All is Not Well: Advocating for people with disabilities in Bulgaria

A Manifesto for Change to advocate for people with disabilities in Bulgaria, and for those who care or support them.

Since 2012, disability activists in Bulgaria, including parents of disabled children, have protested against the slow pace of reform of material infrastructure and of institutionalization. Activists call for change in outdated medicalized disability assessment practices and for the introduction of personal assistance legislation properly informed by a social model of disability.

Led by the School of Modern Languages, and building on previous All is Not Well projects that made homelessness and undervalued caregiving visible, this project alongside the University of Sofia and Plovdiv University, advocated for a host of disability organisations and charities to make the effects of outdated medicalising policies and attitudes better known in Bulgaria and further afield. The work is important because quality of life is diminished by lack of progress towards disability equality and thwarts the aspirations of disabled people to live independently .

The project captured the everyday diverse perspectives and experiences of disabled people in over 20 interviews. Artists from Bulgaria and the UK were commissioned to re-present these narratives in photographs and comics for display in galleries in Bulgaria and the Workers Gallery in Ynyshir.  View the comic online.

Activists and stakeholders were also equipped with a new advocacy tool kit – a concise illustrated Manifesto for Change. This new resource enabled disability activists and stakeholders to reassert their claim to the rights agenda and to lobby, making the case for change to perceptions of disability in Bulgaria and the UK.