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Inclusive arts practice and research: A critical manifesto
Abstract
Inclusive Arts Practice and Research interrogates an exciting and newly emergent field: the creative collaborations between learning-disabled and non-learning-disabled artists which are increasingly taking place in performance and the visual arts. In Inclusive Arts Practice Alice Fox and Hannah Macpherson interview artists, curators and key practitioners in the UK and US. The authors introduce and articulate this new practice, and situate it in relation to associated approaches. Fox and Macpherson candidly describe the tensions and difficulties involved too, and explore how the work sits within contemporary art and critical theory. The book inhabits the philosophy of Inclusive Arts practice: with Jo Offer, Alice Fox and Kelvin Burke making up the design team behind the striking look of the book. The book also includes essays and illustrated statements, and has over 100 full-colour images. Inclusive Arts Practice represents a landmark publication in an emerging field of creative practice across all the arts. It presents a radical call for collaboration on equal terms and will be an invaluable resource for anyone studying, researching or already working within this dynamic new territory.
Supplementary resource (1)
... In order for collaborative research to occur, another critical component within disability studies involves the building of trust between researchers and participants with disabilities. Fox and Macpherson (2015) described trust as something not to be rushed because researchers and participants need time to listen and respond to one another. In cases where participants are asked to reflect on their experiences, time is also necessary for the creative process to develop and for meaningful creative self-expression to blossom. ...
... Such inclusive experiences would provide the opportunity for these individuals to be involved in positive recreational activities and to interact with their peers in educational, social settings. Beyond beneficial programs, museums can also create partnerships with researchers focused on disability studies in order to challenge and change the perceptions of marginalized and underrepresented groups (Fox & Macpherson, 2015). ...
... One of these organizations, the Rocket Artists in the United Kingdom, focuses on a group of artists with learning and developmental disabilities who make visual and performance art with a community of supporting figures. Since 2004, the Rocket Artists has been an innovative model for inclusive learning and art-making for individuals with disabilities (Fox & Macpherson, 2015). ...
Many museums have been critically characterized as elitist institutions that offer few inclusive services to meet the needs and interests of marginalized populations and communities (Hill, 2016; Sandell & Nightingale, 2013). Some museums, however, are turning to visitor-centered approaches that refocus their efforts to concentrate on the needs and interests of visitors instead of the objects on display (Love & Boda, 2017; Weil, 1999). One population often still overlooked by museums are adult visitors with developmental disabilities, thus the need for increased museum programming. This work represents a literature review that begins with a close examination of conceptual frameworks provided by disability studies, followed by how disability studies relates to art education and inclusive art-making for individuals with developmental disabilities. Next, the review presents an overview of literature related to developmental disabilities, with a specific focus on adults with developmental disabilities and recreational options available to them. Finally, the literature review delves into the museum experience and visitor-centered museum education. By blending best practices in disability studies, art education, and museum education, museums are primed to create needed inclusive programming and connect with new audiences.
... In focus is practice at module level on a pioneering Inclusive Arts Practice (IAP) Masters, and Arts practices currently underutilised in student-staff partnership literature, particularly the emerging concept of 'expanded listening' (Fox & Macpherson, 2015). On an IAP module, learning was facilitated at Tate Modern through a series of public talks, dialogue with the public, arts-based activities responding to collections and gallery space, individual and group reflections and a peer-assessed research poster. ...
... IAP is used across educational, healthcare, arts-based or community settings to enhance communication for therapeutic and developmental purposes. In these contexts, the practice of expanded listening (Fox & Macpherson, 2015) is an approach employing the nuances of listening (non-verbal, gestural or visual cues, additional to verbal communication), to enable open dialogue. This openness to all forms of communication and listening in an expanded sense informed the facilitation of the module as shall be explained. ...
... This study highlights the value of such an approach in deepening staff-student dialogue and partnership work. The values informing the project design were supported by 1) values from the HEA's Student Engagement in Partnership Framework (Healey et al., 2014) and, p. 2) Inclusive Arts Practice (IAP), particularly Fox and Macpherson (2015) identified features for successful collaborative practice (p. 80). ...
Mechanisms for listening and responding to students need to offer space for diverse voices and meaningful dialogue for greater student–staff partnership. This study explores the beneficial impacts and challenges of using creative pedagogical methods to support rich dialogue for module evaluation. A variety of evaluation activities were embedded throughout a postgraduate module, using creative materials and metaphorical reflective questions. Whilst there are logistical and perceptive barriers to adopting creative approaches, this paper demonstrates the beneficial impacts on both students’ and staffs’ experiences of learning and teaching, and the culture of partnership it develops. Deeper reflection and evaluation from students enabled inclusive student–staff dialogue. More nuanced and richer feedback allowed staff a responsive approach to module design, empowering the students and cultivating trusting student–staff relationships. Supporting the transferability of this practice across non-arts disciplines, principles for using discipline-specific materials and metaphors, for triggering reflection and evaluation are proposed.
... Educational laws, practices, special education support systems, and art have had major positive impacts on young people with special needs (Berger 2013, Fox andMacpherson 2015). These practices have increased the awareness of individuals with special needs and expanded educational practices, all while diminishing negative stereotypes in order to accept the strengths of individuals (Berger 2013). ...
... Creating art within a museum also opens an opportunity for Inclusive Arts to take place. Fox and Macpherson (2015) described Inclusive Arts as a creative collaboration between disabled and non-disabled individuals in order to support increases in knowledge, skills, and competence within the arts. Inclusive Arts can help reveal the creative and artistic potential of people with developmental disabilities, facilitates different modes of communication, and promotes individual self-advocacy (Fox and Macpherson 2015). ...
... Fox and Macpherson (2015) described Inclusive Arts as a creative collaboration between disabled and non-disabled individuals in order to support increases in knowledge, skills, and competence within the arts. Inclusive Arts can help reveal the creative and artistic potential of people with developmental disabilities, facilitates different modes of communication, and promotes individual self-advocacy (Fox and Macpherson 2015). Inclusive Arts is about more than art making, as it can be applied directly to the museum experience and the community. ...
Visiting a museum can be a tremendously stressful event for families that include children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD). The goal of this research study was to find what concerns families have when visiting a museum, if there are any intervention materials caregivers prefer, to examine behaviors of children with ASD while in the museum, and to see if an art-making activity after the museum visit could be directly tied to the museum experience. Results indicated that museums continue to be stressful for families, and parents would like materials to help reduce anxiety in their children before and during the visit. While in the museum, parents tried to focus their children’s attention on interesting things, but many children became overly excited and desired spaces within the museum to be more active. Art-making after the museum visit allowed children to reflect back on what they saw and did during their experience.
... In this paper listening is broadly conceived. This is in part a reflection of our different disciplinary backgrounds and how individuals listen in unique ways (Forsey, 2010). It also reflects trends regarding ethnographic research, which involves a range of methods often including participant observation alongside other methods such as interviews (Crang and Cook, 2007). ...
... It also reflects trends regarding ethnographic research, which involves a range of methods often including participant observation alongside other methods such as interviews (Crang and Cook, 2007). Some lament the demise of participant observation as a stand alone method and there is concern regarding the crowding of this method with others which demand talk under the label 'ethnographic' (Gans, 1999; see also Forsey, 2010). Interesting questions have been asked regarding what gets lost in 'verbal methodologies' (Crang, 2005;Back, 2003Back, , 2007Back, , 2012. ...
... The paper draws upon a diverse literature to think about listening. To help us explore 'listening whilst doing' we explore an embodied approach to listening evoked in methods that include participant observation (Laurier and Philo, 2006;Swanton, 2010;Rogaly and Qureshi, 2013;Wise and Velayutham, 2014;Wessendorf, 2014;Crang, 1994), participatory action research (Askins and Pain, 2011) and nonverbal research techniques (Macpherson and Fox, 2014;Fox and Macpherson, 2015;Bingley, 2003). Different theoretical, disciplinary and political agendas motivate this various research, but common to all is not only listening to what participants might say, but listening whilst doing and involved in happenings, evoking something of the experience of being there. ...
In this paper we reflect on the kind of listening that happens in research whilst taking part in a keep fit group and getting sweaty, that pushes us to ask an interviewee ‘Are you alright?’ and haunts us when the project is over. This is the kind of listening that weaves through, around and beyond what is immediately heard, including the unspoken, the articulateness of objects and the listening that comes through participating. The paper stems from a project concerned with how people live, experience and manage cultural diversity and ethnic difference in their everyday lives in urban England. Divided into two sections, the first part introduces our methods that included participant observation, interviews and repeat in-depth discussion group meetings. The second section reflects on our experiences of listening whilst doing, explores feelings that mediate listening and considers the time involved in listening.
... Using an outdated term, Kramer and Freedman Fask (2017) refer to creative collaborations between people with "different abilities" in theatre, music, visual arts and elsewhere. In their work, Fox and Macpherson (2015) use the term "inclusive arts" to describe creative collaborations between people with intellectual impairments and non-disabled artists. Inclusive arts seek to develop the abilities, knowledge and skills of those involved, so that these creative collaborations produce works of art or creative experiences of high aesthetic quality. ...
... In this context, the main objective is to produce high quality artistic outputs with socio-political objectives being of secondary importance, unlike other related social/participatory practices where disabled participants are perceived as those in need of support or representation. At the same time, nondisabled artists are removed from the traditional role of the helper and are treated as collaborators (Fox & Macpherson, 2015). ...
Η τέχνη που αφορά ανάπηρα άτομα και καλλιτέχνες αποτελεί ένα πεδίο που σταδιακά προσελκύει το ενδιαφέρον ακαδημαϊκών, ερευνητών, καλλιτεχνών και πολιτιστικών οργανισμών στο ελληνικό πλαίσιο. Η σχετικά περιορισμένη ωστόσο θεωρητική και ερευνητική κάλυψη του πεδίου επιτάσσει τη διερεύνηση των διαφορετικών τάσεων που σχετίζονται με τις τέχνες, και ιδιαίτερα το θέατρο και τα ανάπηρα άτομα. Στο πρώτο μέρος της παρούσας μελέτης, διερευνώνται οι διαφορετικές πρακτικές τέχνης που αφορούν ανάπηρα άτομα και καλλιτέχνες, μέσα από συγκεκριμένες −ιστορικά διαμορφωμένες− διαστάσεις. Στο δεύτερο μέρος συζητείται η σχετική έρευνα στο πεδίο και η διάρθρωση της καλλιτεχνικής πρακτικής και εκπαίδευσης των αναπήρων στον ελληνικό πολιτιστικό χώρο. Μέσα από τη θεωρητική ανάλυση των παραπάνω δεδομένων, η μελέτη επιχειρεί να συζητήσει τους τρόπους με τους οποίους οι −ιστορικά διαμορφωμένες− διαστάσεις στην τέχνη που αφορά ανάπηρα άτομα και καλλιτέχνες διαπλέκονται και σχετίζονται με την καλλιτεχνική πρακτική και εκπαίδευση των αναπήρων στον ελληνικό χώρο.
... Opportunities that students are often less aware of before they embark upon their studies are those in participatory arts (Matarasso 2019), socially engaged art practice (Helguera 2011), arts in health (Clift and Camic 2016) and particularly, inclusive arts (Fox and Macpherson 2015). These fields constitute the foundations of the degree, and projects are developed in each of these subtly distinct areas to enable students to understand the potential to apply their artistic skills in a myriad of creative and applied contexts. ...
... The cohort embarked upon an immersive, CDS-informed, inclusive arts curriculum in their first term of study. This included exploration of different approaches to professional practice in the community, namely inclusive art (Fox and Macpherson 2015), disability art (Kuppers 2014) and participatory art (Matarasso 2019). There was also a distinct CDS dimension, exploring how students understood the construct of disability, and focused teaching around the constructs of ableism (Kumari-Campbell 2009; Baglieri and Lalvani 2019) and privilege (Hadley 2013). ...
This study reports on the unanticipated findings of a small-scale, evaluative research project. Further to a pilot iteration, a cohort of undergraduate art students engaged with an immersive, inclusive arts curriculum informed by critical disability studies. Students’ perceptions and attitudes about disability were recorded at the outset and conclusion of the pedagogical project, through a qualitative questionnaire. Thematic analysis was employed to surface patterns in the cohort’s responses at both points in their learning journey. While the findings evidenced the anticipated shift from individualized perspectives about disability to an increasingly social, interactional perspective, the full extent of the medicalized gaze and internalized ableism at the outset of the study was unanticipated. This realization has been influential in developing the pedagogical approach and the framing of the content taught, and has exemplified both the potential and the need to learn about disability, disablement and diversity through art education.
... However, we hope the combination of images and ideas that we present here give the reader a sense of the forms of practice and visual dialogue that occurred in the studio. Furthermore, we have since built on some of this work in our book publication 'Inclusive Arts Practice and Research: a critical manifesto' (Fox and Macpherson, 2015), which includes more detailed discussion of art work, interviews with a range of Inclusive Art Practitioners, Students and the Rocket Artists. ...
... The experience of such collaborative arts activities is potentially very significant for the individuals involved at that moment. It is also significant when it reaches wider audiences and is given status and value in the wider art world as highquality collaborative practice rather than burdened with the limiting label of 'Outsider Art' or relegated to community rather than mainstream gallery spaces (Fox and Macpherson, 2015). Furthermore, by facilitating a dialogue, collaborative practice allows for a temporary 'plane of equality' to be found (cf. ...
In this paper, we develop an expanded conception of listening as ‘being-with’ and explore this in the context of creative visual arts activities with people with learning disabilities. Through a series of textual and visual interlocutions between Inclusive Artist ‘Alice’, Social and Cultural Geographer ‘Hannah’ and members of the contemporary arts group ‘The Rockets’, we identify how an expanded conception of listening is practiced and the results it produce. Where listening for the Inclusive Artist includes an attentiveness to visual, verbal and gestural vocabularies of arts-based methods; the construction of conducive spaces for listening and voice with attuned collaborators and appropriate art materials; the use of art materials as ‘meeting points’, which enable a non-verbal conversation to take place and knowledge of how particular materials and practices can influence a person’s work and sense of themselves. The temporalities of these forms of expanded, attentive, curious listening are explored and concern is expressed about how they sit in opposition to the hasty demands for research with ‘impact’. We hope this paper provokes researchers to consider what it means to listen through arts-based methods, the crucial role of the facilitator and the temporalities of listening they are bringing into being.
... Adding to this understanding of arts-based research, we must also reach an understanding of the concept of inclusive arts practice, which is central to AIM's work as it is this field that its artists operate within. Fox and Macpherson (2015) explore this concept in depth, emphasising the importance of collaboration between disabled and non-disabled artists in inclusive arts practices. They argue that such practice should not just provide access to the arts for disabled people but, also, recognise and valuing the unique contributions that all artists can make to contemporary art practice. ...
Left feeling isolated by the Covid-19 pandemic, artists working within Art in Motion (AIM), a participatory contemporary arts organisation operating as a collective of learning-disabled and neurodiverse artists and non-learning-disabled and non-neurodiverse artists, based at Spike Island, an international centre for the production and exhibition of contemporary art in Bristol, UK, wanted to reach out to similar UK-based arts organisations. Their goal was to understand the challenges these organisations were also facing and to build a sense of community. A citizen research project, taking an arts-based, practice-led, and participatory approach, was developed by artists working within AIM to challenge assumptions about learning-disabled and neurodiverse artists engaging in research and inform the inclusive development of the visual arts sector in the UK within a postdigital landscape. The project’s approach followed the recent expansion of longstanding notions of citizen science into the social science and humanities. The project involved the co-development of accessible, practice-led, creative research tools that built on the creative practice of artists working within AIM, bridged the digital and the physical, and took an overarching postdigital perspective. Visual metaphors were drawn on and a ‘suitcase’ of practice-led research tools was developed, where researchers could select tools needed for a series of both virtual and in-person research trips. Such tools included reflective practice, questionnaires, interviews, visual scribing, and mapping. This article charts the development of the project as artists took on the collective role of researchers in a postdigital context. It reflects on the positionality and experience of a collective of artists working as citizen researchers, while expanding upon the concept and the value of research for a diverse art collective in a hybrid virtual-physical art context. It concludes that citizen research can be made more inclusive and accessible through arts-based, imaginative methods, particularly when researchers hold multiple identities and active roles in the research process.
... Inclusive research methods emphasise the expertise of people with intellectual disability regarding the issues that affect their lives, including care, work, education, and the environment (Nind and Vinha 2014;Walmsley and Johnson 2003). In this work, it is vital to explore different ways of generating knowledge, including through nonverbal and artsbased approaches (Boydell and Belliveau 2017;Fox and Macpherson 2015;Watfern 2024). Transdisciplinary and inclusive work in this field will increasingly require the building of diverse teams that include people with intellectual disability as strategists, leaders and analysts . ...
Background
Climate change disproportionally affects people with intellectual disability. Despite this, people with intellectual disability are rarely included in conversations about just environmental futures.
Methods
Using PRISMA‐ScR guidelines, this scoping review maps the academic literature surrounding intellectual disability and climate change.
Findings
We identified three key themes in the 10 articles included in our review. First, people with intellectual disability experience heightened risks and barriers during and after natural disasters. Second, they are largely absent from government disaster planning and response. Third, inclusive education initiatives are in their infancy. Overall, people with intellectual disability are not involved as leaders or collaborators in research or practice related to climate change. The literature focuses almost exclusively on natural disasters as opposed to the broader context of the climate crisis.
Conclusion
We take a critical lens, calling for further research that reframes the role of people with intellectual disability in climate change discourses: From helpless victims to collaborators, caretakers, and advocates for a safer climate.
... Inclusive research methods emphasise the expertise of people with intellectual disability regarding the issues that affect their lives, including care, work, education, and the environment (Nind & Vinha, 2014;Walmsley & Johnson, 2003). In this work, it's vital to explore different ways of generating knowledge, including through non-verbal and arts-based approaches(Boydell & Belliveau, 2017;Fox & Macpherson, 2015). Transdisciplinary and inclusive work in this eld will increasingly require the building of diverse teams, that include people with intellectual disability as strategists, leaders and analysts (Carnemolla, Kelly, Donnelley, & Healy, 2022).Furthermore, there's a notable absence of research with people with intellectual disability that focuses on responses to climate change more broadly (as opposed to natural disasters). ...
Climate change disproportionally affects people with intellectual disability. Despite this, people with intellectual disability are rarely included in conversations about just environmental futures. Using PRISMA-P guidelines, this scoping review maps the academic literature surrounding intellectual disability and climate change. We identified three key themes in the thirteen articles included in our review. First, people with intellectual disability experience heightened risks and barriers during and after natural disasters. Second, they are largely absent from government disaster planning and response. Third, inclusive education initiatives are in their infancy. Overall, people with intellectual disability are not involved as leaders or collaborators in research or practice related to climate change. The literature focuses almost exclusively on natural disasters as opposed to the broader context of the climate crisis. We take a critical lens, reframing the role of people with intellectual disability in climate change discourses: from helpless victims to potential caretakers and advocates for a safer climate.
... Hal ini menunjukkan bahwa proses penciptaan karya seni atau karya seni itu sendiri berhubungan erat dengan ilmu pengetahuan (Matarasso, 2019). Oleh karenanya seni bukan hanya persoalan estetika atau keindahan namun terdapat tawaran gagasan di dalamnya (Fox & Macpherson, 2015). Kemerdekaan berpikir dapat terfasilitasi melalui sumbersumber pengetahuan yang tersedia, salah satu tempat yang menyediakan hal tersebut adalah perpustakan. ...
Penyandang disabilitas memiliki hak yang sama dengan masyarakat lainnya dalam mengakses fasilitas dan pelayanan publik. Namun, sering kali mereka menghadapi hambatan dalam memperoleh aksesibilitas yang layak di fasilitas umum. Artikel ini bertujuan untuk menggambarkan upaya yang dilakukan oleh pihak penanggung jawab Galeri R.J. Katamsi di Institut Seni Indonesia Yogyakarta dalam membangun fasilitas yang ramah bagi penyandang disabilitas. Metode penelitian yang digunakan adalah metode kualitatif, dengan literatur acuan diperoleh dari database Google Scholar dan wawancara dengan penanggung jawab Galeri R.J. Katamsi. Penelitian ini mengeksplorasi langkah-langkah konkret yang diambil oleh pihak penanggung jawab Galeri R.J. Katamsi di Institut Seni Indonesia Yogyakarta dalam mewujudkan aksesibilitas yang lebih baik bagi penyandang disabilitas. Hasil penelitian menunjukkan bahwa Galeri R.J. Katamsi telah melakukan perubahan signifikan dalam memperbaiki aksesibilitas bagi penyandang disabilitas. Salah satu langkah yang diambil adalah merancang dan membangun fasilitas yang ramah bagi penyandang disabilitas, termasuk akses yang mudah dan ramah pengguna kursi roda, tangga yang terjangkau, serta toilet yang sesuai dengan standar aksesibilitas. Selain itu, penelitian ini juga mengungkapkan upaya pihak penanggung jawab untuk meningkatkan kesadaran dan pemahaman terhadap isu aksesibilitas di kalangan staf galeri. Disability Accessibility at R. J. Katamsi Gallery, ISI Yogyakarta ABSTRACT Persons with disabilities have the same rights as other members of society in accessing public facilities and services. However, they often face obstacles in obtaining proper accessibility in public facilities. This article aims to describe the efforts made by the party in charge of the R.J. Gallery. Katamsi at the Yogyakarta Indonesian Art Institute in building friendly facilities for persons with disabilities. The research method used is a qualitative method, with reference literature obtained from the Google Scholar database and interviews with the person in charge R.J. Katamsi Gallery. This research explores the concrete steps taken by the party in charge of the R.J. Katamsi Gallery at the Yogyakarta Art Institute in realizing better accessibility for persons with disabilities. The results of the study show that the R.J. Gallery Katamsi has made significant changes in improving accessibility for persons with disabilities. One of the steps taken is to design and build facilities that are friendly to persons with disabilities, including easy access and wheelchair-friendly, affordable stairs, and toilets that comply with accessibility standards. In addition, this research also reveals the efforts of the responsible party to increase awareness and understanding of accessibility issues among gallery staff.
... The involvement of persons with disabilities in the artistic processes can be seen as a practice of inclusive art. Fox and MacPherson define inclusive art as "the creative collaboration between learning disabled and nonlearning disabled artists" [5]. The main focus of inclusive art is on the collaboration process, not on the final products such as paintings, design, film, theatrical performance, musical performance, etc. ...
This research was conducted to examine the practices of Teater Cangkir which bridges the interactions of the diffable and non diffable group in Tegal, Indonesia. The method used in this research is Sociology of Art approach which focuses on the production process and the public’s reception of Teater Cangkir’s performances. Data was collected through observations and in-depth interview. Observation was used to collect data of Teater Cangkir’s production process. While the interview was used to align the data that has been previously obtained.
... As cultural institutions that house various artsy entities, museums have the ability to facilitate the benefits of art-making by including activities that tap into meaningful experiences through the means of specialized programs (Woodruff 2019). Creating art within a museum setting opens up opportunities for inclusive arts, as creative collaborations between the disabled and the nondisabled increases knowledge, skills and competence within the arts (Fox and Macpherson 2015). Also, a variety of textures, colors, smells and tastes of art have an inherent capacity to inhibit and/or induce emotional and sensory responses in those with autism (Hinz 2016). ...
Museums are destinations that are made for all sectors of the society, and as a social entity they undergo evolution as time passes by. With their growing social image, functions and scope, museums are becoming rather diverse, inclusive and accessible for all segments of the society. Autistic visitors are considered to be one among the most marginalised groups when visiting museums. And so, they deserve to be given appropriate attention from the museum community. Autism is a neurodevelopmental disorder that leads to hindered physical and mental growth, reduced communication abilities, and social interaction and behavior are primarily affected. The purpose of this article is to discuss the importance and need of creating museums, that are socio-cultural spaces accessible to marginalised visitors, focusing on those with the autistic spectrum disorder. This paper discusses the role museums can play in providing opportunities to autistic visitors while making them feel included and accepted in the museum setting. To do so, this article elaborates upon some commonly used techniques for autistic visitors, such as art therapy, art-making activities, enactments alike ventriloquism and hands-on sessions. The author's first-hand experiences gained by participating in ventriloquism and 'touch and feel' sessions are also discussed thereon.
... With these thoughts in mind, as arts educators we can look to further reconcile our agendas of inclusive, culturally relevant, dialogical and non-authoritarian pedagogies that have so frequently been explored in arts education scholarship (see for example: Almqvist & Christophersen, 2017;Fox & Macpherson, 2015;Hatton, 2015), and the reality of our pedagogical practices. Attempts to escape the hegemony of existing structures, knowledge and expectations in arts can involve acts of transgression. ...
I denne artikkelen har vi undersøkt et samarbeid mellom en kommunal kulturskole og en grunnskole. Hensikten med artikkelen er å utvikle kunnskap om tverrfaglige samarbeid der vi, fra et lærerperspektiv, undersøker hvilke syn på kunst som møtes og utvikles i oppstarten av samarbeidet. Hvilke fortellinger kommer til uttrykk om å delta som grunn- og kulturskolelærer i samarbeidet? Det empiriske materialet genereres gjennom refleksjonsverksteder mellom lærere og førsteforfatter der verbal/skriftlig/visuell refleksjon kombineres. Med en a/r/tografisk tilnærming og tematisk narrativ lesing har vi konstruert fortellinger om hvordan kulturskolelæreren og grunnskolelærerne tar ansvar for områder det er forventet at de skal ha kompetanse på. Forståelsene og praksis som møtes ser ut til å ha sterk forankring i en modernistisk grunnlagstenkning, men i samarbeidet mellom lærerne vokser det fram dissonanser mellom et modernistisk og et postmodernistisk kunstsyn, mellom objektsentrert undervisning og undervisning med mer vekt på relasjonelle aspekter. Føringer fra ledelse og rammefaktorer som manglende prioritering av tid for felles utforskning ser ut til å hindre reell tverrfaglig samproduksjon og holder samtidig den kunstdidaktiske praksisen i et modernistisk doxa.
... Ideas and evolving concepts were also enabled to emerge through an iterative process of informal discussion and conversations-as well more directed activities such as visual mapping on flipchart paper and creative arts-based activities using photography, collages and other craft materials (Aldridge, 2006;Fox & Macpherson, 2015;Garland-Thomson, 2002). But being able to access so-called "everyday places" does not always mean that people with learning disabilities feel like they are welcome or "belong" there. ...
1.1 Background: his journal article draws on findings from a research project that examined how people with learning disabilities and their allies were seeking to build a sense of belonging. We wanted to focus on the concept of “belonging” in the context of personalisation and reduced government social care funding. Specifically, we sought to understand how people with learning disabilities and their supporters were coming together to “self-build” networks of support including friendship clubs and self-advocacy groups to enable a greater sense of belonging in their local communities.
1.2 Methods: qualitative interviews were conducted with seven local authority representatives across four case study areas in the UK, as well as 39 staff across 29 organisations providing a range of day and evening support and activities. We also talked to 43 people with learning disabilities across the four areas about their experiences.
1.3 Findings: our findings demonstrate how belonging involves a complex configuration of actors, places, times, relationships and institutional roles (much like the ingredients in a cake). The ways in which belonging intersects with agency and choice was also identified as an important and novel finding of our study.
1.4 Conclusion: while belonging is often presented to people as a desirable and realisable outcome of social inclusion policies, cuts in funding and a lack of appropriate support frustrate people's desires to meaningfully belong with other people in their local community. This demonstrates the importance of supporting social environments that meet people's needs for social connectedness and belonging.<br/
... A series of ten four-hour-long art workshops using an inclusive arts approach introduced these ten young people to a range of visual arts activities (see Fox and Macpherson 2015). Young people were supported to understand and apply the basic ideas behind the Resilience Framework (Appendix 1). ...
This article provides an overview of how arts-based approaches have the potential to support the development of young people's resilience. It also summarises our own research study that aimed to identify and evaluate the possible benefits of visual arts interventions for young people with complex needs. We began our research by reviewing arts based literature framed by our own Resilience Framework (www.boingboing.org.uk). This framework draws on five key components of resilience that prior reviews and research have identified as crucial to young people's wellbeing and personal development - these are Basics, Belonging, Learning, Coping and Core Self. These core concepts helped identify some key resilience benefits of visual arts interventions. Finally, some of the limitations of this study are considered and we make recommendations on further and more indepth, longitudinal research on this subject.
Engage: International Journal of Visual Art and Gallery Education, Vol 36
... In the same period, inclusive approaches have been taken up both in research (Walmsley and Johnson, 2003) and in the arts, reflecting a growing recognition of learning disabled people as researchers, artists, performers and communicators. Whilst this has resulted in a proliferation of work by learning disabled people in the performing and visual arts (Fox and Macpherson, 2015), curation has only rarely been explored and then principally in museums dealing with history (Open University, 2008; Museum of Liverpool, 2014;Access All Areas, 2017) rather than in the context of art galleries. This gap in the practice led me to develop this research; Art as Advocacy. ...
Over the past 40 years within the UK the concept of self-advocacy has gained momentum by enabling learning disabled people to speak out in order to affect change. In the same period, inclusive approaches have been taken up both in research and in the arts, reflecting a growing recognition of learning disabled people as researchers, artists, performers and communicators. Yet curation has rarely been used as an inclusive practice and then principally in museums dealing with history rather than in the context of art galleries. Via a practice-led research approach, Art as Advocacy addressed this gap by exploring the potential for curatorial practice by learning disabled artists to act as a site for self-advocacy. It brought together members of self-advocacy group Halton Speak Out and members of Bluecoat's inclusive arts project Blue Room, to curate a visual arts exhibition titled Auto Agents. These curators developed an exhibition theme, collaborated with artists, commissioned new artwork and designed accessible interpretation for audiences. Through curating Auto Agents, the purpose of this research has been to produce a rich account of the ways in which curatorial and self-advocacy practices intersect. This intersection, whereby tools found in self-advocacy were carried over into curatorship, provided new methodologies that enabled curating to become an inclusive practice. This attention to process results not only in curating becoming more usable by more people, but also more transparent and rigorous. By achieving this, this research delineates to understanding the processes and practices by which our cultural spaces can become democratised.
... Research on the participation in inclusive arts activities and on the intersections of the arts, social inclusion, and social work expose the potential for change, empowerment, and agency in the lives of marginalised groups ( Sinding et al., 2014;Fox & MacPherson, 2015;. Within the field of disability arts, studies evidencing the benefits of participating in inclusive arts activities on the lives of disabled people is drawing attention to how involvement is impacting on the confidence, motivation, and identify of disabled people (Parr, 2006;Atkinson & Robson, 2012;Watts & Ridley, 2012;Hall, 2013;Levy, Robb, & jindal-Snape, 2017), social inclusion (Newsinger & Green, 2016), empowerment (Houston, 2005), activism and social change , and disability culture (Kuppers, 2011). ...
... The degree programme teaches students about models of disability (Goodley, 2017), inclusive practice ( Fox and Macpherson, 2015;Baglieri and Shapiro, 2017), arts in health (Fancourt, 2017) and arts for wellbeing (Clift and Camic, 2016); nurturing practitioners who are passionate advocates of authentic participation and creative expression. Students facilitate creative arts workshops in their local communities throughout their studies, with a focus on wellbeing. ...
This paper reflects upon a recent collaboration between students and staff on the Creative and Therapeutic Arts degree and the Disability and Dyslexia Service (DDS) at the University of South Wales, where students raised concerns about challenges in accessing specialist support for their learning. As is commonly noted on creative courses a relatively high percentage of students on this degree identify as experiencing additional or specific learning needs. As part of a pastoral support initiative, it was recognised that a high percentage of students were eager to engage with DDS but perceived that they had experienced difficulties in doing so. By establishing monthly meetings between the Course Leader and the Manager of DDS, and consulting student records, with students’ full consent, it emerged that there was a significant misunderstanding between students, academic staff and support staff about the process of engaging with DDS and securing specialist support. The collaboration between students, Course Leader and DDS Manager unearthed that, as well as differing perceptions of disability, there was a significant lack of accessible guidance for engaging with this process, echoing the Welsh Assembly Government’s findings that complexity was a barrier to engagement with such provision nationally (WAG, 2017). As a result, an infographic was created to guide students and staff through the complex process of engaging with DDS to secure specialist support. The intention is that this resource will support students, academic staff, support staff and colleagues in other departments to understand the process involved in accessing specialist support and thus support students in this important journey.
... This study used a unique mode of practice-led research (Smith & Dean, 2009;Sullivan, 2009), which combined an arts-health practice with a qualitative actionresearch case study. Embedding research within arts practices is useful for its ability to provide insight, to enhance knowledge about the effect of arts practices on people's lives, policies or organisation, and to develop practice (Fox, A. & Macpherson, 2015;Leavy, 2009). Such an approach can be useful to provide insight and to address the current lack of guidelines for arts-health practice (Jensen, 2014;Moss & O'Neill, 2009). ...
Background: Many studies in arts and health have focused on evaluating the impact of participatory arts activities, but few have considered the processes and components shaping the wellbeing outcomes of participants. This paper uses a relational approach to health to explore the processes and components at play during art making that helps foster the wellbeing of participants. Methods: The study uses an action-research case study of a 12-week visual art programme in a nursing home with 10 participants. Data collected were analysed and interpreted using grounded theory to obtain general themes and to facilitate focused analysis. Results: The study identifies the participants, wellbeing outcomes, the environment and the quality of activities as key concerns of arts-health practice. In addition, it reflects on the link between caring and arts-health practice to highlight several caring attributes that promote a caring arts-health practice. Conclusions: The study findings provide a practice framework that can guide decision making and action to foster a caring arts-health practice.
Keywords: Arts in Health; Care; Practice Framework; Assemblage theory; Critical Arts-Health Practice
https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/w5c7cxb9eDN96YcmDI2c/full 452
... Consequently, Zmijewski, Schlingensief and their protagonists also shift traditional boundaries that might inhibit inclusion or foster exclusion. The two case studies are characterised by a series of contradictions that refuse to give a simple answer to the question of how to integrate people with disabilities or how to model a concept of 'inclusive art' (Fox and MacPherson 2015). Instead, using the terms of Schillmeier (2007), the works function as a question mark and provocation to rethink disability as 'complex sets of heterogeneous practices that (re-)associate bodies, material objects, and technologies with sensory and other practices ' (p. ...
Conventional representations of disability on television and in documentary films often emphasise ‘pity’ or stage their characters as ‘supercrips’. Only a few productions provide alternative framings of disability. Such films can be conceived as a kind of experimental system through which established knowledge about disability can be unsettled. To demonstrate this, this chapter analyses the Singing Lesson by Artur Żmijewski, a video installation interlacing experimentally deaf singing and religious choirs, and Freakstars 3000 by Christoph Schlingensief, a TV docusoap that modifies conceptions of intellectual disability by mocking television casting and reality formats. Both productions open up a space for media participation that creates ambiguity while refusing to give a simple answer to the question of how to model a concept of ‘inclusive art’ or media.
... Methodologically, to the extent that we give analytical attention to the nonrepresentational whether this is the agentic capacity of material objects and environments or the pre-conscious affects that move bodies to act, this will require methodological approaches that move beyond the collection of 'representable' personal testimony to capture the ways which bodies are moved to in/action within specific fields of force. Macpherson's (2010) own use of ethnography offers an excellent illustration of such an approach, providing access to the embodied practice of walking (see also Macpherson and Bleasdale, 2012;Fox and Macpherson, 2015). Elsewhere, Bigby and Wiesel (2011;also Wiesel et Finally, the preceding discussion of the 'able-body' suggests that we need to think creatively about ways to empirically document the kinds of knowledge, relational practices and social spaces implicated in the process of becoming able. ...
In this paper we develop linkages between non-representational theory and emerging work by disability scholars in geography. We argue that non-representational thinking has the potential to advance our understanding of the complex and emergent geographies of dis/ability. We first outline key dimensions of non-representational thinking within geography. We then explore how this perspective has begun to, and might further inform, geographical scholarship on disability. Next, we extend our thinking to consider how NRT might provide the basis for a critical geography of the ‘able-body’. We conclude by reflecting on the conceptual, political, methodological and empirical implications of our argument.
... Some argue that "art for art's sake" is sufficient, while others call for civically engaged arts. The rising perspective is that the transformative force of the arts in people's lives (civic engagement) does not have to be at the expense of pursuing artistic excellence (market success; Borwick, 2012;Fox & Macpherson, 2015;Mandoki, 2014). Previous studies focused on measuring one or two nonprofit role dimensions (e.g., Berry, 2005;Child & Grønbjerg, 2007;Mosley, 2010). ...
Nonprofits face increasing pressure to compete in the market, while they must maintain their civic commitment. Focusing on the arts and cultural sector, this study conducts the first large-scale, comprehensive empirical measurement of nonprofits’ engagement in various roles. The article uses a previously validated 18-item role index to categorize nonprofits as primarily engaged in either civic or market functions, so that a subsequent regression analysis can identify the common characteristics of civically active nonprofit arts service organizations. The data come from (a) qualitative interviews with leaders of arts nonprofits, (b) a random national sample of more than 900 arts nonprofits, and (c) Internal Revenue Service (IRS) tax returns of the sample nonprofits. The findings suggest that civically active arts nonprofits have diverse networks, recognize civic engagement as the industry norm, and are consciously aware of their nonprofit status. The results suggest how nonprofits can balance their equally important market- and civic-oriented functions.
Искусство, работающее с темой границ и ограничений, чаще всего относится к области социокуль- турных практик. Опыт временной слепоты или дальтонизма, нарушенных телесных ощущений, а также другие ограничения и из- менения возможностей восприятия в произведениях современных авторов рассматриваются в этой статье не как интеграционная технология, а как художественный прием и метод современного искусства. Автор исследует отно- шение нового термина «инклюзивное искусство» к сложившимся понятиям «ар брют», disability art и outsider art, а также предпри- нимает попытку классификации проектов, в центре внимания которых — ограниченные или измененные возможности воспри- ятия, даже если импульсом для их создания не являлась инклюзия в общество и культуру социально исключенных групп. На примере выставок и отдельных произве- дений анализируется отношение тренда ограничений к концепциям «эстетика переживаний», «ося- зательная эстетика» и «эмпирический поворот» в современном искусстве.
Navigating recent shifts in diversity agenda in the theatre industry and ensuring continued moves towards the accurate representation, equal participation, and valued contribution of disabled people on and off stage requires interdisciplinary perspectives. Many involved in day-to-day theatre work lack knowledge commonplace to disability scholars. They also lack understanding of lived disability experience and perspectives crucial for understanding attitudes, structures, and environments experienced in theatre settings. This article considers the most necessary aspects of disability studies knowledge to share in building, and moving forward from, disability consciousness in the theatre sector and training. It introduces stages in a process of engagement with theatre practice and disability for actors and directors, and a reflective tool for personal positioning in a process of engagement with theatre practice and disability. The article examines how interdisciplinary perspectives support individuals’ processes of exploring new territory, building familiarity across disabled and nondisabled communities, and sharing responsibility for industry-wide change.
This article was published open access under a CC BY-NC-ND licence: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ .
In a post-Covid context, the term presence has become the subject of renewed academic focus, amplified by mass phenomena such as Zoom fatigue and online classroom teaching. The prism of new materialism allows for a new reading of relationships between technology and human sensing, physical and virtual presence and copresence, with possible design implications: Current research in public health and social-environment discourse is interested in the effect of presence on well-being. As a theoretical framework, new materialism provides a lens that foregrounds complex relations between affect and technology, enabling us, through interventions like the KIMA: Colour participatory artwork, to interrogate the broad discourse on mediated presence and social connectivity. This paper provides an overview of the AHRC-funded research project, 'p_ART_icipate!', which is a collaborative investigation led by the University of Greenwich, CNWL NHS Foundation Trust, and Brunel University. This paper describes one of the case studies within the project, 'KIMA Colour', a collaboration with the art collective Analema Group, the National Gallery and the Royal National Institute of the Blind (RNIB). The case study explores the effect of collective cultural experiences and participatory art on a sense of social connectivity and copresence. In collaboration with RNIB and a group of visually impaired individuals, the team asked how we can design meaningful and accessible online interfaces that actively contribute to a sense of 'participatory presence'. Findings suggest a possible link between the experience, presence and social connectedness. This research aims to contribute to our understanding of participatory art and to provide recommendations for accessibility and facilitation designc for participatory online interfaces. ARTICLE HISTORY
Background:
In the context of ongoing underrepresentation of disabled people and shifts in the theatre industry, this article examines the significance of personal disability understandings and how these are interpreted in relation to the wellbeing of disabled people in theatre.
Methods:
The findings presented are part of an Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis; an interdisciplinary study detailing experiences of theatre practice and disability among professional actors and directors in theatres that are funded by Arts Council England.
Results:
One of the six emergent themes from interviews, Navigating Inexperience of Disability in Theatre, assists in considering disability understandings and aspects of actors’ wellbeing in this article. It details interpersonal and emotional competencies required of disabled people in day-to-day practice; these relate to confidence, risk, empathy, compromise, value, and contribution.
Conclusions:
Routes to building accessibility in theatre are proposed as a shared and personal endeavour; value is placed on learning from disability as crucial in preserving wellbeing, creativity, and effective arts practices across disabled and non-disabled communities.
Although opera outreach has gathered momentum over the last few years, opera is still often overlooked as a potent multisensory tool in dramatherapy, perhaps due to its association predominantly with music and music therapy. Using drama-related case studies, this article wants to breathe new life into the discourse of opera therapy initiated by music therapist Emma O’Brien in 2006. It further ties in with a discourse around dramatherapy work for adults with learning disabilities. The article traces how inclusive engagement techniques inspired by Francisco Cilea’s opera L’Arlesiana can be rendered useful within a dramatherapeutic context. The project was facilitated as part of Opera Holland Park’s accessibility programme in 2019. By sharpening consciousness for the distinct contributions to opera therapy from individual disciplines other than music therapy, the article hopes to put opera back on the map as a medium also for other creative therapies to explore.
This study suggests Christian salvation, as God’s power revealed in the eschaton brought by Jesus’ action in incarnation, crucifixion and resurrection to initiate a liberating course of karma for the blind and visually impaired, is based on a critical challenge to a Chinese version of dis/ableism implicitly and explicitly expressed in a folk belief in paoying (a belief in retribution for what one does) and cán fèi (deformity and uselessness), thus empowering the blind and visually impaired to celebrate life in which they are received as a gift and they are gifted, with reference to the practice of the Hildesheimer Blindenmission in Hong Kong and a theological reflection of touch.
This article re-contextualises applied drama practice in the wake of Covid-19, with a particular focus on cognitive diversity. From an inclusive perspective, it asks how encouraging self-expression helps to diversify the still often one-dimensional perception of people with learning disabilities in media reports. It thereby continues an on-going argument around empowered representation within disability drama and culture. The article traces arts practice that engaged a group of women with learning disabilities in reflections about the lockdown 2020. The practice section of the article documents three concrete examples from a workshop series with the members of Powerhouse, a group of women with learning disabilities from the East of London.
While the intersections of normalization and outsider art have been articulated in studio art therapy practice with people labeled/with IDD, little attention has been given to the intersection of art therapy, artists labeled/with IDD and disability art. As a counter-cultural endeavor rooted in a political movement, disability art offers a distinct and potentially fruitful framework in which art therapists in studio practice with artists labeled/with IDD can advance social justice.
This article reflects upon the process, the challenges and the opportunities realised in the recent revalidation activity of an undergraduate degree programme in Creative and Therapeutic Arts (CTA) in the UK. The premise of the revalidation activity and the historical context of the course are briefly encapsulated, before engaging with theoretical frameworks at the forefront of contemporary Participatory Arts practice. This includes an initial focus on the relevance of Critical Disability Studies to Participatory Arts education, followed by exploration of the contrasting approaches of Socially Engaged Art practice, Inclusive Arts practice, Participatory Arts practice, Arts in Health and Arts Therapies. The challenge of defining a diverse practice which draws from such contrasting perspectives is further explored in relation to the challenge of working on the boundary between artistic and therapeutic practice. Geographical context is considered, drawing from the Welsh evidence base to inform culturally relevant provision. Curriculum design is reviewed in relation to experiential learning and inclusive practice literature, as well as relevant higher education policies. Upon briefly summarising the revalidated curriculum, a critical discussion around the future of the training and the discipline more broadly is developed, considering the contribution of the critical review and focus groups facilitated as part of this revalidation activity. It is hoped that this discussion will further nurture and challenge educators, students and practitioners in this exciting area of evolving, contemporary practice.
The facilitation approach described here, though developed in artistic contexts, can easily be adapted to tackle serious organisational issues like team relationships, collaborative working and strategic planning. In a nutshell, it involves combining movement, material and words to create an emotionally safe, trusting landscape that is conducive to honest, brave exchange. Our reflections are based on two particular events, separated by a couple of years, in two different oriental locations. We begin by describing a visit to Taiwan, where we worked with a group of older people to prepare them rapidly for a live collaborative performance featuring ice and ribbon. The other (earlier) event took place in Cambodia and, though it was based on similar principles, the context was quite different: a group of staff from all levels of an NGO managed to develop a draft strategic plan by writing on fruit and teapots. In both cases, a playful and creative way of working enabled those involved to bond rapidly and achieve something useful and positive.
For our students engaging with the performing arts, pedagogies of self-reflection, cultural competence, dialogue, and empathy are imperative to providing the appropriate context for the politics of performative representation. It is our responsibility to ensure that we take the necessary steps to evolve curriculum in pace with the diversity of our cultural realities. Julius Bailey has students explore philosophical approaches to diversity through hip hop music, building bridges between popular culture and critical race philosophies. Michelle Hayford and Katie O’Leary work with college students to facilitate a summer theatre camp for youth with autism spectrum disorder. The mutual exchange that occurs during the summer camp exemplifies the imperative of diverse learning communities that expose students to life experiences, identities, and worldviews divergent from their own.
Key words: Arts for Health; Aged Care; Nursing Home; Participatory Visual Arts; Assemblage Theory; Vitality; Wellbeing; Caring Artist; Practice Framework
The priorities many nursing homes give to physical care often supersede consideration for leisure arrangements and resources with the effect that the range of activities and engagement opportunities for residents are limited. An inactive lifestyle in nursing homes can compromise the residents’ quality of life and their psychosocial wellness through boredom, diminished morale and reinforced dependency. A low level of engagement also exposes residents to a greater risk of developing cognitive impairment and accentuates feelings of loneliness and isolation. Given the demographic trend of an ageing population together with a growing demand for nursing homes in Singapore, this research addresses the current lack of research on lifestyles of nursing home residents and arrangements to promote their personal well-being.
In this thesis, I investigate the effect of a participatory visual arts programme on the personal well-being of residents in a Singapore nursing home. The study explores the ways in which well-being is afforded through participatory arts activities and the role an artist can take in relation to human caring. To facilitate evaluation and reflection on my arts-health practice, I brought my arts-health practice into a novel dialogue methodologically with the action-research case study approach of social science. I refer to this hybrid approach as ‘critical arts-health practice’.
The empirical data of the study prompted exploration of the link between vitality and participatory arts activities. Participatory arts activities are found to revitalise the sensory, physical, cognitive, emotional, social capacities of older adults and promote self-actualisation. Drawing on Gilles Deleuze’s assemblage theory, I conceptualised the Arts-Health assemblage as a way of understanding the processes through which participatory arts activities contribute to the participants’ well-being, as both dynamic and as involving multiple interrelated elements. I argue that the broad concerns of arts-health practice can be defined as combining individualised attention to the participant, well-being outcome, and ensuring the quality of the environment and activities for participatory arts. I argue that attentiveness to these dimensions will promote a more effective and caring arts-health practice. Lastly, the central importance of these dimensions within an arts-health practice emphasises that the arts-health practitioner is first and foremost a caring artist.
In this paper, we develop an expanded conception of listening as ‘being-with’ and explore this in the context of creative visual arts activities with people with learning disabilities. Through a series of textual and visual interlocutions between Inclusive Artist ‘Alice’, Social and Cultural Geographer ‘Hannah’ and members of the contemporary arts group ‘The Rockets’, we identify how an expanded conception of listening is practiced and the results it produce. Where listening for the Inclusive Artist includes an attentiveness to visual, verbal and gestural vocabularies of arts-based methods; the construction of conducive spaces for listening and voice with attuned collaborators and appropriate art materials; the use of art materials as ‘meeting points’, which enable a non-verbal conversation to take place and knowledge of how particular materials and practices can influence a person’s work and sense of themselves. The temporalities of these forms of expanded, attentive, curious listening are explored and concern is expressed about how they sit in opposition to the hasty demands for research with ‘impact’. We hope this paper provokes researchers to consider what it means to listen through arts-based methods, the crucial role of the facilitator and the temporalities of listening they are bringing into being.
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This article reports research that aimed to identify and evaluate potential resilience benefits of visual arts interventions for young people with complex needs. The study involved a review of the ‘arts for resilience’ literature and a case study of 10 weekly resilience-building arts workshops for 10 young people experiencing mental health complexities and/or learning difficulties.
Findings:
We found a significant existing evidence-base linking visual arts practice to individual and community resilience, across disciplinary fields including art therapy, social work, community health, visual arts practice and geographies of health. Visual art activities were utilised to both educate young people about resilience and enhance young people’s overall resilience. Qualitative research material developed from the case study shows that even short-term visual arts interventions can impact on young people’s resilience – crucially, participation was extremely beneficial to young people’s sense of belonging and ability to cope with difficult feelings (topics which arose repeatedly during interview, focus group discussion and observation).
Applications:
Our review and findings from this small case study provide some initial insights into the resilience benefits of participation in visual arts activities. This, combined with the resilience-based practice framework presented here, could aid the effective targeting of interventions for social workers and others working with young people with complex needs. Alongside this research paper, an arts for resilience practice guide has been produced by the project team (including young people). It contains instructions on how to conduct a range of practical visual arts activities that we identified as being resilience-promoting.
This article documents some of the imaginative and physical journeys taken by a group of performance makers during a two-week course at Northbrook College, West Sussex in July 2011. Text, photographs and artworks are used to re-present some of the journeys we have taken together as a group and the modes of marking, map making and documentation used. MB: is an inclusive arts practitioner who works with artists with learning disabilities. Mary was coordinating the course and HM: was participating as an interested Cultural Geographer. The article is written as a dialogue and is likely to be of interest to readers interested in the geographies of performance, disability, non-representational research, innovative non-verbal methods or inclusive arts practice.
At the moment we are working on an Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) connected communities’ research grant exploring the resilience benefits of visual arts practice. As we write this Hannah has a headache and keeps on thinking about budgets in the bath and Angie is tired after a night of writing the next bid for follow on funding! We are all involved in the complex process of engaged, impactful participatory research and at times suffer some of the symptoms of this labour intensive and contradictory process. Our current research project involves a scoping study with community partners and young people facing mental health complexity and / or learning difficulty.
It has been argued that research that employs qualitative methods among vulnerable groups, such as people with learning disabilities, must reconcile the conflict between meeting recognized academic criteria, or measures of research ‘strength’, while at the same time appropriately and effectively representing the experiences and needs of vulnerable respondents. This article explores some of the tensions that lie within these objectives and looks at the use of more appropriate, participatory research methods, in this case photographic participation and elicitation techniques, as a way of including vulnerable respondents more effectively in social research studies.
Humour and laughter are socioembodied phenomena which may be evident in interview, ethnographic, or other social research settings. In this paper I argue that we should engage with humour and laughter in our research accounts, rather than simply relegate these themes to the brackets in our transcripts. Drawing upon doctoral research carried out with members of specialist visually impaired walking groups, I show how laughter and humour form a temporary sonic element to the landscapes they pass through and how laughter and humour are used to negotiate the relations between sighted guide and walker, relieve nervousness, and subvert stereotypes. I argue that recog- nition should be given to laughter and humour as both a conscious reflective strategy and a 'nonrepresentational' embodied and contagious phenomenon, for laughter and humour are intimately connected both to the subject positions of walkers with visual impairments and to the embodied, muscular practice of walking itself. I note that, while humour is a useful individual coping strategy that gives people with blindness a sense of liberation from a notion of 'the blind' as subjects of pity, laughter and humour can also betray a certain pessimism - sometimes used as a way of coping with, rather than actually challenging, some of the subtle prejudices that they face as users of rural space.
The notion of arts-based risk is rarely acknowledged outside of art therapy. This paper describes an injury sustained as a result of art activity. The case was subject to legal proceedings which established arts practitioner and organisational negligence. The case was consequently settled out of court for a large sum. The paper reports the legal argument and explores what the process tells us about how art can both help and harm participants. This specifically concerns the power of art to make the subjective seem real and the need for practitioners to able to competently assess participants’ psychological vulnerability to this. The case represents an important milestone in the current arts and health debate, particularly with regard to the protection of the public. Lessons to be learnt for organisations seeking to deliver arts and health projects to vulnerable people are discussed.
The field of arts and health, and associated academic discussion, is beset by a number of interlinked challenges which make it vulnerable to academic dismissal or, at best, poor visibility. One of these is a preoccupation with developing an evidence base of impact. This is compounded by resistance to definitions, disagreement over what constitutes appropriate evidence of success and inadequate consideration of the mechanisms of arts and health practice, as opposed to outcomes. We argue that increased attention should be paid to the description, analysis and theorising of the practice itself as the basis upon which the findings of impact studies can be understood and accepted. A literature review identifies some important emerging themes in community arts and health practice and some lacunae in need of further investigation. We conclude that an interdisciplinary theoretical framework for the practice could make a valuable contribution to the academic status of the field.
The present study examines an aspect of lifestyle that has received little attention, namely creative arts leisure occupations, and explores the opportunities and barriers to participation that confront community-dwelling adults with learning disabilities. A survey of the managers of 34 residential homes in two major cities in the UK was carried out (reflecting a 54% return rate). They reported that art activities (including painting and pottery) were the most commonly available form of creative leisure occupation, and drama the least available. Creative occupations tended to occur in specialist settings, such as day centres, and a minority of residents participated in mainstream community groups and environments. Managers perceived the major barrier to creative leisure participation to be expense (i.e. for the activity itself and for support staff). Further barriers included insufficient staff to accommodate individual's personal interests, transport problems and unwelcoming community resources/attitudes. The results of the study indicate that many residents can engage in art within either mainstream and specialist resources. Other active creative occupations are not as accessible. Given its dependency on the voluntary return of questionnaires, the present survey may have provided a benign view of creative leisure provision. Even so, the barriers that were identified confirm some continuing problems with accessing community/mainstream facilities.
In this paper I explore some of the ways in which people with visual impairments see landscape and participate in visual cultures of landscape apprehension. I draw on ethnographic and interview material, developed while acting as a sighted guide for specialist blind and visually impaired walking groups who visit the landscapes of the Lake District and Peak District in Britain. Through this research material I show how landscape is likely to become present for people with blindness or visual impairment through both their individual capacities for sight and a complex mix of discursive, material, social, and historical relations. Specifically, I argue that there is an intercorporeal, collective dimension to this emergence of landscape and this intercorporeality is evident at both a perceptual and a discursive level. I suggest that future research needs to attend further to how landscape emerges and becomes present through intercorporeal processes.
From a very young age we are told not to stare, and one hallmark of maturation is the ability to resist (or at least hide) our staring behavior. And yet, rarely do we master the impulse. Despite the complicated role it plays in our development, and its unique brand of visual enticement, staring has not been considered before as a suitable object for socio-cultural analysis. What is it about certain kinds of people that makes it impossible to take our eyes off them? Why are some visual stimuli irresistible? Why does staring produce so much anxiety? Drawing on examples from art, media, fashion, history and memoir, Garland-Thomson defines staring, explores the factors that motivate it, and considers the targets and the effects of the stare. A bodily inventory then enumerates how stares actually operate in daily life. A section on "Bodies" focuses on the question of size and scale as key indicators of normalcy, while certain body parts show themselves to be disproportionately arresting, as passages on "Faces" "Hands" and "Breasts" reveal. A concluding chapter on "Beholding" considers the frisson at play between starer and staree and offers an alternative way of understanding visual communication between people. Featuring over forty illustrations, Staring captures the stimulating combination of symbolic, material and emotional factors that make staring so irresistible while endeavoring to shift the usual response to staring, shame, into an engaged self-consideration. Elegant and provocative, this book advances new ways of thinking about visuality and the body that will appeal to readers who are interested in the overlap between the humanities and human behaviors.
An intellectual history of contrasting ideas around the power of the arts to bring about personal and societal change - for better and worse. A fascinating account of the value and functions of the arts in society, in both the private sphere of individual emotions and self-development and public sphere of politics and social distinction. © Eleonora Belfiore and Oliver Bennett 2008. All rights reserved.
What does diversity do? What are we doing when we use the language of diversity? Sara Ahmed offers an account of the diversity world based on interviews with diversity practitioners in higher education, as well as her own experience of doing diversity work. Diversity is an ordinary, even unremarkable, feature of institutional life. Yet diversity practitioners often experience institutions as resistant to their work, as captured through their use of the metaphor of the "brick wall." On Being Included offers an explanation of this apparent paradox. It explores the gap between symbolic commitments to diversity and the experience of those who embody diversity. Commitments to diversity are understood as "non-performatives" that do not bring about what they name. The book provides an account of institutional whiteness and shows how racism can be obscured by the institutionalization of diversity. Diversity is used as evidence that institutions do not have a problem with racism. On Being Included offers a critique of what happens when diversity is offered as a solution. It also shows how diversity workers generate knowledge of institutions in attempting to transform them.
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Disability and Contemporary Performance presents a remarkable challenge to existing assumptions about disability and artistic practice. In particular, it explores where cultural knowledge about disability leaves off, and the lived experience of difference begins. Petra Kuppers, herself an award-winning artist and theorist, investigates the ways in which disabled performers challenge, change and work with current stereotypes through their work. She explores freak show fantasies and 'medical theatre' as well as live art, webwork, theatre, dance, photography and installations, to cast an entirely new light on contemporary identity politics and aesthetics.
Creative arts are understood to be a mediator between positions of social exclusion and of inclusion for marginalised people and places, building self-confidence and strengthening social networks. Although there are undoubted benefits from involvement in creative arts, the author critiques the assumed shift from excluded to included positions. Instead, he adopts the nuanced notion of 'belonging' to reflect the experiences of attachment and desire or yearning for recognition, of one marginal group people with learning disabilities. Drawing on case studies of two creative arts organisations in Edinburgh, Scotland, it is argued that: first, the making of arts objects and performances provides opportunities for embodied and emotional expression, and belonging; second, the act of 'gifting' objects and performances to people in wider society transmits emotions and creativity into nondisabled spaces, with possible outcomes of connection and recognition; and third, the intimate communities and safe spaces where creative art is made provide bases for ventures into public spaces for gifting, and the generation of senses of belonging. The author concludes hopefully, arguing that through the doing of creative arts, people with learning disabilities can transcend the exclusionary landscape (albeit temporarily) and begin to reimagine and transform understandings of learning disability and difference in society.
The paper provides a preliminary attempt to integrate the research traditions in social and natural hazards. Attention is given to institutional and technological hazards and the mechanisms for risk management and prevention of catastrophe. The concepts of competency and dangerousness are integrated into the discussion of risk management, with emphasis given to the insights provided by the clinical and legal literature on the mentally handicapped. The method of fault-tree and event-tree analysis, as used by nuclear engineers, is suggested as a promising approach to the analysis of catastrophe prevention arising from social hazards.
In this paper we argue that a new model of disability is emerging within the literature by disabled people and within disability culture, expressed most clearly by the Disability Arts Movement. For the purposes of discussion we call it the affirmative model. It is essentially a non-tragic view of disability and impairment which encompasses positive social identities, both individual and collective, for disabled people grounded in the benefits of lifestyle and life experience of being impaired and disabled. This view has arisen in direct opposition to the dominant personal tragedy model of disability and impairment, and builds on the liberatory imperative of the social model. Critiques of the latter have been consistently expressed as, or interpreted as, re-affirmations of personal tragedy, particularly in relation to impairment. In this analysis the affirmation model addresses the limitations of the social model through the realisation of positive identity encompassing impairment, as well as disability.
This paper discusses some ethical and methodological issues which arose in a recent study examining the exercise of choice by people with learning difficulties. The research aimed to examine in detail the choice-making process, and to explore ways of involving people with learning difficulties both as respondents and as contributors to the study design. Various dilemmas were encountered-including how to gain informed consent from people with profound impairment, the risk of intrusion when conducting research in people's own homes, and the dangers of raising expectations of continuing friendship. The importance of accountability when analysing data and disseminating findings is highlighted. A Research Advisory Group, including two people with learning difficulties, was set up to give guidance on the study. Steps were taken, but not enough, to facilitate their involvement in the meetings. Reflecting on experience gained in this study and on research reported elsewhere, a number of pointers for future research are drawn. These include the need to consider the potential implications of intellectual impairment for involvement in the research process.
This paper reports on the second phase of a research project to determine a British occupational therapy definition of client-centred practice. Sixty-seven occupational therapists participated in nine focus groups, structured according to the nominal group technique. These groups involved therapists working in social services, mental health, learning disabilities, paediatrics, neurology, a wheelchair service and with elderly clients and there were two groups in general medicine.
A hundred and sixty-five components of client-centred practice were generated and subsequently analysed to form seven themes. Frequencies and medians of the components ranked in the top five were also calculated. In addition, three questions were asked to solicit opinions on the definition that was created in the first phase of this study and frequencies were also determined from these responses. All these data were used to inform revisions to the definition created in phase one. This revised definition was then reviewed by members of the Council of the College of Occupational Therapists as the final validating group. The resulting final definition will enable therapists to determine whether or not they are using a client-centred approach.
Accessible summary
We are people with and without learning disabilities doing research together.
In this paper we talk about the good bits and the bad bits of doing research together.
Summary
In our paper we talk about what it is like to be a group of people with and without learning disabilities researching together. We describe the process of starting and maintaining the research group and reflect on the obstacles that we have come across, and the rewards such research has brought us. Lastly we put forward some ideas about the role of professionals in such a group that we hope people might find useful.
In this paper, the role of the nondisabled researcher who supports inclusive research in learning disability is explored. The author argues for more transparency about the role in order to highlight the challenges of working inclusively on research projects, the real contribution of people with learning difficulties to research, and the training/support implications of working inclusively.
There is a lack of literature and research supporting the use of art as therapy in occupational therapy. In spite of this, art as a therapeutic modality is a frequently used tool. In an attempt to define the rationale for using art in therapy, this paper reviews selected literature to gain an understanding of the historical use of art and the current status of art used by occupational therapists in mental health settings.
The term outsider art has been used to describe work produced exterior to the mainstream of modern art by certain self-taught visionaries, spiritualists, eccentrics, recluses, psychiatric patients, criminals, and others beyond the perceived margins of society. Yet the idea of such a raw, untaught creativity remains a contentious and much-debated issue in the art world. Is this creative instinct a natural, innate phenomenon, requiring only the right circumstancesâsuch as isolation or alienationâin order for it to be cultivated? Or is it an idealistic notion projected onto the art and artists by critics and buyers? David Maclagan argues that behind the critical and commercial hype lies a cluster of assumptions about creative drives, the expression of inner worlds, originality, and artistic eccentricity. Although outsider art is often presented as a recent discovery, these ideas, Maclagan reveals, belong to a tradition that goes back to the Renaissance, when the modern image of the artist began to take shape. In Outsider Art, Maclagan challenges many of the current opinions about this increasingly popular field of art and explores what happens to outsider artists and their work when they are brought within the very world from which they have excluded themselves.
Points of Contact brings together contributions by leading writers, artists, scholars, and critics to provide a remarkably broad and consistently engaging look at the intersection of disability and the arts. The contributions include essays and memoirs by a wide range of disabled and nondisabled writers, including Bell Gale Chevigny, Sandra Gilbert, Joseph Grigely, Georgina Kleege, Victoria Ann Lewis, Carol Poore, Tobin Siebers, and Rosemarie Garland Thomson among others; poetry by Brooke Horvath, Joan Seliger Sidney, William Stafford, and others; fiction by Stephen Dixon, Michael Downs, Georgina Kleege, Dallas Wiebe, and others. The collection covers a broad range of subjects and concerns that lie at the intersection of disability and the arts, including fetal alcohol syndrome, education, and identity; representations of disability in the visual arts and the complicated position of the disabled spectator; the impact of cancer on the patient and the caregiver; the similarities between beauty pageants and freak shows; Alzheimer's disease; prosthetic devices; the mechanized disabled body; disability and performance; and profiles of Helen Keller and Annie Sullivan, Christopher Reeve, Franklin Roosevelt, and sado-masochistic performance artist Bob Flanagan. Points of Contact: Disability, Art, and Culture was originally published as a special double issue of the well regarded literary magazine, the Michigan Quarterly Review. Now available in a single, convenient paperback volume, its broad range of perspectives on disability and its entertaining and engaging selections will appeal to general readers, scholars, and students alike. Susan Crutchfield is lecturer in English, University of Michigan. Marcy Epstein teaches literature at The Roeper School and women's studies at Henry Ford Community College.
This article compares the composition and characteristics of the social networks of 14 people with learning disabilities with those of 24 of their paid support staff. In doing so the article not only establishes the differences in the diversity, durability and density of each group\'s social set, but highlights the disparity in perspective that the service users and the support staff have about their shared relationships. This is followed by a sociological discussion of why those with learning disabilities perceive their support staff as friends, while the support staff seldom consider the service users in this way, preferring to view themselves as facilitators to these individuals\' friendships. The article concludes by discussing the consequences of the staff and service users\' differing perspectives about their relationships, in terms of the tensions it generates in staff about their caring role and the effect it may have upon those with learning disabilities\' broader social inclusion.
This paper reflects upon treatments of the body in both disability studies and disability geography, taking seriously the impaired body in its immediate materiality: in its flesh-and-boneness, in how it deals with everyday practices in everyday places, as this embodiment is 'voiced' by disabled people themselves. The paper discusses Hansen's in-depth research with a sample of disabled women living in Scotland and Canada, teasing out their experiences of coping with impaired bodies in non-disabled spaces. Particular attention is given to their own bodily practices, complete with 'timings and spacings' that may depart from what is supposedly normal for non-disabled people. It is also shown how these women resist ableist accommodations that entail both modifying external spaces and 'correcting' bodily differences. The paper concludes by identifying a key but neglected step within the 'politics' of better accommodating disabled people: namely, shifting the emphasis from (aiding disabled people in) "doing things 'normally'" to (underlining for all of 'us') simply the "normality of doing things differently". Copyright (c) 2007 by the Royal Dutch Geographical Society KNAG.
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