Cultivating spaces for extraordinary artists

Disability Arts Online

The new url will be www.disabilityarts.online

The leading editorial journal for the UK's disability arts scene, Disability Arts Online, is delighted to announce the launch of its brand-new website as part of its Grants for the Arts project, Viewfinder. The website will feature new branding, functionality and design, with the aim of better supporting disabled artists, sharing their work and providing a platform for critical discussions within the disability arts community.

Disability Arts Online has worked closely with Brighton-based design firm Take Up Space, who specialise in projects for ethical organisations, to tailor the branding and the design of the website to best serve its mission and audience, both of which have disabled artists at their core. Disability Arts Online's long-term web development partners, Surface Impression have implemented the designs, bringing to bear their expertise in producing accessible websites.

Being a platform primarily for and about the arts, the new website places greater emphasis on images and video, making for a richer and more engaging user experience. The work of disabled artists is given prominence throughout the new site using high-quality editorial, an extensive directory of artists and new gallery-equipped showcase features which profile the work itself.

Director Trish Wheatley says: “The new website has been developed following useful feedback from our readers and we can't wait to share it with everyone. We were able to make this happen thanks to funding from Arts Council England and a great deal of hard work from the staff and freelance team. We look forward to hearing what our readers think of the new site and welcome ideas for future blogs, articles and features.”

Editor Colin Hambrook said: "The sheer volume of content on Disability Arts Online has always made navigation tricky. I'm delighted that we will be able to profile our writers much more effectively through a facility within the new site for pulling related content together. It means that our readers will more easily find articles by favourite writers. In addition with a more straightforward system of tagging articles, our readers will also discover areas of specific interest from across different sections within the site."

As part of the launch, the URL of the website will be changing from www.disabilityartsonline.org.uk to www.disabilityarts.online. Disability Arts Online has always acted as an archive of the Disability Arts movement and of disability culture more generally. For this reason, content predating 2015 will remain on the old website as an archival resource. The old website will no longer be updated with new editorial content as of May 2016. Blogs and listings will stop being updated on the old site from the date of launch of the new site on 9 June.

Later in the year, Disability Arts Online will be launching a new video platform, Viewfinder, which will feature curated video playlists, original commissions, and eventually, live streaming. Both the new Disability Arts Online site and the Viewfinder video platform have been funded through Arts Council England's Grants for the Arts programme, and further supported by core funding from The Esmée Fairbairn Foundation.

Alongside the new website, Disability Arts Online will also launch their newly branded newsletter with the most exciting news, opinion pieces, blogs, events and jobs relating to disability arts and culture. You can sign up to the newsletter here: http://disabilityartsonline.us13.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=178bfacb1401aa915f9d55ef2&id=72f6aefe76