Cùran is still hard at work building the Unseen Barriers website. Some sections may be missing or unfinished while the site is under construction, thank you for your patience!
We have big plans. From festivals to storybooks to plushies that save lives, our work is just beginning. These are the initiatives we are building, together.
Festival Outreach 2026
Our Year of Disruption Pilot Tour will target Download, Bloodstock, Slam Dunk, and 2000 Trees. At each, we’ll offer distress-informed support, on-site training, and presence that says — we see you. We hear you.
Cùran Merchandise & Storybooks
Every plush, badge, and book is a vessel for belonging. Profits fund our direct work. Visibility spreads our message. Kids, teens, adults — everyone deserves to feel part of something.
Training & Advocacy
We’re developing a CPD-accredited training programme built on the Unseen Barriers Framework. It will be delivered to festivals, venues, local authorities and organisations who are ready to listen, and change.
Safeguarding & Signalling
Our hidden key tag system will provide a discreet way for individuals in unsafe situations to signal for help. More than access. Protection.
Full Version
The Unseen Barriers Foundation exists to take theory into practice. Our projects are how the Unseen Barriers Framework moves off the page and into the world. Each project is rooted in lived experience, guided by disabled leadership, and shaped by the needs of those who have been overlooked for too long.
We do not replicate what others are already doing. We exist to name and address what no one else has.
The original Unseen Barriers Framework was developed by our founder, Shaun Gray, as part of postgraduate research on food insecurity and disabled people’s access to support services. What began as an academic investigation quickly revealed a much wider systemic failure, the sheer number of disabled people who are excluded not by location, funding or eligibility, but by unrecognised forms of distress. Shaun named these ‘distress-based barriers’, codified them into four categories, and formalised the model as an original theoretical contribution to Disability Studies.
The framework was released as a public working paper in 2025. But naming the barriers wasn’t enough. We needed a way to dismantle them.
This is where the Foundation comes in. We exist to operationalise the framework, to design and deliver practical, strategic, and emotionally literate interventions based on what the framework makes visible.
Our Core Projects
We have identified six priority project streams, each tied directly to one or more barriers in the framework. Each project is deliberately designed to disrupt systems of invisibility and distress while embedding rights-based solutions that start from the individual and scale upwards.
1. Event Disruption and Training
We are building a national festival and venue training model focused on distress-based accessibility. We pilot this through our ‘Year of Disruption’ tour, a 12-month cycle of direct engagement with music festivals, community events, and public venues. We are also introducing our Unseen Barriers Champions model, trained staff embedded across events to support attendees experiencing distress-based exclusion.
2. Distress Education and Children’s Work
Cùran is not just a plush toy. They are the voice of distress literacy. Our education work includes the development of CPD-accredited training on distress awareness and trauma-informed communication, along with the production of a child-appropriate storybook titled Cùran Doesn’t Like Secrets. This project includes narrative resources, voicebank development, and animated materials voiced by a child who himself lives within a home affected by CPTSD and neurodivergence.
3. Pay-It-Forward Programme
At the heart of our values is the belief that support should be freely given, not conditionally earned. Our pay-it-forward scheme allows backers and donors to sponsor plushies, badges, or materials for others who need them. Sponsored recipients receive no obligation, no guilt, and no qualifying test. Just one message: Cùran knows the world is better with you in it.
4. Safeguarding and Symbolic Tools
Our plush design includes discreet tags, hidden pockets, and emergency contact mechanisms. These are not gimmicks. They are lifelines. A detachable keyring tag that quietly says If you are given this tag, contact the Foundation can be the difference between silence and safety. This project is led by lived experience, not hypothetical scenarios.
5. Digital Barriers and Communication Distress
We are developing systems that allow users to explain missed appointments, shut-downs, or access failures without shame or fear of penalty. These systems are trauma-informed, optional, and do not rely on bureaucratic literacy. We reject the status quo that says we will make you so embarrassed you never ask for anything again. Instead, we build systems that ask What happened? And how can we help?
6. Research Continuation and Barrier-Specific Work
We will continue developing Shaun’s original research through stand-alone academic and applied projects focused on individual barrier categories. For example, the next formal research paper will focus on Scent Distress, one of the least understood but most widely experienced barriers among neurodivergent and trauma-affected communities. Each future study will reinforce the framework, strengthen its legitimacy, and inform our applied work.
In Development
- A distress-aware plush mascot costume for in-person events and safeguarding presence
- A 3D animated series featuring Cùran and companions representing each unseen barrier
- Training packages and licensing tools for schools, councils, and mental health providers
- A Cùran-led podcast platform centring survivor narratives and youth-led distress storytelling
None of this is performative. All of it is built from what we live.
We aren’t here to fix people. We are here to fix the systems that forgot they mattered.
And we are just getting started.