At the start of the summer a formal looking envelope popped through the castle letterbox. I opened it with curiosity, unsure what to expect: it’s content blew me away.

It was a letter from the University of Wolverhampton saying they’d like to award me an honorary degree of “Doctor of Letters” in recognition of my work with Touretteshero.…

Yesterday was the last day of Southbank Centre’s incredible Unlimited Festival. The Festival celebrates the artistic vision and originality of disabled artists. Highlights for me included Claire Cunningham’s beautiful piece The Way You Look (At Me) Tonight, Heart N Soul’s stunning building-wide take-over on Friday night, and Liz Carr’s thought-provoking Assisted Suicide The Musical.…

It’s been the Unlimited Festival at the Southbank Centre this week. The Festival celebrates the artistic vision and originality of disabled artists. It’s included amazing new pieces, work in progress, and a wide range of talks, workshops and events.

Tonight the brilliant Heart n Soul celebrated their 30th birthday with an astonishing building-wide take-over of the Royal Festival Hall.…

For a few minutes I lay on my back, studying a small corner of sky that the van’s floppy thermal blind had revealed. It wasn’t giving much away, just a steady non-committal grey.

The noises outside were more revealing: no patter of rain on the roof, only the comforting racket of Fat Sister making tea outside.…

While we were touring in North America I was excited to be in touch with a number of theatre academics who are interested in the Relaxed Performance movement. Brilliantly Cameron Hunt McNabb, Assistant Professor of English at Southeastern University in Florida and a specialist in medieval and early modern drama agreed to write a guest post explaining her particular interest.…

As a child I loved Children’s TV. Among my favourite characters were Mr Bump, Super Ted, and Rachel in Grange Hill (played by Francesca Martinez) and the thing all these characters had in common was that they were identifiably ‘different’: Mr Bump – poorly coordinated, Super Ted – rejected in the opening sequence because ‘they found something wrong with him’ and Rachel ‘wobbly’ as the result of cerebral palsy.…

Innes opened the curtains and through the huge window I could see the hills and sweeping roads of LA, already busy with activity. It was cool in my room from the air-conditioning but I knew that outside it would already be hot.…

A week ago I wrote a post explaining my concerns about Me Before You, a book, and now big budget Hollywood film, that opens in cinemas tomorrow. Countless disabled people and non-disabled allies have spoken out about the stereotypical portrayal of disability and negative messages that it promotes.…

In the words of the bold, forthright, witty, Crip activist Stella Young:

“We’ve been sold a lie that disability is a bad thing… and to live with disability makes you exceptional, it’s not a bad thing and it doesn’t make you exceptional.”…

We’re in the USA with our show Backstage In Biscuit Land, and one of the most interesting things about travelling is experiencing different ways of doing things. Often it’s the differences in the most routine and familiar aspects of life that stand out, and one of the first things I noticed was how different accessible toilets are over here.…