US & THEM
Freewheelers Theatre & Media awarded £132,000 from National Heritage Lottery Fund for ground-breaking disability history project Us & Them
Freewheelers Theatre & Media Ltd, a company of creative disabled people based in Leatherhead, Surrey, has been awarded £132,000 by the National Lottery Heritage Fund to deliver Us & Them — a pioneering project exploring the history of disabled people in Surrey’s mental health hospitals between 1850 and 1920.
Us & Them will be delivered in partnership with photographer Emma Brown, On the Record, the Surrey History Centre and Kings College London.
Through this funding, Freewheelers will investigate and interpret the stories of people who, in another time, ‘could have been us’. Using original medical portrait photographs and records held at Surrey History Centre, the project will explore the lives of patients with conditions such as epilepsy and learning disabilities — people whose voices were rarely heard.
With our company members at the heart of the process, Us & Them will bring these hidden histories to light through:
A highly accessible touring exhibition, reaching over 31,000 people
A film documenting the project and its discoveries
Oral histories, sharing lived experiences of disability today
A publication, reframing perceptions of disabled people past and present
Central to the exhibition will be newly created wet-collodion portraits of Freewheelers members, made using the same photographic techniques used to capture the original patients. Exhibited side by side, these images will draw powerful parallels between us and them, challenging how disability was — and is — perceived.
“Thanks to the support of the National Lottery Heritage Fund and working closely with our project partners we can tell these stories in our own voices. This project allows us to connect with people like us from the past, and to share their lives in ways that make audiences see disability differently.”
Us & Them will launch in November 2025 with its first exhibition at Horton Arts in 2026, before moving on to Kings College London’s Curiosity Cabinet in The Strand.
HRH ROYAL VISIT
We were excited to welcome His Royal Highness, The Duke Of Edinburgh to Freewheelers on Wednesday 6th March 2024.
As part of The Duke of Edinburgh’s big birthday week celebrations, His Royal Highness joined The Lord Lieutenant, Michael More-Molyneux, and representatives from the Orpheus Centre, Bloomin Arts and DAiSY (Disability Arts in Surrey) at our new home, The Light House Parish Church Hall.
During the visit The Duke and guests were invited to view a display of tintype photographic portrait prints recently created with photographer Emma Brown as part of a project called Us & Them. Eight Freewheeler artists who, with support from Surrey History Centre’s Julian Pooley and Dr Alana Harris from UCL, researched nineteenth-century wet-plate collodion photographs and glass-plate negatives that were originally generated in Surrey’s psychiatric (and learning disability) institutions. By re-staging and provocatively ‘pairing’ portrait images of Freewheeler company members with the original Victorian photographs, these heritage objects are re-purposed for stigma-dispelling and restorative justice purposes and celebrate our experiences and agency in making and sharing art.
The Duke was invited to take part in a puppet making session by company member Nick Russell based on a Surrey Hills Arts community celebration hosted by the National Trust. Next it was across the road to the beautiful 1,000-year-old parish church, to join a music workshop, which in based on the use of modern iPad technology enabling Freewheeler wheelchair users to create and compose their own music and soundscapes. Following on from the music workshop, The Duke was invited forward to the front of the church by Abi Williams, a member of the Freewheeler dance company to join the Wonderdusk murmuration dance.
All our guests followed by a rousing rendition of happy birthday to The Duke, ahead of his 60th birthday on Sunday 10th of March.
We would like to thank His Royal Highness, The Duke Of Edinburgh for taking the time to join us, sharing his birthday celebrations.
