The support worker discussed with his clients how to address each of
their barriers – such as social phobia or communication challenges.
Working with clients who say that they usually do not like to talk to
strangers, he remarked that when meeting with him at his office, they
were comfortable with talking to everyone there. This provided an
example to counter his clients’ argument that they are uncomfortable
meeting new people with a demonstration of how slow integration into the
community can actually work – one small step at a time. Furthermore,
the support worker convinced his clients to meet other artists and test
whether this would help them become more comfortable once they realized
that others have goals and interests similar to theirs.
Another lesson that the support worker learned was to avoid taking for
granted the possibility that his disabled clients would naturally
initiate follow up. This was made clear at a later network meeting,
assuming his clients would look up information about the next gathering,
however this did not happen and they missed the meeting.
Uncovering gaps and misconceptions
A community event organiser remarked: “last year I organised more
than 25 community events attended by over 50,000 people. We don’t have
any policy to specifically include marginalised people and our reporting
does not include such categories either. We do have a Disability
Strategy, but I have no idea what it means on the ground”. This gap is
yet unaddressed by community leaders.
The data also pointed to unexpected reactions to the project and shed a
new light on what to pay attention to when working in the community
sector, as opposed to a service provider to disabled people. Following a
number of positive meetings with the local community arts organization,
we realised that they had assumed that because we were working with
differently-abled artists, our focus was, actually, on disability. They
asked what the next meetings will focus on: “What is your next
topic after disability ”? This was a surprising question to us but it
brought home the idea that even when we think we have shared inclusive
values to the best of our understanding, there still can be
misunderstandings. Clarifying that disability is not a ‘topic’ we
explained. The intention was to build an artists network with the help
of other artists, offering a space where a wide range of people,
disabled and non-disabled would focus on their professional art practice
- like getting their work in the best galleries and exhibitions. The
lesson we learnt was to pay closer attention to possible misconceptions
– even amongst our closest allies.
Early interventions to foster
engagement
Running a series of micro-interventions bringing people together in
creative activity, we were surprised by the level and quality of energy
liberated during these encounters. Our data showed that this new energy
was then reinvested in making space for new encounters with people
different to oneself. Some mainstream artists reported a personal effort
to engage with others who previously may have felt marginalised. Steve,
a graffiti artist explains that the reason why he loves the hip hop
culture is because it is rooted in participation and collaboration:
“I take on at-risk youth as my apprentices and show them how to
harness their creative potential to become recognised for what they can
offer.” The artist remarked that such inclusive sparks happening at an
individual level need to be extended to the macro level, and that
community event organizers need to change their practices to involve
disabled people in an intentional way (Janson, 2013).
Spelling out the gains
From the perspective of the disabled artist, engaging in an organized
event such as an Arts Trail reduced some of the ‘risks’ in engagement
and was fertile ground for disabled artists to open up to the idea of
connecting with others based on commonality of interest. Following the
new experience of travelling together with a facilitator for 3 days to
meet a large number of artists in their studio, the disabled artist
reported gaining some understanding of the benefit of short term
networking activity as opposed to developing in-depth relationships.
Finding the common
grounds
This methodology allowed us to delve into the reasons why mainstream
people may connect to others with a disability. The answers that
participants shared with us were about how they identified commonalities
with the disabled artists. Mainstream artists for instance repeatedly
noted that they enjoyed spending time with the young disabled artist
because they recognized themselves at his age through their common
interests in art – not through his disability. This reinforced the fact
that it is what people share that brings them together. One well-known
mainstream established artist kept some contact with the disabled
artists after they visited him in his studio. Others exchanged emails
with a potential to sharing future opportunities to collaborate in joint
exhibitions or art events. These encounters may bear further fruit but
we are unable to report on these yet.
Crafting shared creative
encounters
We found that in working side by side on creative projects, people
experienced first hand some moving quality of authentic human
connection. Getting to know each other better lays the potential to
reducefear and the negative attitudes that go with prejudice as well as
provide marginalised people with healing and participative experiences
(Hall, 2009). As a follow up to these encounters, participants crafted
collaboratively their next involvement stage: planning a community
garden as a contribution to their communities.
A new experience of
togetherness
Amongst the disability group there was a great sense of excitement as
for some it was their first visit to the local university campus.