Mental Gymnastics, an exhausting #beddingout blog post.

“As the week unfolds through emails, I realise that my assigned role in this interview will be to provide the ‘human angle’ on the benefits onslaught. It feels a risky game in which my ability to convince the viewer that I am ‘deserving’ will reflect on the validity of every other claimant and every other disabled person. This is a medium that relies on symbol and soundbite, on two-dimensional versions of who we really are. It is a style of reporting that almost guarantees I will be seen as either ‘saint or scrounger’ (to echo a current programme title), but almost never that more complicated, contextualised, living whole.”

Blog continues http://www.disabilityartsonline.org.uk/liz-crow?item=1753

@Spoonydoc show’s us hers! A #beddingout #bedlife pic and great article.

Picture thanx to @SpoonyDoc

Picture thanx to @SpoonyDoc

“Artist Liz Crow is currently performing ”Bedding Out”. During this she takes to a bed in a gallery for 3 days to show the hidden side of disability which no one usually ever sees. It is a reaction to the current welfare rhetoric.

As part of this she organised a photo competition  #beddingout for fellow disabled people who are also house or bedbound depicting their bed and what it means to them.

This really got me thinking. I’m not a particularly good photographer….. ” Keep reading @Spoonydoc …  http://bit.ly/14dUsWF

“I’m Here To Be Seen” Liz Crow’s #beddingout Photo Competition is underway! Get clicking #disability #invisibleillness

It’s Competition time!

We have an exciting competition for you budding amateur photography enthusiasts, video makers which could put your bed image firmly on our beddingout map – literally!  I really want to see where in the world you all are and create a virtual ‘Bedding Out Involvement Map’.  I’ve always wanted people to own the project and to feel as involved as possible, this is just one way in which we can highlight how many of us are currently genuinely affected by attitudes towards disability and the image being created by the media and our Governments.

Cameras at the ready, we are looking for your best colour photographs or videos depicting, symbolising, and even celebrating your bed. There’s a fantastic prize (well ok, maybe not fantastic, but it’s OK….)

free-itunes-gift-card a £15 (or your Country currency equivalent) iTunes gift card.

General rules of entry

Photographs/Videos should be submitted via Facebook page: http://on.fb.me/142Hsyb or to @RGPLizCrow on twitter, or if you prefer by email to tweetmeister, Dawn Willis, quinonostante@hotmail.com (in the subject box – Bedding Out ) – Please include your name, and where in the world you are.. 

 

No photographs/videos of people in rude, nude or compromising situations or indeed animals – we need to keep things clean!

Photographs/videos can be of any time of the year, any part of your bed, of you (clothes on), your view from your bed, your bedding, your teddy bear, something which represents what your bed means to you.

Must be original  not from internet or whatever, because we’ll have those copyright police chasing our tails. It is your responsibility to ensure that any photographs/videos submitted have been taken with the consent of anyone who is identifiable from your photograph or film.

The closing date for the competition is Sunday 14th April 2013 . Entries submitted after this date will not be included.

A panel of 2  judges will pick the winner, their decision will be final.

Prize will be dispatched either electronically or by post within 5 days of competition ending.

Important: Entrants will retain copyright and moral rights in their submitted images and you will continue to be able to publish, sell, loan or otherwise use the photograph(s)/videos in any way that you wish. By entering the Competition, you are granting Roaring Girl Productions a perpetual, non-revocable, royalty free, non-exclusive, worldwide licence to publish or otherwise use the photograph(s)/videos in any media including, but not limited to, the following:

  •  publication of the photograph by Roaring Girl Productions on social media sites
  • publication of the photograph on the Roaring Girl Productions websites

Get clicking, get your friends and family clicking. Let’s show the world We are here to be seen!

Ik moet hier worden gezien…..
 

Sono qui essere visto

 

Estoy aquí ser visto
Я должны здесь быть увиденным


Eu estou aqui ser visto

Je suis ici pour être vu


Ich bin hier gesehen zu werden

Roar

 

 

You picked your bed, you gotta lie in it! #beddingout

From Dawn Willis:

“I recently bought a new bed. I spent days browsing the internet for deals. Thing is the bed had to be right. I wanted modern, sleek, cheap, a headboard that wasn’t padded and pink like my nan’s and a mattress which would guarantee blissful slumber, and all for around three hundred quid.

It was not easy, let me tell you. I could have a metal bed frame with iron headboard, not really built for resting my reading back on. Or I could have an ottoman storage bed, which I could hide my excess junk, never to be seen again because if I wanted to get to it I’d be dismantling the bed, and I’m far too lazy for that!

Cool bedMy dream of throwing myself onto an immaculately made bed, covered in golden silk sheets and sinking into a marshmallow mattress enveloped in luscious quilted throws, whilst surrounded by delightful boudoir cushions was, all the while looking like I had just stepped out of a Vogue fashion shoot … was exactly that, a dream. Marshmallow mattress!! I’m far too old for that. Silk sheets? Expensive and slippery! And as for the Vogue me, well that’s serious fantasy!

So began the is it too hard or too soft mattress malarkey. I was getting away from a memory foam thing which seemed to forget I slept there and ensured every part of me ached next morning. There were extra firm, firm, medium firm, sprung, pocket, air pocket, spring, wring, cling… it was all very confusing. What was clear was I needed practical comfort, but it couldn’t have flowers.. or be blue, most certainly not blue, when I was made homeless and moving out I remember my blue mattress being heaved onto the removal truck and the memory doesn’t fit well with comfort  I associate with ‘my bed’.

So your reading this and thinking something like ‘flipping eck it was just a cheap bed, how hard can that be?’ (‘hard’, do you see what did there?) Yet it was, it took me about ten days to decide, I got the platform from one place, the mattress from another. I wanted the best nest I could get for my money, but knowing that it has to last, needs to do the job because I can’t afford it not to.

Whilst I don’t have a ‘bed life’ my life is made manageable by having a place where I can rest well.

I guess writing this little missive has served to make me aware that there must be a massive emphasis of getting your bed right if it’s somewhere you spend a lot of your days, in both comfort and discomfort.

Can we talk about your beds? See your bed? Hear your bed buying dramas….?”

It really is all about #beddingout

I made my bed… I lie in it

Dawns Bed

 

 

Diary Of A Benefit Scrounger from Sue Marsh, fighting the fight, quite often from her bed! #ESAendgame #beddingout

I have a rare form of Crohn’s Disease. I was diagnosed 21 years ago and have had many operations to remove strictures (narrowings in my bowel that grow like tumours) I suffer daily pain, often vomiting, malnourished and weak. I take mega-strong medications every day including chemo-style immuno-suppressants, opiates and anti-sickness injections. Sometimes I am fed into my central vein by tube, other times I can enjoy a nice meal out. I have children that I often can’t look after and a husband who often looks after me. Our lives are disrupted daily by the misery of a chronic condition.

Read and act:  http://diaryofabenefitscrounger.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/todays-esaendgame-request-important.html