The Future of Inklusion
Two copies of the Inklusion Guide on a grey surface.
The first copy shows the cover: coral, with swathes of white, blue, and yellow across the bottom with Ink splats. The title is in large white letters, with the subheading in small black type below: ‘A kickass guise to making literature events accessible for disabled people’. The logo is top right.
Next to it, a copy of the guide is open to a doublepage spread of the ‘Employ Disabled Staff’ section. There’s a swathe of green top left beneath the title, a white background, text, and stats boxes, alongside some ink swirls and splats.
Greetings from Team Ink!
There’s been a lot going on at Ink HQ the past few weeks and we wanted to update you on where things are at.
Ink Guide: Accessible Versions
Firstly, we’re gradually getting all the different versions of the guide out in the world: we’ve mailed out the limited run print edition, and the beautifully designed accessible pdf can be downloaded from out site.
The Large Print, Easy Read, and Braille are now available, and the BSL videos and audio will be ready soon - keep an eye on our socials (Twitter and Instagram) for updates.
We’re incredibly proud to be at this point – albeit a bit later than we expected – and we’re over the moon to have such a supportive, positive response from organisations and individuals alike. It makes it worth all the graft!
The Future
Three months ago we made the announcement that we would be stepping down after two very full-on years managing the project, and Elspeth Wilson would be taking Inklusion forward. Since then, Elspeth has made the difficult decision to not take on the role, as she needs to concentrate on her health and wellbeing.
We got together to discuss how to proceed, and Julie felt that she could see through the 2025 revision with support from our research partner Cat Mitchell. This future work however requires making a time-consuming arts funding application; which requires further fundraising to pay Julie £1800 for her time on this application (please reach out if you can contribute!).
Julie has wider plans for Ink, however an unexpected loss in her family has meant that she is taking time away for the time being to focus on her wellbeing. She looks forward to partnering with Cat again for the review once the target is reached and she feels ready to pick up the mantle again.
For myself, I’ve decided to step down and concentrate on my creative work. For 2+ years I’ve had to put my creative work aside to concentrate on Inklusion. Because I’m chronically ill, I’m unable to do multiple large projects at once; the most I managed while working on Ink was some editing of my novel HellSans and a brief period of cut up and erasure storytelling. The rest of the time was Ink, admin, and events. It was exhausting and I felt awful not being able to dedicate any time to being creative. Over the past few weeks, things with Inklusion have become less demanding and I’ve been able to do some creative writing: I’ve now completed 50k of a novel and every minute working on it has been a euphoric joy. Time away from writing has at least shown how important it is to me and there’s nothing else I’d rather do.
I’ll be stepping down on Wednesday 31 May (but will pop back briefly to share the launch of the BSL and audio versions when they’re ready) and Ink will go on a temporary hiatus while Julie is on leave.
I’ve learned a lot working on the guide with Julie and the journey has been quite the ride! Massive thanks to all the sponsors, disabled consultants, and others who have supported us over the past couple of years. I’m very proud of what Julie and I have achieved in such a short space of time. But there’s still so much work to be done and I hope the publishing industry, event organisers, and book festivals take on the guide’s advice to make literature events accessible to both authors and audiences. Here’s to good access being the norm!
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