Working with artists to address social issues. 2016.
Cultural Partner: DaDaFest (Disability and Deaf Arts Festival) and Stacy Bias
HE Partner: The University of Liverpool

The power of animation is being used by Dr Bethan Evans, Department of Geography and Planning at The University of Liverpool working in collaboration with artist and activist Stacy Bias and DaDaFest (Disability and Deaf Arts Festival) to communicate the lived experiences of air travel for people who identify as fat.

Significant media and policy debate concerning the rights of fat people in commercial air travel operates at a level of extraction from lived experience, resulting in dehumanising portrayals of fat people as ‘excess baggage’. In contrast, this project emphasise the perspectives of fat passengers. Based on analysis of survey and interview data, Stacy Bias has animated an account of flying while fat told in the voices of fat passengers. The aim ultimately is to encourage empathy with those who often face exclusionary physical and social environments when travelling and to inform understandings of more accessible forms of air travel. The outputs include:

• An animation, Flying While Fat, was shown at the Bluecoat and Tate Liverpool as part of DaDaFest 2016 International festival and is and now available online.
  
  
• A public talk and discussion about the findings from the project and the relationship between the accessibility of air travel for fat people and for disabled people at the Unity Theatre, Liverpool as part of DaDaFest 2016 festival. This is part of a larger discussion about the relationship between fat activism and disability activism that also ran at the Unity Theatre.
  
• A Huffington Post article: http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/stacy-bias/equality-in-the-air-what-_b_12838692.html

This initiative is one of a range of projects funded last year through the University of Liverpool’s Knowledge Exchange & Impact (KE&I) Voucher scheme which this year has funded a project working with an artist to address the poor perception of victims of conflict such as refugees.