This AHRC funded research project explores the voice of disabled people reflecting on environmental concerns.  The project uses walking, conversation and creative activities as methods to trigger exchanges between disabled people and sustainability practitioners, developing dialogues to explore how differences can be kept, and the empathy exchanged.

About the research project

Disabled people’s voices have been largely absent from the sustainability debate, and from environmental groups. This project develops dialogues between these two traditionally separated communities (disabled & environmental activists).

Through these dialogues we seek to understand more about different forms of resilience in support of the transition to a sustainable society.

This study takes a participatory action research (PAR) approach, facilitated by walking, narrative and arts-based methods. The research will take an approach of co-production with participants, operating in the role of co-researchers.

We will work inclusively and to maximise participation, while recognising the challenges involved in this and the ways our different knowledge bases are traditionally valued.

Twenty co-researchers, drawn from disabled and sustainability practitioners will undertake and document walks and conversations, working with academics and partners drawn from disability and environment groups.

This project explores the questions raised by the proposition that disabled people have a ‘wisdom’ drawn from lived experience to contribute to sustainability, with the aim to understand more about different forms of resilience, so increasing knowledge for sustainability.

• By better understanding how the lived experience of disabled people can contribute a sustainable society.
• Developing a platform to build and sustain a shared ongoing dialogue between disability and sustainability practitioners.
• As a secondary objective we will also engage planning agencies and policy makers with the outputs from the research, to inform planning and policy agendas.
• Explore the place of mobile and arts based methods to surface embodied practices.

Interim thoughts

The project is in full swing at the moment, with participants walking in and around Bristol. It is already clear that conversations between co-researchers are surfacing issues of risk assessment, problem solving and troubling attitudes to independence and interdependence. As one participant has written:

A wee comment on 'Walking:'

I rather thought that disability and WALKING go poorly together, like chocolate and ketchup.

Accepting help from a good P.A. means that even the seemingly impossible can become a reality.

Interconnections is joyously plausible, when you have someone on your side.

And another writes about her first walk with her walking partner R, taken using her trike (a form of motorised wheelchair):

What I found today is that much of Leigh Woods – 400 acres of woodland just across the suspension bridge; what R referred to as the lungs of Bristol – is trikable. In dry weather at least, I have a new space to explore.

Asked to draw a map of the route in advance, we decided instead to explore as we went. Instead, we each produced a map of our impression of the woods before setting out. R’s was leafy green and full, the river a buffer between city congestion and breathing space, whilst mine was a large blank canvas bordered by river and road. Today has begun sketching into that canvas, light and loose but with promise.

Further information

Co-researchers will come together in October to share and ‘make sense’ of their experiences. Dissemination events will follow with invited participants from a number of planning agencies and other organisations. 

Walking Interconnections involves a partnership between University of Bristol – Sue Porter; Glasgow University – Dee Heddon; University of the West of England Shawn Sobers and Suze Adams, and West of England Centre for Inclusive Living, peer support group; with Alison Parfitt.

For more details see: walkinginterconnections.com

Or contact Sue Porter

A dissemination event will be held on 21 November 2013.  If you are an interested agency, organisation or individual and you would like to attend, contact Sue Porter.