‘Documenting Failure’ takes its name from a quote from Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha's book Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice, that clearly outlines that a success rooted in Disability Justice often looks like mainstream failure. It invites artists from across the UK and beyond to reframe such failures on their own terms, and in so doing move towards new models of success, access and sustainability.

The roots from which Documenting Failure grew from were laid down in 2025, when the Selina Thompson Ltd team were part of Culture Central's Radical Listening Week. Exploring key themes from the Charter for Equity research by Dr. Lucy Lopez, we hosted a lunchtime podcast on Equity & Intersectionality - talking about the layered realities of identity, failure, and the learnings our disability frameworks and experiments in ‘different’ can teach us. This initial conversation became the pilot for Documenting Failure.

Selina Thomposon Ltd is an interdisciplinary performance and visual arts organisation based in Birmingham, UK.

Our practice is primarily intimate, political and participatory, with a strong standard of public engagement and investigation. We make joyous, highly visual work that seeks to connect to those often marginalised by the arts.

Our work has been presented in a range of contexts, all over the world. From pubs, clubs and toilets, to the National Theatre Studio and the British Council Showcase, amongst other divers venues.

In 2023, STL joined Arts Council England’s National Portfolio for the first time.