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Draw to Perform Festival
25-26 July 2026
Drawing on Disability
Dream Centre – Chailey Heritage Foundation
Featured Performance Artists:
Connor McCarthy, Laura Greenway, Rachel Gadsden
Matilda Sharpley, Jennifer Light, Ram Samocha, Rebecca Bond
Video Performances by:
Workshops Instructors:
Ram Samocha, Rebecca Bond, Bun Kobayashi, Xan Dye, Michelle Baharier
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Draw to Perform and Chailey Heritage Foundation presented Draw to Perform Festival 2026: Drawing on Disability, a two-day festival celebrating the possibilities of drawing, mark-making, performance, and disability.
The seventh Draw to Perform festival took place on 25-26 July 2026 at the Dream Centre, Chailey Heritage Foundation, bringing together professional disabled artists, young people, members of the Chailey Heritage community, and the public for a weekend of live artistic experiences and creative participation.
The festival placed disability at the centre of Draw to Perform’s ongoing exploration of drawing as a live and performative practice. It celebrated the creativity, innovation, and diverse artistic approaches of disabled artists, while exploring how drawing can be created through movement, sound, technology, adapted tools, the body, and performance.
The first day featured a programme of live drawing performances by professional disabled artists, offering audiences the opportunity to experience drawing as an active and dynamic process. The performances demonstrated a wide range of approaches to mark-making and challenged conventional ideas about how drawing can be made and experienced.
The second day featured three participatory performative drawing workshops led by professional artists. Designed for disabled participants, including wheelchair users and young people with complex disabilities, the workshops encouraged experimentation and creative exploration in an inclusive and supportive environment. Adapted drawing tools and different forms of movement, sound, technology, and mark-making enabled participants to find their own ways of engaging with drawing.
The festival was presented in collaboration with Chailey Heritage Foundation, whose accessible facilities and community provided an important setting for the programme. The partnership reflected a shared commitment to accessibility, inclusion, artistic excellence, and creating opportunities for diverse creative voices.
Drawing on Disability expanded Draw to Perform’s ongoing international programme and marked an important step in developing its engagement with disability arts. The festival demonstrated how drawing can become a space for movement, communication, participation, experimentation, and connection, while opening up new possibilities for performative drawing.
Founded by artist and researcher Ram Samocha, Draw to Perform has been exploring drawing as a live, performative practice since 2013, bringing together artists from different backgrounds to challenge traditional understandings of drawing and expand the possibilities of mark-making through performance and audience engagement.
The 2026 festival was supported by Arts Council England and presented with Chailey Heritage Foundation.
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