The Team – cuckoo's nest books

THE HUMAN TEAM

Project Lead – Dolly Sen

Dolly Sen is a disabled, working-class queer who has a brain of ill-repute that wants to disrupt systems that hurt people, not through trojan horse viruses but

Dolly

with my little ponies on acid with a little sadness in their hearts. Because of this she is a writer, artist, performer and filmmaker. Ten of her books have been published, she has written several chapters for academic publications, penned work for both theatre and film, and their subversive blogs around art, disability and humour for Disability Arts Online have a huge international following. She did some work in mental health archives and found only a small percentage was of the survivor voice so that’s why she started this project. Dolly currently resides in Norwich. She/They.

www.dollysen.com

Editor – Debra Shulkes (1975-2022)

Debra Shulkes was an editor and activist who struggled a bit with bios. She was a trauma survivor and a psych survivor: she could only write this because she’s had the benefit of hearing and reading others’ survival stories. Those stories filled her with words where there had been a hard silence. Debra had been very lucky to have the chance to work on publications for the European Network of Users and Survivors of Psychiatry and the World Network of Users and Survivors of Psychiatry. She had been trained in international human rights frameworks by psych survivors and disabled people. She loved supporting people to take back their experiences and stories from those who have framed and silenced them. She was part of (Re)-Imagining Mental Health Care, a Herstory memoir writing workshop for Mad-identified people. Sadly, during this project, she became unexpectedly ill with cancer and died soon after.

WE MISS HER EVERY DAY

Dolly, Cassie, Debra and Caroline – the last time they were together

Editor – Cassandra Lovelock

Cassandra (Cassie) Lovelock is a Black mixed race, disabled wheelchair user based in London. She is a writer, editor and cholar activist who works, studies and writes words across lived experience of mental health/survivor spaces and mental health policy, unpaid care, disability and race. She is currently based between the London School of Economics and Political Science and Kings College London where she researches unpaid mental health carers place within lived experience narratives and our understanding of psychological distress among people accessing the UK welfare system, respectively. She is very tired. (She/Her/They/Them) @soapsub on instagram and twitter.

Producer – Caroline Cardus

Caroline Cardus is a visual artist and creative producer for disabled artists. She believes it is crucial for disability experiences to be part of mainstream arts culture, not just exist in a discrete, box ticking corner of life. In her art practice, Caroline makes work about the world disabled people live in. Through her work as a producer, she ensures disabled artists have a practical and creative ally to make bigger projects happen.

Caroline likes to work with Dolly because they both share a healthy belief in the power of the absurd – using subversion, mischief, and rage to reset false narratives of limits and disability, shame, and madness.

THE ANIMAL TEAM

This project has been challenging in many ways. Covid, cancer, crappy health and conservative governments. We want to acknowledge the important role our animals have had in our lives.

Sir Scampton OF Scampton Manor or Scamp or Scampi-Woo

Scamp, at first glance, is a dog, but we think he is the love child of an ewok and Chewbacca. He is a mad crip dog who is also a performance artist. Many dogs are jealous of his underbite and his skill in attracting many girlfriends and boyfriends, but he can’t help his charismatic good looks. Pictures of him helped Debra cope with her illness. He sometimes interrupted our Zoom meeting to show us his arse.

Barry the Llama

Barry was a friend of Debra’s. They became friends when Debra gave him some fermented apples where he found his vocation in being a rabble rouser. He often gets into trouble for sheep shagging or biting the bottom of other animals on the farm he lives on. He has many interests: he likes Goth adjacent music, trawling Youtube for bottom-biting for videos, bread rolls, and building a time machine so he can go back and tell Kafka to put more llamas in his books. The main hope he has for the future is to make it over the fence to get to the forbidden pear tree. What he looks for in a partner is someone who stands still. He likes big butts.

The Orange Anarchy Society

Halo and Bella

Caroline’s desire for justice and equality inspired her two orange cats, Halo and Bella, to form The Orange Anarchy Society.

Halo is the quietest member of the Orange Anarchy Society. She knows that when love is shared, things become easier – this has certainly been true in her own life. She guards the spaces she has fought for with determination and is always first in the queue for brushing and extra biscuits. She loves pressing her bum on things, which is an existentialist act in celebration of her extraordinarily freckled bumhole.

Bella, a.k.a Showbiz Bagpuss, is the most rambunctious member of the Orange Anarchy Society. Skilled at finding sleeping spots almost anywhere, Bella is motivated by love but driven by chicken. Like her humans, Bella wants to build a world that suits her attitude and physical form. Bella is the lovechild of Halo and Oscar the Grouch. Consequently, she is beautiful but scruffy, and will eat anything, including on one occasion, a door-to-door canvasser from the Conservative party.