Arts Thread

Ripple Effect is a multimedia project that looks at the positive impact that meaningful employment has on people with intellectual and/or developmental disabilities (IDD) and the community surrounding them. The project consists of a portrait series of people with IDD who have careers – some upwards of 25 years, a film that follows the work and home life of Max – a man with IDD who has worked at a church for 17 years, and an article that provides insight into the issues affecting this population. "But sooner or later, even a body that seemed so beautiful, so serviceable, would give way. The disabled (no word is truly fit or sufficient to define them) are a hidden majority: in spite of the machines and drugs and prosthetics attempting to prove death doesn't exist, nearly all of us, over time, will lose a superpower, sight, or an arm, or our memory. The inability to do things we should be able to do, the impossibility of seeing, hearing, remembering, walking – these aren't the exception, they're the destination. Sooner or later, we all become disabled." -Claudia Durastanti, translated from Italian by Elizabeth Harris