Contribution impact indicator: Invitation to exhibit the
creative works
Our approach was guided by contemporary social integration thinking as
summarised by Cummins and Lau (2003) and Armstrong (2014) as relative to
the groups people want to belong to, the valued roles they can play
(Wolfensberger, 1998) or the interests they share with other mainstream
people – in this case the art community.
In their interviews, participants have explained how they have felt a
sense of belonging through these encounters. As noted by Armstrong
(2014), sense of belonging is interrelated with notions of community
connectedness and social capital. This research has attempted to surface
components of social inclusion in a range of dimensions. We have,
however, gone further than interviewing participants to assess their
experiences – we have looked for evidence of social inclusion where
they may be found. This supports Kendrick and Sullivan’s argument (2010)
that a contemporary definition of social inclusion needs to clearly
emphasise authentic valued social participation, however arduous it is
to appraise. Our community partners proposed, for the work produced by
these encounters, to provide the backdrop for a national community
gathering (a ‘hui’ in the Maori language), focused on using creativity
as a community development channel. Our artists’ works have secured a
home and will represent a cause, in a statement that is political as
much as personal. In this exhibition, the names of each contributing
artist will appear in one list, symbolically bringing each contributor
into the hall and sending out a message of ‘on par’ contribution in a
concrete way to represent inclusion.
The second contribution impact indicator was that as a result of this
intervention, disabled people asked the group to continue working
together to co-develop a community garden for residents to contribute to
community building. We take both these impact indicators as noteworthy
contributors to people feeling a sense of belonging as a result of
activities that involve mutual relationships (Hall, 2009).
Mobilisation to change professional practice
Our first learning was about the disabling impact of mobility and
transport. One of the poignant obstacles we faced in this work was the
role logistics play in enabling community-based activities. We were
unconvinced by the argument put forward by some disability support
services, who offered no transport to the people they serve because
their interventions was to encourage disabled people to independently
partake in community life. Whilst we agree that this is a valuable goal
in the long-term, we argue that the measure of social participation
could not rely on transport independence at too early a stage on
people’s path to social independence. At the point where our concern is
to help people overcome initial fears and reluctance, this would add an
unnecessary obstacle to participation. Indeed no one from this service
did travel independently to join in our encounters. Those disability
service providers welcomed collaboration with our project, , having
organized transport for their clients because they strongly identified
with social inclusion goals. They supported the gradual approach, first
involving enjoyment of the new situation itself before making claims
about the intrinsic value of independently getting to a new activity.
Any attempt therefore, to increase social inclusion, must take into
account how logistics barriers are to be overcome.
Our second learning is about the need to engage differently with
community development staff. Community building staff is so busy with
logistics and organisation that inclusiveness can become yet another
task during otherwise crammed workloads. Even when frontline employees
are passionate about broadening participation, they need to invest extra
energy towards inclusive outcomes – which may then go un-noticed and
un-reported (Cobigo et al, 2012). Our discussions with community events
organizers, uncovered the lack of systems to identify and reach out to
marginalized groups, e.g Intentional Invitations. They also have no
method to verify that marginalized groups’ integration in changing. The
paradox is that staff could use large events’ organising to leverage and
impact community integration. At the outset of the project, they had
asked for our help in designing ‘Best Practices’ that could be used by
their different teams. We interpreted this request as taking ownership
over part of the inclusion process with the potential for some change to
happen over the participation continuum. On the mainstream side of
society, it is about the extent to which community event organisers
publicise their events beyond the ‘usual’ channels and the extent to
which marginalised groups feel welcome and invited. Elsewhere on the
continuum, it is the actions – not words – from the disability sector
that need to be scrutinised. The websites of disability service and
mental health providers have carefully formulated mission statements
that talk about community participation. In reality there are
substantial differences in how they implement their vision to create
authentic community participation - as opposed to token participation.
It is arguable, whether the funding for service providers is efficiently
used, if the ball of social inclusion is dropped by not fully enabling
participation of target groups, thereby negating much of the good work
and effort already in place.
Reflecting about spaces
Label free spaces are temporary intentional spaces, where visibility is
for once lowered. Everyone has the potential to be someone with a label,
but people are seen for their actions and not their identity markers.
Even people that identified with disability labels said that they loved
the concept and application of a label free space. Label free spaces
solve the problem of wanting to self-identify, whilst also feeling that
this separates or stigmatises people.
Some of these interviews changed our own perspectives, because
surprisingly, most people with a disability liked and identified with
the term disability. This begs the question, whether identification with
the word has come from a normalisation of the narrative from the
mainstream. Have we, as a society, just projected what we think is right
for people with disabilities? It is already a problem because the
disability group tended to agree with a lot of the things said - the
question ‘what do you think of the word ‘disability’? Do you like it?’
mostly leant an affirmative answer during our collaborative discussions.
“We are always struggling with my brother: should we disclose that has
a disability background? He has never identified with the disability
community- not in school, and not out of school. Perhaps he sees that
there is a clear segregation in society, and that he doesn’t want to be
part of that.”(Melissa)
This matched the experiences of others who also didn’t want to be
involved with the disability community, in spite of having been assigned
a label, for example‘intellectual disability’. When someone transcends
the label of intellectual disability, it shows that they have been
critical about their identify formation. Are these our leaders in
‘middle spaces’ ?
We were interested in finding out how both parties can start closing the
attitude/behaviour gap. It is a movement requiring parties on either
side to engage on the bridge and move towards each other. Sam is the
father of an artist who once was marginalised: “We must look for
solutions that do more than ‘bridge the gap’ but strive to create an
overlap so that no one falls behind”. There is however a great ethical
responsibility on mainstream society to both initiate and follow up with
disabled people. Given that disabled people have less experience of
choice and control than their non-disabled counterpart, it would be a
valuable contribution for the latter to understand and act on the need
to follow up – perhaps more than they would be used to when instigating
change in a non-disabled context. Fragile early successes could lead to
yet more disappointments and renewed feelings of isolation. In order to
avoid setting expectations that may be unmet, action must be purposely
taken to build on initial achievements – until new behaviour patterns
can set. The process of initiating and following through, however is no
different to spreading innovation in service development, it takes place
in ‘interactive spaces’ (Nind, 2011) and is certainly a pivotal part of
how our changing social services can mesh with our community development
services to create more inclusive societies for the benefit of all its
citizens.