May 2021

Publication of The Brown Envelope Book, evidencing the brutal welfare system from those with lived experience.

What:  Scores of disabled people who have been brutalised by DWP’s bureaucracy contributed to a new anthology of poetry and prose that describes their ordeals in “graphic and heart-rending detail”. The Brown Envelope Book is co-edited by two disabled writer-activists, and contains more than 200 poems, pieces of prose and short plays, the majority of them written by disabled people who claim benefits.

Why significant: This is the disability arts movement combining with disabled activists to produce powerful art that exposes the “cold-hearted barbarism” of DWP.