Disabled artists protest The Many Costs of Living
A "collective response" to the disproportionate impact of the rising cost of living on disabled people, a Shape Arts project has brought an artistic billboard campaign to Sheffield and four other cities.

Shape Arts' The Many Costs Of Living billboard, featuring art by Bella Milroy, Hanecdote, Justin Piccirilli and the Kirkwood Brothers.
This week, a new kind of arts campaign was launched across
the country. Led by the national organisation Shape
Arts, billboards were revealed in London, Glasgow,
Manchester, Liverpool and Sheffield, displaying four new artworks by
disabled artists in response to the cost of living.
“Disabled people
are disproportionately impacted by the rising costs of living,” a
spokesperson for Shape Arts said. “In a time of spiralling
inflation, and the chaos of a crumbling welfare state and national
infrastructure, this has turned into an ongoing crisis.
“The Many Costs of
Living project is a collective response to this emergency.”
Sheffield has a long
history of protest art, from the stylised typefaces of the Orgreave
Truth and Justice Campaign to the lino
prints which raised money to save Sheffield’s trees.
This time, the city was chosen because of its proximity to
Chesterfield-based artist Bella
Milroy, who created 'It Feels Like This' as part
of the project.

It Feels Like This
Bella Milroy“I was really
interested in expanding on the nature of the DWP envelope being both
covert and overt,” Bella told me. “How it’s obvious to those who
understand its meaning, and unnoticed by those who see it as just
another bit of post.”
The stress disabled people experience when a brown
envelope from the Department for Work and Pensions falls through the letterbox has been well documented online, but
Bella’s art takes this reality a step further.
“I liked the idea
of playing with scale in this way,” she said. “And how making it
massive on a billboard could better reflect the way it arrives, and
how much space it takes up, mentally and emotionally.”
Bella’s towering
brown envelope shares its place with art by Hanecdote,
Justin
Piccirilli and the Kirkwood
Brothers. The resulting billboard, which in Sheffield is located on Fitzwilliam Street, is a striking reminder of the all-too tenuous support this
government has offered to disabled people over the course of the
last fraught decade.
Last month, Citizens
Advice revealed that over
130,000 households that included a disabled person had
their energy disconnected at least once a week due to being unable
to keep up with the payments. Meanwhile, NHS waiting lists are at an
all-time
high and, with disabled households having a far lower
income than non-disabled households, many are much
less able to absorb the extra costs.
The aim of The Many Costs of Living campaign is to draw attention to
the struggles disabled people continue to face and include the
wider public as a witness. But for Bella, being able to create
alongside other disabled artists was almost as valuable as the work
itself.
“I’m always excited when disabled people come together and raise our voices about what the world we live in feels like,” she said. “I hope that people are moved to reflect on how this moment [in time] feels, and [understand] that the voices of disabled people matter to all of us.”
As well as the
billboards themselves, Shape Arts has curated an online campaign,
with digital animations and an interactive map of the sites for
viewers to access. It’s already attracted some famous interest.
“As an ardent
advocate for the power of creativity as an antidote, this campaign
strikes me as an extraordinary example of the alchemy of art in
action,” said the artist Alison
Lapper MBE.
“Each artist has confronted the unavoidably dismal outlook we currently face with gentleness, humour and craftmanship typical of their work. As the public encounter the campaign in the wild, the potency of the works will surely have long-lasting and galvanising effects.”