Disability, culture and normative environments

Abstract

Swedish disability policy is guided by normative principles such as influence, participation and self determination. One way of practicing the policy is to create social settings conductive to the realisation of the aims and objectives in the law. In this article I discuss the condition, content and ideology of one of those normative environments - theatres with intellectually disabled actors. The empirical data collection is conducted in a fieldwork in a municipality in northern Sweden. I intend to discuss the main findings of this study, where the focus highlights the tension present when arranging artistic motivated activities within the frames of the communal social services. The article is based on a study, fully presented in Holmgren (2001).