MRI, by Graham Naylor, showing as part of an exhibition by brain injury survivors (credit: Headway east London)Artist Jon Barry’s work, Lady in Green, in progress.Birds, by Laura Wood
While many of the creatives have had solo exhibitions since joining the project, this is the first time they are showing work that outlines how their experiences, including recovery, have influenced their art. The show asks visitors to consider the question “how far can one life-changing incident be seen in the artistic work you create?”.
In a related event this Saturday, the collective, which began 10 years ago, is involved in an free art workshop at London’s Southbank Centre. The event involves the artists encouraging the public to participate in on the theme of “what love means to you” with contributions acting as the basis for a collaborative piece at the Submit to Love studio. The workshop takes place in the Clore Ballroom at Royal Festival Hall on Saturday 11am – 2pm and is recommended for ages six upwards.
Freckle Face, by Chippy AitonElvis in London, by Cecil WaldronCreature, by Ad
According to Headway, survivors of brain injury are often excluded from society, have lost skills, occupations and cannot communicate as they used to; art is an outlet for communication and self-expression. The charity is keen to reposition art from a simple rehabilitation activity to “both a vocation and passion project”.
Three Chicks Going to a Do, by Tony Allen
* The exhibition, sponsored by Hyphen Law, is open 9am-6pm (Mon-Sat) and 09.30am–2pm (Sun) until Tuesday 23 February 2017 and entry is free. Venue: Stratford Circus Arts Centre, Theatre Square, London E15
Two characters in a scene from pop-up street show The Loneliness Street Cabaret.
Are you too busy with tech to talk? How well do you know your older neighbours? Do you think your local community involves everyone in it?
A pop-up street theatre performance this week will focus on the epidemic of loneliness and the growing isolation of older people, as I explain on the Guardian website today.
A young audience member gets involved in a recent performance of the Loneliness Street Cabaret.
The theatre performance, which takes place in different public spaces across the south London borough, is inspired by the fact that loneliness is increasing at a time when our our cities are becoming ever more crowded. The show has been developed using anecdotes, opinions and experiences of older people in south London.
A character is chastised in the Loneliness Street Cabaret for being too distracted by his phone to interact with people.
The shows are performed in public spaces, from outside tube stations to public squares, in the hope that the shared experience of performance will spark the audience to have conversations and take action based on the show’s themes. Osborne says the aim is to provoke people to consider the issues highlighted by the performance: “It’s about your local community and how you fit within it,” says creative producer Chloe Osborne, “but also about what your responsibility is for ensuring that others belong in it too.”
Laura’s piece, Post Party, is one of 1,240 chosen from 12,000 submissions and the original was snapped up by a buyer on the second private viewing day.
Having her submission chosen for the annual show, says Laura, who has a learning disability, has made her feel “equal”. She adds that it was a “massive goal” to be accepted for the exhibition but that she was also “scared, excited, amazed”.
Laura explains what she enjoys about her work: “l lose my difficulties in the moment of creating. I feel from finding life difficult, it becomes clearer. As l make decisions in my drawing l just feel my way through and fill it with colour and drawing .
Although Laura’s artistic work was not one of our interview topics, we chatted afterwards about her art studies, progress and plans. I remember Laura explaining how important the creative process was to her and how important it was for her to develop and succeed. Three years on, she is fulfilling her ambitions by being accepted for the Royal Academy event; it is the biggest open art exhibitions in the UK and has taken place every year since 1769.
Laura says of making art: “l lose my difficulties in the moment of creating. I feel from finding life difficult it becomes clearer. As l make decisions in my drawing, l just feel my way through and fill it with colour and drawing.”
This is Laura’s artist statement: “I tend to notice social interaction. People’s characteristics are often displayed externally. As I draw following the line I somehow see inside as well as outside and clothing adds its own story. I draw to enjoy and convey something of the often, quirky nature of how I see and to provide a wry smile. I invent using colour and line and I am experimental in the way I use line and create structure. I choose different paper surfaces to do this.”
And here are some more examples of Laura’s work:
Two people, by Laura BroughtonCouple in London, by Laura BroughtonPeople walking, by Laura Broughton
* Laura can be contacted on laurabroughtonartist@live.com
The website laurabroughtonartist.weebly.com shows some of Laura’s earlier work and will be updated with more current work in coming weeks.
Kay Alston’s campaign for London’s first sensory bus was inspired by her use of sensory books (photo: Kay Alston/Outward)
Responding to a lack of relaxing, interactive spaces for disabled people, Londoner Kay Alston has decided to launch her own campaign for the capital’s first ever sensory bus.
The 32-year-old, who has moderate learning disabilities, is backed in her social enterprise project to create a mobile sensory room by Outward, the care and support charity that runs her supported living in Camden, north London.
Kay needs to raise £28,245 towards creating the project. A sensory room is a relaxing environment designed to focus on specific senses through special objects, and sound and visual effects. It enables people to interact with, and control the environment around them and is particularly beneficial for people with sensory impairments, complex needs and those with autism.
Kay Alston in her sensory room at home in London.
The idea is that people would pay a minimal fee to use the bus, with the money being reinvested into the social enterprise. The accessible vehicle would include elements like interactive carpets, star ceiling and LED Projectors.
Here, Kay explains why her project is so vital:
“Someone once said that sensory rooms have effects of taking medication without taking the medication. The room would be a stimulating place for people, and it could help to reduce anxiety and stress, and help to improve their concentration. People with disabilities should come to sensory rooms because it’s fun and fascinating.
“The sensory room on a bus will be an interactive and a calming environment. It will have an interactive floor, platform swing, bubble tubes and light projectors with music playing in the background too. The bus will be accessible to wheelchair users. It’s purpose would be to calm and stimulate people, by giving them an interactive and visually stimulating environment.
My idea was inspired by the Autism Show. I went to in 2014 where I got a sensory tactile book, and I have been to other sensory rooms and they’re lots of fun. I have been to day centres and nursing homes where people with high needs simply get parked on the side and have nothing to do. Outward was running a Dragon’s Den competition and staff who already knew of my idea encouraged me to enter. Outward invested in my idea and said they will help me set it up. Outward staff spoke to me about the online fundraising campaign, and helped put it online and I handed out over 100 leaflets to places I shop in, people I know and places where I use their services. It’s also nice to be a little famous.
I hope the bus will be a fun and interactive place for people to learn new things. People with high needs find it difficult to get out, and can’t easily go to a place like a sensory room. Everyone can do what they want and behave in a way where they won’t be judged, sometimes I walk along the street and laugh and people look at me funny and it makes me think I want more control. In a sensory bus I could have more control.
I want to run it through a social enterprise to make it bigger and better, to add new inventions and more equipment to use. The bus will drive around to different places to give more people a chance to experience and use it.
There isn’t a sensory bus in London, and there aren’t many sensory rooms in London. The sensory rooms in London aren’t properly maintained, so I have only been to sensory rooms outside of London. But some people can’t travel that far or outside of London, so a sensory bus would make it easier by going to them. People haven’t thought of a sensory room in London to be on a bus, and there isn’t a sensory room with an interactive floor.
The most difficult thing so far has been getting enough people to pledge as I don’t have many connections. But it is a unique idea because there isn’t a sensory bus in London. If we could make this happen it would be a great achievement for me and would help lots of people in London.”
Nuno Sabroso & Daniele Oliveira, who compete internationally together, will perform at the WDSA event on Saturday.
The Wheelchair Dance Sport Association (WDSA) celebrates its 10th anniversary on Saturday with a gala event at the Stratford Circus Arts Theatre. “Everyone can dance” is the charity’s motto and the gallery of images here reflects the organisation’s work with the dance sector and disabled people to enable everyone to dance, from beginner to elite level.
Dance, says WDSA patron Rashmi Becker, has no boundaries: “It is for everyone and can be enjoyed anywhere….Dance can make us think, smile, relate to one another, it can be a positive motivating force and simply, it is good for our well-being.”
All photos: WDSA
For more information, watch the short film Motion, recently commissioned by WDSA:
Redstart Arts weatherSCAPE project is on display in south London this week (all photos: Redstart Arts/Sinead Kempley)
Clouds suspended from the ceiling and lighting bolt sculptures form part of a new installation from a London-based inclusive art collective.
Redstart Arts: stencilling work in preparation for the exhibition (all photos: Redstart)
Redstart Arts, a collaborative group of artists with learning disabilities, have been developing weatherSCAPE for several months and the works are now open for public view, coinciding with Learning Disability Week.
The aim of Redstart is to encourage its members’ creativity, critical thinking and also to challenge public preconceptions about artists with learning disabilities. The artists do this through producing high quality pieces of art for public exhibition and by using community arts venues to create the works.
Artist Colleen Campbell says she enjoys “drawing on big paper, being with my friends”. For fellow Redstart member Uduehi Imienwarin, it is “using the stencil to make the weather words” that is particularly interesting. Byron McCarthy, meanwhile, says he loves the “purple lightning” and, referring to the research behind the installation, “books on weather”.
Another participant, David Quan, has no speech but likes to do printing using bubble wrap. Gerard Allen is similarly non-verbal, but Cash Aspeek, an inclusive arts specialist who launched the group in 2011, says that his mood and behaviours reflect that he is especially taken by the opportunity to perform with the Redstart group “whenever the opportunity arises”.
Drawing and detailing at Redstart Arts
Redstart Arts has a residency at the Deptford Lounge and the Horniman Museum. The group meets weekly and involves up to 10 artists with learning disabilities aged 25 to 29 who collaborate with other artists. For example, local artist Chris Marshall has worked with the group on the weather project, which was mostly funded by the Arts Council.
Sculpture produced for weatherSCAPE by Redstart Arts
Cash and Chris say the inspiration for “came from the artists in the 6o’s who worked with inflatables and free form events, breaking barriers in terms of art being inclusive, including people and communities”…Redstart Arts have responded to the environment of the Deptford Lounge, they discovered the atrium space at the back of the building and got excited by its height and drama…[and wished] to explore this space to its fullest potential creating floating free forms derived out of our discussions and observations of our local dramatic weather.”
Cash explains how the project is led by the people involved: “They come in with ideas; we have a lot of art materials available and such a lot of room for each artist to express themselves in a way they really want. We do a lot of experimenting with materials and then seeing what people are drawn to, really observing what each person leans towards.”
In 2012, the artists created figures for the Olympics which were displayed on the rooftop of ATP gallery in Deptford. The collective’s next project involves creating discovery boxes – participants’ personal box of made objects for public display – for the Horniman Museum.
* weatherSCAPE can be seen 10am-5pm from Wednesday 22 June to Sunday 3 July at the Atrium, Deptford Lounge, Deptford SE8 4RJ
As Ruth Gould, the artistic director of the UK’s biggest disability arts event, DaDaFest, pointed out in an interview I did with her for the Guardian, the latest cuts threaten to make disabled people “more invisible”. The work of disabled artists, as she says, is also at risk, thanks to sharp reductions in funding from local authorities and Arts Council England (Ace).
In 2001, Gould organised a one-off community arts event for Liverpool city council to mark International Disabled Peoples’ Day. As the head of the North West Disability Arts Forum (NWDAF), Gould, who is deaf, argued a single day was inadequate, and designed a groundbreaking week-long festival.
Fifteen years on, DaDaFest is the UK’s biggest disability arts event and Gould its artistic director. The NWDAF eventually adopted the name of the jewel in its crown (“DaDa” refers to the initial letters of each word in the phrase “disability and deaf arts”), so DaDaFest refers to both the festival and its parent charity. Each biennial extravaganza draws 10,000 visitors and participants. It has launched the careers of comedian Laurence Clark and actor Liz Carr, and helped Liverpool win European Capital of Culture 2008.
Last week, as something of a curtain raiser to 2016’s two-week festival in November, DaDaFest held a seminar on the barriers to disability arts for black and minority ethnic people (BME). The awareness raising event complemented DaDaFest’s play, Unsung, recently performed at the Everyman theatre, based on the life of 18th century blind Liverpool poet, abolitionist and disability rights pioneer Edward Rushton.
Gould commends the Arts Council’s Creative Case for Diversity, launched in 2014 to encourage more BME, deaf and disabled people into arts, but fears such efforts are a drop in the ocean. She explains: “We don’t have the disabled people who put people on the stage – the producers, the casting directors, curators, decision makers.” She adds of DaDaFest’s recent BME seminar: “We tried to attract those we see as gatekeepers…[to] look at the barriers and issues and use them to try and influence change by identifying benchmarks that we can reflect onto to see if change if happening.”
Nathan Bessell rehearsing for Up Down Man at the Salisbury Playhouse. Pic: Laura Jane Dale
“I always wanted it to be about dance, drama, feelings”, said actor Nathan Bessell recently of the new play he has inspired and collaborated on.
The 31-year-old stars in Up Down Man, at the Salisbury Playhouse until March 12. The play, as I explain in this piece on the Guardian’s social care network today, is about Matty, a young adult with Down’s syndrome. Bessell, who plays Matty, has influenced the script, which also draws on stories from families of people who have a learning disability.
Nathan Bessell and Heather Williams in Up Down Man. Pic: Richard Davenport
To explore the issues raised, there will be three discussion forums for professionals in health or social care, theatre managers and families, with the first of these happening this weekend.
The show, by Bristol-based Myrtle Theatre Company, involves dialogue, original music and dance, and is a sequel to the company’s Up Down Boy, which I featured on the blog some time ago. The original play, also starting Bessell and written by his mother, Sue Shields, was performed in 2013 at the National Theatre and toured the country. The sequel, written by Brendan Murray, is not autobiographical, but follows the same character into adulthood and is presented from his perspective.
The two years of research and development involved in the new play currently running at the Salisbury Playhouse Murray involved the views and experiences of families and carers, with the process tailored to enable Bessell, who has limited vocabulary and a hearing impairment, to contribute.
Heather Williams, the artistic director of the Mytrle Theatre Company, has known Bessell since she began working with him when he was 16. Williams
Williams says her fellow actor’s influence has led to a more thoughtful, and gradual method of making theatre. However, as she stresses in today’s piece, the aim is also to produce a high quality piece of entertainment: “I hope people won’t think, ‘I’m going to see an issue-based play’, but come and see a damn good piece of theatre that changes the way they think.”
Nathan Bessell and Vic Llewellyn in rehearsals for Up Down Man. Pic: Laura Jane Dale
An inclusive ballet session at ballet school Flamingo Chicks (photo: Flamingo Chicks)
A Bristol-based dance project is spreading its inclusive arts campaign, training teachers to run ballet sessions for disabled children and their non-disabled counterparts.
UK-based Flamingo Chicks dance school ran pilot sessions in Ghana earlier this month (photo: Flamingo Chicks)
My piece on the Flamingo Chicks dance school, which launched two years ago as a community interest company, is on the Guardian site today. Its weekly classes in Bristol, Leeds, York and London reach 1200 three to 19-year-olds with or without disabilities, and those with illnesses such as cancer. Classes offer access to mainstream dance activity (often, such classes are segregated), develop confidence, social skills, co-ordination, communication and concentration.
Now, the sessions are launching in Ghana – dubbed “the worst place in the world to be disabled” – sessions reaching 200 children and training 10 teachers to put on classes. Founder Katie Sparkes has contacts in Africa thanks to her work supporting charities with corporate social responsibility.
A pilot dance session in Ghana (photo: Flamingo Chicks)
Sparkes says of the work in Ghana earlier this month: “We did lots of workshops with children aged two to 25 and also did a teachers’ training session where teachers and childcare workers from a variety of schools and orgs attended. We left them with lesson plans, equipment and a host of ideas. We’ve also set up an online ‘Global Chicks’ group where we can provide on-going outreach support. Any questions, ideas or motivation they need, our teachers will respond and coach them, also providing video tips or tutorials.”
Ballet, with its discipline and formal image, might not seem an obviously accessible art form, but Sparkes says it can improve body awareness, muscle strength and core stability. Its storytelling aspects and focus on character are also accessible.
Dance school Flamingo Chicks runs inclusive ballet classes for children of all abilities.
The school has eight teachers who focus on trips and performances as goals and benchmarks, instead of exams. The 45-minute or hour-long sessions include drama, dance and yoga using sensory equipment like feathers, dance ribbons, scarves and flashcards for deaf children, or hula-hoops to teach arm movements to a blind child. The relaxed atmosphere means children may wander around or makes noises without fear of flouting any rules.
There are an estimated 770,000 children with disabilities in the UK. Three quarters of families with disabled children feel so isolated that it has caused anxiety, depression and breakdown, according to charity Contact A Family. Four in ten (38%) parents of disabled children say their child ‘rarely’ or ‘never’ have the opportunity to socialise with children who aren’t disabled, according to a 2014 Mumsnet and Scope survey.
Working with memory triggers in a reminiscence arts session (photograph: Age Exchange)
By 2025 there will be one million people with dementia in the UK, according to the Alzheimer’s Society; a project I reported on today for the Guardian online is proving the impact of arts-based therapy on people with the condition.
Take Eddie (not his real name). When he first met arts practitioner Jill, from London-based arts group Age Exchange, he was withdrawn and uncommunicative.
Eyes downcast, head bowed, hands clasped and legs crossed; Eddie, an introverted wheelchair user, had been in a dementia care home for a decade when he began sessions Jill.
Over six weekly reminiscence arts sessions – work that explores memories using creative activity – Jill noticed how Eddie became “awake, sitting upright in his wheelchair, trying to talk, being better at regulating his mood and behaviour … He felt safe enough to allow himself to express some of these stored up energies and feelings through movement and making sounds which freed him and allowed him to start opening up and connecting with people.”
A simple gesture after the final session – previously unimaginable – reflected the transformation. Jill recalls: “I was very touched as we said goodbye; he extended his right hand towards me, I took it and we shook hands.”
