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February 2021
Climate change is having the largest impact on the world’s poorest and most vulnerable people. Climate Change is a disability rights issue. The topic of ‘Disability and Climate Change’ is about equity and justice. It is about hope and innovation. It is about working together with people with disabilities to create awareness, understanding and solutions.
The failure to engage with disabled people in contemporary climate adaptation planning, disaster relief and recovery efforts overlooks our potential as knowledgeable and powerful agents of change. I want to ask questions, I want to engage with you, the community and have honest conversations about climate change.
The time is now for us as people with disabilities to be included in these discussions involving climate change and the prevention of it. Instead of coming up with harmful actions for the disabled community, such as banning plastic straws or asthma inhalers, people with disabilities must be included in the research, prevention and response to climate change.
Working together through informal conversation, presentation, drawing and collage, this digital residency will ask how we can make the climate change revolution accessible.
About the Artist
Áine O'Hara is an award winning visual artist and theatre maker creating exciting and engaging documentary performance and collaborative work. Áine is passionate about making provocative work for and about marginalised communities.
Áine's long term ambitions include demanding adequate access to theatre and the arts for disabled and marginalised communities through the creation of large scale, ambitious work as well as the continuation of community building projects like Chronic Chats, a creative and social group for chronically ill people run with the support of the A4 Sounds Studios in 2020. In 2021 Áine will be facilitating Chronic Chats online for 6 months from Jan-June for disabled and chronically ill people in Co Mayo with the support of Mayo Arts Office.
Recent achievements:
Arts Council Theatre Bursary 2020, A4 Sounds
Studios Project Award 2020, Axis Playground Bursary 2020, Riverbank
Momentum Award 2020.
Edited advertisement from the first plastic straw created by Joseph B. Friedman in 1937. The poster reads: Flex-Straw: The individual, personalized drinking tube. Sanitary - disposable, Bends to any angle, Eliminates sterilization and breakage, Saves valuable time at current high labor costs, Lessens possibility of spread of communicable diseases, Treatment in high temperature resistant micro crystalline wax prevents disintegration in hot liquids.
