drawing to declare, embody, and deposit their intentions for the Future Curators Programme (FCP) and how they are feeling their way through the process. Peak is proceeded by ‘drafts’ from Claudia Lastra (Arts Catalyst), Elinor Morgan (Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art, MIMA), Roma Piotrowska (Midlands Arts Centre), Trish Wheatley (Disability Arts Online), James Green (Newlyn Art Gallery &The Exchange), and Rosie Cooper (Wysing Arts Centre).

Download the Drafts BSL Transcript
Download the Press Release

Watch: DASH
Watch: Arts Catalyst
Watch: John Hansard Gallery
Watch: Newlyn Art Gallery & The Exchange
Watch: Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art, MIMA