Language We Use
The language we use at Oily Cart has shifted over the last few years. We acknowledge that this language may not work for everyone, and that it will continue to evolve. However, by sharing Oily Cart’s journey, we want to provide context for these choices, and reflect our commitment to the social model of disability in the words we use.
What is the social model?
Oily Cart’s work is guided by the social model of disability. Under the social model, a person is disabled by barriers in society, rather than a health condition or impairment.
These barriers can be physical, attitudinal, structural, institutional and ideological. Barriers to accessing theatre, for instance, include lack of work that is meaningful for or representative of disabled young people and their lived experience, as well as venues that don’t have a Changing Places toilet.
Why is language important?
Language is also a barrier. It reflects our assumptions, attitudes and values, and impacts the way we treat each other. Under other models, like the medical and charity model, medicalised and institutionalised labels are used to define disabled people by their conditions or impairments. In recent years we have moved away from using these terms as they suggest that disability is something to be ‘fixed’ or cured. The social model challenges this idea, fighting for social and political change that acknowledges a shared responsibility to remove barriers.
The language we use
The social model informs the language that we use to talk and think about Deaf, disabled and neurodivergent people. It has been developed by disabled people, and so comes from a place of ownership.
A lot of what we do at Oily Cart is with, alongside and for children who experience the most barriers to access. We use this term to refer to a diverse group of disabled children who have many different types of cognition and ways of being in the world, and who communicate in many ways other than words. (In some settings, they may be labelled as having ‘Profound and Multiple Learning Disabilities’, often shortened to ‘PMLD’). This imperfect language aims to acknowledge how many barriers words can create in terms of gaining influence and power, alongside the many other barriers society has created. Even when a show is considered ‘accessible’, there is often no adaption of the creative content for audience members who don’t understand, relate to or use language. We deeply consider cognitive access, removing barriers by catering to different processing times, working with different playing spaces, and expanding the creative palette to use all 33 human senses.
We also create work with, alongside and for Autistic and / neurodivergent children (some settings may use language including ‘child with autism’, ‘autism spectrum condition’, ‘ASC’ or ‘autism spectrum disorder’, ‘ASD’).
We tour and work with specialist schools: schools that specialise in education for disabled children (some settings may use the terms special school or ‘Special Educational Needs’, SEN, ‘Special Educational Needs & Disabilities’ or SEND school).
We will keep listening and learning. The language we use will continue to evolve over time, always in the direction of equality for everyone.
Some additional resources:
As well as many conversations within our team, with our Critical Friends and our wider community, the following resources have been hugely helpful:
‘Language and labelling’ came out as one of the key themes from Dr Jill Goodwin’s ‘critical conversations’ with artists, parents, researchers and practitioners during her time as our Researcher-in-Residence, and is included in her report: Read ‘Being With’ in Sensory Theatre report.
https://www.drakemusic.org/blog/becky-morris-knight/using-the-term-sen-d/
https://weareunlimited.org.uk/blog/is-disability-a-dirty-word-language-and-the-labels-we-use/
https://graeae.org/accessibility/
https://www.shapearts.org.uk/news/social-model-of-disability
https://www.drakemusic.org/blog/nim-ralph/understanding-disability/