Crippen's Cartoon Resurrection Project

My name is Dave Lupton, although I’m better known throughout the disability world as Crippen – disabled cartoonist.

It was recently pointed out to me that my cartoons provide one of the most comprehensive records of the past 40 years of the disabled people’s movement in the UK. These cartoons cover, amongst other events the early demonstrations and accessible transport protests of the 1980’s and 1990’s as well as the political shenanigans of the governments of the time and the rise and fall of the Disability Discrimination Act and other legislation.

Because many of these early cartoons were created for early printed publications, they were produced in a greyscale format. Unfortunately, when attempting to use this online, there is often no clear definition between shaded areas of the cartoon and they become inaccessible.

Ideally, these all need to be reworked in order that they can be made accessible to a modern online audience. This will involve redrawing most of the cartoons created in the late 1980’s and reworking the later ones, replacing colour palettes, replacing inaccessible text etc. If I put all of my other work on hold, I estimate that it will take me some 900 hours to work on some 600 cartoons.

Obviously, when I’m doing this I’m not earning and will therefore have to look for funding to keep the wolves from the door. I’ve set up this gofundme page so that people can help towards supporting me whilst I complete this body of work.