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.