Rights Release Info
The National Disability Movement Archive & Collection (NDMAC) collects the ephemera of the UK campaign for disabled rights.
The works we collect remain the commercial copyright of the creators, at all times and in all uses. For many of the works on the website, archival material has been deposited on a CC-BY-NC basis – creative commons by non-commercial.  This is a requirement of our main funders, the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF).
NDMAC does not hold the rights to use any image for commercial purposes. CC-BY-NC means NDMAC and its public audience are free to use and re-use the digitised images across our locations and platforms in order to tell the history of the disability rights movement.
We have rights to copy most of the images on our locations for NDMAC. However, for many images we are showing, the copyright situation is not clear. We decided, after taking legal advice, to include many of those images whose copyright (CC-BY-NC or otherwise) situation is not apparent or held by the Archive and therefore has not been assigned to NDMAC.
We feel the original intention of the creator – that is, the person or people or group who made the original works we have made a digital copy of – was that they would wish their works to be seen as part of the disability rights movement, and not to be lost to history. In this context, we believe the original creator would be unlikely to object to their works being displayed in the collection. Where we know the artist or originator, we have sought to credit them. Where we did not have this information, we have ascribed the image to the depositor or source where we could.
The general principle of NDMAC allowing use of the images within our catalogue is that we believe these images should be free to use within the context of profiling, exhibiting, publishing or otherwise promoting the NDMAC project and our content. However, as this statement makes clear, we do not have any commercial rights and they all rest with the original creators. We have some creative commons rights but not to all our digital files on this website, and we have collected works in the principles that the artists of the Disability Arts Movement wanted their works seen and their contribution to a movement known. Do get in touch if you want to use the assets to profile, exhibit, study or publish about NDMAC.
We have made many efforts to trace copyright owners on those works we have copied that we cannot offer on a CC-BY-NC basis. We will also take down any works when the rights owner requests us to do so. We will add correct titles to any works, change descriptions and add credits if contacted by a copyright owner.
The NDMAC site is non-commercial (not generating any profit). Our organisation is charitable and we have tried to avoid using any copyright material where the owner is likely to be a professional creative such as a photographer. We do not want to get in the way of commercial careers and the need to monetise content they may have. We do not allow use of the material where we do not have the right to do so, beyond viewing the material for personal use.
Under CC-BY-NC, for general use, visitors may use the images and story of NDMAC in the context of ‘fair dealing’. This means using work(s) for the purposes of research for a non-commercial purpose. This does not infringe the copyright of the work provided it is accompanied by a sufficient acknowledgement – unless this acknowledgement is impossible, for reasons of practicability or otherwise. Fair dealing with a work for the purpose of private study does not infringe the work’s copyright.
Copying for more than one person’s personal study use does infringe copyright. In some institutions such as educational establishments, making the works available through dedicated terminals for research or study is allowed. For example, Section 43 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 (CDPA) allows a librarian or archivist to make and supply a copy, unless the copyright owner has prohibited this. And, again, none of this can be conducted for profit.
On crediting images and artists: the images on the NDMAC.org all have the full credits, works and background meta data available, which you can view in the Collection on this website. The catalogue structure is provided by System Simulation and follows museums and archives practices regarding data, author, title and so on. Sometimes, on other locations, we have been unable to attach all such metadata to each image on each location, such as when the BBC profile us. As a policy, however, where we can and have the power and space to enforce, we will always seek to credit the creator, the work title and other metadata. Who made the work and their crediting is very important to NDMAC.
To use and promote the works, put on exhibitions, create talks, show the films, or generally use the NDMAC assets, please do get in touch and we will facilitate your needs in order to get the great heritage story of the Disability Arts Movement out to the wider public, which is of course is our mission.
And finally, a word on Editorial. We have sought to be factually accurate at all times, of course, but sometimes research throws up varying versions of a work, of a person’s career and so on.  Where we are alerted to factual inaccuracy on our part, we will of course make the changes.
