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Listen to my World is born out of an interest in listening to stories less often told, and the belief that these stories matter. But what is more, that they may show us different ways of thinking about ourselves and the world, and how we might change the structures that permeate society and privilege only the very few.

Listen to my World reflects on what it is that makes us feel included or excluded from a place or space, and proposes that listening to each other’s experiences of these spaces and places could afford us a way to be more empathetic and generous toward each other.

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This art project proposes that listening to each other’s experiences of spaces and places could afford us a way to be more empathetic and generous towards each other and our environment – especially when we might hear that we have more in common and are more dependent on each other than we are often led […]

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Social model of disability

Next to being embedded in dominant mobility discourses, I feel that accessibility and spatial reasonable accommodation have been approached from strong problem-solving perspectives in our culture. These have been inspired by the ‘social model of disability’ which has considerably won ground since the 1960s and which assumes that people are disabled by barriers in society, […]

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Western Societies

In Western societies, a wheelchair is considered a significant symbol of physical disability. In my opinion, in discussions about space and accessibility, it too quickly or too easily becomes a pars pro toto (a part or aspect of something taken as representative of the whole) for it.  Categories of types of wheelchairs – such as […]

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Razane vertelt door middel van ‘de hand’ methodiek wie ze is en hoe ze in het leven staat.

NL ———————————————————————————————————————————————————— Ringvinger: ‘Waaraan ben ik trouw?’ Mijn moeder Ik ben trouw aan mijn moeder, ze inspireert mij. Ik hou van haar maar wil niet zoals haar worden. Ze heeft al te veel moeten opofferen in haar leven. Ik wil sterk en zelfstandig worden en zal mij niet laten doen. Ik wil zelfredzamer worden dan […]

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I have a love-hate relationship with wheelchairs.

In the following anecdote, I share with you why I have a love-hate relationship with wheelchairs, and their ability to make me feel both excluded and included in a space. I have a love-hate relationship with wheelchairs. On the one hand I hate wheelchairs, because they confront me with the unusualness of my body when […]

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Here is a glance at my historical research:

These pictures show assistive devices for shoemaking and tailoring that were designed at the Belgian re-educational institute at Port-Villez, Northern France, for disabled Great War soldiers. For some apprentices, the traditional positions of these trades provoked great fatigue and soreness, even with the support of prosthetics or orthotics. The experiences of several Belgian soldiers who […]

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Marisa De Picker

I am a 30-year-old Belgian PhD student and I follow a part-time doctoral programme. I have cerebral palsy (CP). From head to toe, my muscles are spastic and weakened, causing daily difficulties, tiredness and pain. While CP predominantly causes visible movement symptoms, in my case it is a visible and invisible illness, making it difficult […]

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The last station

It was my mission to find a new home, the place that I wanted to be my home, and it is the country that I ended up in, Denmark. The lovely place with all the great and open opportunities to start again, to gain my wasted life, to build up a life that I dreamed […]

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Sounds and Colours

Once I was thinking that before humanity discovered sound, where was it? How was it found? I was with my music student, and I started to imagine a story about how or where sound started, that a small girl decided to start a journey to search for sound. And through her trip she meets all […]

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Music Island

Music was always my free zone or the only place in the world that I can be whoever I want to be, but in time passing and after a few horrible years through the war in my homeland, the music saved my life and gave me a reason to start again after a hard crash. […]

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Deep below

The future is always a concern for a refugee. I moved to Aarhus, my lovely city now, where I got so many amazing things that made my life happier and full of colours. That doesn’t mean that Copenhagen is not lovely, but it was something different. Anyway, I started to feel home in this city’s […]

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