Help Dave Lupton, Disabled cartoonist Crippen, to bring his works into the 21st Century
3 March 2023
Someone recently pointed out to me that my cartoons provide one of the most comprehensive records of the past 40 years of the disabled people’s movement in the UK. Sadly, many of the early ones created for printed publications such as Disability Arts In London (DAIL) magazine and the Trades Union Disability Alliance TUDA News are in a clunky greyscale format. Ideally, these all need to be reworked in order that they can be made accessible for modern online publications.
As I’m well into my twilight years I’m aware that the time I have to do this work is slowly running out. I’ve therefore decided to put most of my usual work on hold and concentrate on bringing these original works into the 21st Century. There’s some 600 cartoons, some covering the early demonstrations and protests of the 1980’s and 1990’s as well as the political shenanigans of the governments of the time and the rise and fall of the Disability Discrimination Act.
These will all need restoring, or in some cases redrawing, and I estimate that it will take me some 900 hours to do this. Obviously, when I’m doing this I’m not earning and will therefore have to look for funding to keep the wolves from the door. As an individual artist, most funders aren’t too keen to provide funding although I am writing to all of the usual suspects to see if they’ll contribute in some way to this project. As individual disabled people you can help towards supporting me whilst I complete this body of work and in that respect I’ve created a funding page.
Once converted, I’ll be offering these cartoons as a free resource to disabled people for disability equality training, recounting the history of the movement, and in our current online publications and social media pages. It is also hoped that the material will also be used in media designed to educate school children, higher education students, and the general non-disabled population.