Project Art Works operates as a cross-sectoral conduit between the cultural and social sectors. Projects in this strand are influenced by our response to political, social and cultural shifts in attitudes towards inclusion. They are projects that emphasise to the agents of social care, the validity of using art as a vehicle of communication and expression. They demonstrate the relevance of art as an effective consultation tool within the statutory procedures that influence the lives and care of people with complex disabilities, their families and carers.
The theoretical underpinning of our work, and its location within contemporary visual art has been a constantly evolving and dynamic aspect of our artistic vision. The reality of securing that place, however is more problematic. Visual art made by, with and about people who have complex needs is most confined to outreach and education programmes. It is rarely given exposure to wider, mainstream art audiences. Over the next three years, our ambition is to move toward a sustained ‘placing’ of our work within mainstream contemporary art programming in the South East region.
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Tuesday and Thursday Studios
Through our two core Studio days we offer an experimental visual arts lab for individuals with a broad spectrum of needs and ages ranging from 20 to 70. Through 36 weeks of dynamic and stimulating workshops, we encourage high quality interaction through creative dialogues. A key aim of the Studios is to move away from participants just on ‘day release’ from centres. They are not a passive activity that just passes the time, but a goal oriented, challenging and practice based learning process. As such, their ethos and approach differs exponentially from the creative learning opportunities individuals with complex needs all too often encounter.   
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| Mentoring Studios
A focussed studio pilot programme, Mentoring Studios enables participants to develop their personal creative practice alongside an Artist Mentor. A small group of participants that we have worked with over a period of time have been encouraged to extend their practice and to achieve greater independence. The artist mentoring methodology is well established in the work of professional artist practice and we have recreated this for our learning disabled artists. We are recording what happens through this pilot and will disseminate our learning to a wide (mainstream) contemporary art sector, thereby promoting inclusion and understanding of learning disability.   
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| In Transit
A significant award from The Paul Hamlyn Foundation, together with support from East Sussex County Council will enable the voices of 36 young people with complex needs to be heard at the crucial time of their transition from childhood to adult social services. Currently young people with severe intellectual disabilities are too often seen as problems as they require time and skill in order to facilitate meaningful communication. We will support artists of distinction to collaborate with the young people on making films that observe and record them going about their daily lives. Creating a more rounded picture of a young person, the films will be used to broker for them more relevant and specific support services to help enable opportunities for their adult lives that are tailored to their needs and aspirations rather than to what is available in a range of existing (non tailored) services. In Transit embeds creativity, art and film within the assessments, planning and processes of transition.   
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| Art Breaks: Summer Workshops
For children with complex needs, their disadvantage is often compounded during school breaks, which can be extremely isolating and lonely. Families can find it very hard to access appropriate community activities, particularly if they have disabled and non-disabled siblings. Subsequently, during school breaks, children with complex needs may present symptoms of a lack of stimulation and boredom that is beyond their ability to control/overcome. Through our Art Break Summer Workshops we offer a programme of high quality creative workshops to benefit children aged 4-18 with complex needs. The children will be given a unique opportunity to work on a 1:1 basis with highly specialist practicing artists. We run 16 to 20 half day sessions from the end of July to end August working with 5 or 6 severely learning disabled children per session, accompanied by siblings, families/carers.   
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| Turning Point South East
Through dialogues with curators, visual art organisations, artists and galleries we want to ignite an open and exploratory approach to the issues of diversity and excellence in the visual arts. We will work with them to explore ways in which our work can be integrated into mainstream activities, events and exhibitions rather than in education and/or access settings.
Phase 1: Research and Development |
| Nutshell
Over some years we have designed and made mobile constructions that have been used as spaces in which to conduct workshops and show work; these include a Geodesic Dome that has featured in several projects and Imagebox, a four sided projection structure that shows four films simultaneously at reasonably large scale and can be placed wherever there is mobile power. With Nutshell a new project in development, we propose to take the idea of a travelling temporary structure to another level, designing a multi-function, fold out mobile space in which we can curate installations and exhibitions as well as conduct events, film shows and hold workshops. Nutshell embraces the proposition of the ‘experiential’ as transformative through its potential to reach the wider public, as well as increasing the depth and quality of experience for participants and artists through housing sensory environments of sound, construction and moving image that hold and contain narrative and depth. Through Nutshell these other worlds will appear as ‘happenings’, contained and transient in venues from town centres, to gallery car parks or wild open spaces. |
| Archiving
Project Art Works has an extensive and rich archive of media, documentation and works of art accumulated over ten years of project activity. In late 2008 we began digitizing all documentation including photographs of projects, workshops, exhibitions and individual works of art as well as an extensive film archive. We anticipate this process of preparation for cataloguing to take up to a year. At the same time, we are also organizing centralised and bespoke storage systems for physical media – paintings, drawings, prints, slides, objects and installation components. |
| Perceptual Impairment and the Built Environment
Project Art Works has conducted several innovative and investigative projects that focus on how people with complex needs experience built space including: Close to the Wall (Kate Adams/ NESTA/Wellcome Trust 2005) and a major feasibility study for a specialist centre funded by SEEDA and Seaspace, 2007, that included new ways of consulting with people who have severe communication impairments and their families about the impact of built space on creative engagement.   
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| Models of Consultation
We recently completed an in depth consultation for and with Screen South on Youth Screens – a national project aimed at engaging young people in film making. The consultation indicated a need for a more developed approach to consultative approaches with people who have complex cognitive and communication needs that have resonance and depth. Project Art Works has specific expertise in this area. We work alongside speech and language therapists and have developed multi-faceted tools for communication that include augmentative communication symbols and signage, picture and object exchange and the use of film and photography. These methods of augmentative communication are used in conjunction with the deconstruction of standard questionnaires, and areas of consultation that would usually rely on understanding and use of the spoken word.   
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