Karen Sheader
Getting Closer To Home

About Getting Closer to Home
A longstanding member of the Disability Arts Movement, Karen started out in music as a singer songwriter, famously with punk outfit The Fugertivs. She is an award winning film director and is part of a team running Shoot Your Mouth Off Films in Hartlepool. Check out and subscribe to their youtube channel and join their 46,500 fans! This commission is a slight departure from songwriting to poetic form, and is an autobiographical narrative poem of Karen's life, not all about her experience as a disabled person, but will look at how disability has altered the course of her life. Getting Closer To Home is intended to be a performance piece. Karen is finally doing a degree in English Literature and Creative Writing, with a view towards writing a memoir. This poem is a way of feeling her way into her memories of significant events in her life.

Exhibition Description and Access
Karen's exhibited pieces comprise an audio recording of her autobiographical poem, Getting Closer to Home, accompanied by a transcript.

Content Awareness
Adult content, contains references to a scene of sexual violence, references to disability discrimination.

For audio version of Getting Closer To Home, play here (6mins)

For the transcript of Getting Closer to Home, click button

Getting Closer To Home by Karen Sheader - TRANSCRIPT

About Karen Sheader
I have been composing and performing disability-related songs, sketches and film scripts for 25 years. Profoundly influenced by the 'old guard' including Ian Stanton and Johnny Crescendo, for a while I found my tribe. Over the past twelve years I've been working for Shoot Your Mouth Off, co-created with my friends Steve Carolan and Derek Mathews, we have built a unique and far-reaching body of video productions with learning disabled actors and crew, with 42,000 subscribers to our YouTube channel! I've continued to write and record songs with the Karen Sheader Band, but for the past few years have felt quite isolated, so it's wonderful to have this opportunity to share work with old and new friends. 

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