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

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

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….)

 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…..
 

Eu estou aqui ser visto

Ich bin hier gesehen zu werden

I’m bedding out to shout out, and I really want you to join me….  Raise your voices, be heard!

Click the link

http://bit.ly/13k8AwR

“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!

My 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

[youtube=http://youtu.be/oCqZ31uBU7k]

People Like You is a partnership between LinkUpArts, Disability Arts Online and Salisbury Arts Centre and features work by Gini, Sue Austin, Liz Crow, LinkUpArts and other artists.

• Salisbury Arts Centre
• FREE entry

People Like You is a purposefully participatory new touring show that tackles the subjectivity and perceptions of disability.  Through performance, film, sculpture and audience interaction, it explores commonalities of human experience and conjures some very uncommon experiences of its own.

Gini’s Disability Arts Online commission ‘Creatives in Con.text’ digests conversations into multi layered text works. The title piece is formed of functional grab rails.  Gini explains: “First offered to me by a man who followed it up with “…should be taken out and shot”, ‘People Like You’ is an enigmatic phrase made even more interesting by social media trends. [grab rails] are everywhere, often taken for granted….  I chose Shocking Pink to counteract the drab, unisex nature of the paraphernalia of disability.”  Her other pieces include life size Soft Sculptures and ceramic collaborations.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/designandmake/5459645792/in/set-72157624542466978/