Cripping Creativity & Play: Artist-Led Explorations of Disabled Art-Making
Special Issue: Cripping Creativity & Play: Artist-Led Explorations of Disabled Art-Making
Guest editor: Dr. Elizabeth McLain
Ground Works launches its Reco(r)ding CripTech online archive in fall 2025. The archive documents the collaborative, creative processes of four disabled artists from the Leonardo CripTech Incubator (2022–23), leading up to the exhibit E.A.A.T. in September, 2023.
With this archive, Ground Works aspires to make disabled artists’ work accessible to both scholarly and general audiences, on the artists’ terms. The archive was created in partnership with the artists, who determined what should be in the archive, how it should be framed with commentary or annotation, what the access measures (e.g., alt text) should look like, and how long their materials should remain in the archive. Although we do not pretend that the result is perfect, we believe these practices make progress towards more ethical models of scholarship that center the voices and perspectives of disabled artists. The development of the Reco(r)ding CripTech archive was itself cripped: operating in crip time, developing access experiments through creative collaboration, and functioning interdependently.
Through this special issue of Ground Works, we invite you to join us in reimagining interdisciplinary arts-based research led by disabled artists. To challenge traditional harmful approaches to scholarship about disabled art (such as inspiration porn, super crip narratives, or attempts to “fix” disabled people), this issue seeks to pilot new approaches that honor the agency of disabled artists, building on the example of the Reco(r)ding CripTech archive. In celebration of the interdependence of the disability community, we encourage collaborations that explain, explore, and render accessible the creativity emerging from the disability community.
A2RU issues this call for submissions to Cripping Creativity & Play: Artist-Led Explorations of Disabled Art-Making, a special edition of its peer-reviewed, open-access collection of arts-integrated research, Ground Works.
In this special issue of Ground Works, we welcome submissions that explore or analyze the work of any disabled artist or arts group through an interdisciplinary, scholarly perspective. Our operating definition of art and creativity is as broad and diverse as the disability community itself, including (but not limited to) music, visual art, dance, theatre, storytelling, performance art, cinema, multimedia art, gaming, play, and community-driven projects.
We seek submissions from both academic and non-academic settings that are led by the artists’ interests and desire for how their story should be told. The editorial team offers limited support to connect artists and scholars interested in collaboration (see “Individual and Partnered Submissions” below).
Possible submission topics include (but are not limited to):
Disabled embodiment in artistic and creative practices
Adaptive technologies
Aesthetic access as part of art-making
The impact of funding structures and venues on disabled artists and art-making (as well as the impact of disabled artists and art-making on funding structures and venues)
Art and social justice, including beyond disability
Intersectionality
Entries that are accepted into the special edition will leverage Ground Works’s capacity to feature rich media, using images, video, audio, and other media representations of the artist’s work to do some of the storytelling.
Individual and Partnered Submissions
Submissions should be artist-led and center disabled voices. Artists can submit on their own or in collaboration with partners. Scholars writing about disabled artists’ or groups’ work require partnership with that disabled artist or group in order to submit. Recognizing that forming these partnerships and planning a submission takes extra time, the deadline for Stage 1 submissions is January 30, 2026.
For artists and scholars who are interested in contributing to this special edition but don’t have a partner with whom to work, please contact us; we may be able to facilitate an introduction to a potential collaborator. Please do this via email to vstanich@umich.edu (Ground Works Managing Editor, Veronica Stanich) by November 28, 2025.
If possible, please include links (or examples as image, video, or other file attachment) to your creative work and/or a CV describing your scholarly interests and background.
Submission and Review Process
To submit to this special issue, please create an account or sign in to Ground Works. Then use the “Submit a Project” button and choose Cripping Creativity & Play from the CFP dropdown.
As with all submissions to Ground Works, the review process begins with a brief “Stage 1” suitability review where you will be asked to provide:
title
250-word abstract
100-word statement of relevance
evidence of (perhaps early) external recognition of the work (URL’s)
keywords
disciplines involved
optional link to a project website
Editors will review these for fit with the Cripping Creativity & Play special issue according to the scope and mission of the journal. In addition, for this special edition, submissions should:
be artist-led. The artist is not just an object of study but is contributing the relevant questions they want explored in their work. The disabled artists or arts groups can be independent, university- or school-affiliated, professionally trained, not professionally trained, etc. Artists need to publicly identify as a member of the disability community, but will indicate how they identify using the terminology of their choice (inclusive of Neurodiversity, d/Deaf & HOH, etc.). Submissions must either be:
--authored by disabled artist(s) OR
--by scholars (disabled or non-disabled) in collaboration with disabled artist(s).address arts projects that have already been completed, shared in some way with others, and received some form of external recognition.
put an artist’s work in conversation with some non-arts perspective, combining one or more research disciplines such as Disability Studies, Art History, Science and Technology Studies, Law, Business, Rhetoric, Sound Studies, etc., with the artistic practice under consideration.
move beyond or push back on harmful disability narratives such as inspiration porn or super crips.
There is an anticipated 21-day turnaround on decisions in Stage 1.
Select submitters will then be invited to the second project review stage (anticipated two month turnaround), in which they provide a focused 1,000 word narrative as well as media for their project. Stage 2 submissions will be examined by two external reviewers. Successfully evaluated projects are included in our online compendium, and their authors are invited to contribute reflections on their process and effective practice.
All submissions must be received by January 30, 2026.