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Short abstract:

Life stories for human rights are lived and told by people with disabilities who have spent their lives in total institutions. By their retelling and by sharing uncertainties about how to re-tell them we want to broaden the space for shared memories and response-abilities.

Long abstract:

Life stories for human rights (www.zivotnipribehy.com) are stories lived, told and spread by and with people with disabilities, who have spent big part of their lives in total institutions. Among the rights which are denied to people using the services of the total institutions, the right to own one’s life story and to share it with others plays an important role. Our project offers people with disabilities an opportunity to form a research group together with academics, students, journalists, musicians and artists and to introduce their experiences and standpoints into the expert and public discourses. The outputs of the joint research will be utilised for creating a monograph and academic articles, as well as academic courses and a a lifelong learning course for social workers. Readers and listeners of accessible materials about human rights issues – of the graphic novel, the podcasts and the web page – will enjoy the opportunity to read, hear and see life stories which have never before influenced the public debate. By their retelling, and by sharing uncertainties about how to re-tell them best, we want to broaden the space of shared memories, response-abilities and speculations. Together, we will create discursive and political spaces favourable for exploring better versions of cohabitation, as well as point to concrete ways of breaking the silence engulfing lives of people with disabilities.