Shaping the debate

Stem cell research, ‘saviour siblings’, pre-implantation genetic diagnosis, the DNA database, biometric ID cards – bioethics is never far from the headlines. With scientific breakthrough and public opinion in such regular conflict, isn’t it time to ask new questions? Scientific advances have changed our world and given us a formidable range of choices in our lives, but with many of the choices come ethical dilemmas.
Disabled people are often at the centre of a debate to which they are not invited, as bioethical choices frequently affect their lives: genetic testing, prenatal diagnosis, therapies, treatments, quality of life, end-of-life care, as well as the concept of a cure. Unfortunately, the opportunities for disabled people and the scientific and medical communities to interact as equals, to discuss, debate and learn from each other, are rare, with few opportunities for free and open thinking around the bioethical questions or to generate creative responses to them. Artists have a unique opportunity to help represent these debates and dilemmas to wider society in an engaging way. Shape, a disability-focused arts development organisation, has been working with The Arts Catalyst for two years, developing ideas to bring together disabled and non-disabled artists, scientists, ethicists and clinicians to respond to the issues of bioethics and disability in new and creative ways

The Arts Catalyst commissions art that spans the science-art divide, exploring science in its wider cultural context and sparking debates about our changing world. By inviting this cross-discipline audience to a bioethics open forum, we hope to increase the numbers of disabled artists both in the arts and in art-based public engagement components of science programmes; to nurture the important insights and perspectives disabled artists can bring to contemporary issues in bioethics and disability; to actively engage with audiences new to the area of biomedical science, particularly disabled and deaf people working in or interested in the arts; and to engage audiences new to the area of creative free thinking in an artistic environment.
Shape’s new ‘Science-Art’ exhibition is the first point of engagement for this creative debate project. By showing existing work by disabled artists working on scientific themes, we are creating a starting point for the wider project about deaf and disabled people’s perspectives on scientific processes, experiments and conventions. The artists explore the huge scope of the scientific world, from supernovae to anatomy to chemical reactions. We hope to host a two-day workshop in January 2010: that will lead to new bodies of work, new collaborations and opportunities being developed, which can help translate, reflect upon, respond to and transform complicated issues to those on all sides of the bioethical debate. n