Mob-Shop
About
Mob-Shop, 2021
Mob-Shop is a continuing, disabled-led project exploring mobility shops, mobility aids, and the devices and practices used by and designed for disabled and chronically ill people.
The project aims to expose the concept of mobility shops in where they sit in the cultural consciousness of disabled experiences, and center them in ways that could potentially offer new and better alternatives to the generic, medicalised, grey-beige-purgatory of how they exist today.
Void of fashion, youth-culture and any form of autonomy and self-expression, mobility shops are a fascinating example of the excruciatingly rigid and ableist narrative that cuts right to the heart of how society sees disabled people.
Mobility shops do not reflect the reality of disabled experiences, and the aids and devices that are supposedly designed exclusively for us, so often fail us in offering variety of choice, identity or imagination. As physical spaces, they are both geographically and socially located on the peripheries.
Mob-Shop seeks to centre disability culture and the wealth of shared knowledge and wisdom of our disabled community, placing some of these peripheral experiences as a core focus of this programme.
This programme commissioned disabled artists to respond speculatively to the concept of the mobility shop, and explore the practices of the aids and devices disabled people use every day.
In a series of newly created artworks, writing, residencies, workshops and podcasts, we invite you to creatively accompany us in critically reflecting upon what the design and aspiration of accessible products, spaces and practices might embody.
Artworks were featured across Derbyshire Libraries between October and December 2021, of which archived documentation can be found on this website. You can also find all episodes of this series of the podcast, details of our artist in residence, see the digital copy of our publication and enjoy the video recording of one of our workshops. Visit the Home page for more details.
Mob-Shop is a disabled-led project created by Bella Milroy, supported by 12ø Collective, Derbyshire Libraries, CILIP, Shape Arts and Arts Council England.
