How Arts Council England is supporting neurodiverse artists

Five questions with... Project Art Works

In November 2022, we announced increased funding for Project Art Works through our National Portfolio. In our final piece as part of Learning Disability Week, we caught up with their Director, Kate Adams, to talk about their work promoting more diverse representation of neurodiverse artists and makers, and those who care for them.

 

 

Hi Kate, thanks for chatting with us. Tell us more about Project Art Works.

Project Art Works is an independent creative studio complex based in Hastings. We collaborate with neurodivergent children and adults, families and circles of support to make and show art. Our practice intersects art and care, responding to neurodivergence, its gifts and impacts. Challenging paradigms of inclusion, it spans direct practical and holistic support, film, events, projects and exhibitions.

Since being shortlisted for the Turner Prize in 2021 and exhibiting at Documenta fifteen in 2022 we have also aquired a new building next door to our studio site in Hastings. We are embarking on a substantial refurbishment of our existing studios – made possible through an Arts Council England capital award. This will provide two new fully accessible and flexible studios enabling us to increase opportunities for neurodivergent artists to make work and creatively flourish.  

 

Siddharth Gadiyar, Project Art Works studio, 2019 ©Project Art Works

 

"Going to Project Art Works makes us feel that we are not alone and that there are other parents and children out there and a community that foster acceptance rather than conformity."

 

Why is your work so important?

It is critical to make space to facilitate independent, creative practice for neurominorities and their circles of support. Cuts in social care have reduced opportunities for people to be represented within their communities and on their own terms. Project Art Works provides space, support, advocacy (when wanted) and collaborative opportunities for people to take part and represent themselves in art and culture. This has a profoundly positive impact on the quality of life of marginalised groups and diversifies the stories and experiences represented in art and culture.

 

"In our experience the disabling factors are always in the environment – attitudinal, physical, or cultural."

 

What does it mean to the artists, makers, families, and support circles that you work with?

It felt fitting that this response should come from someone who knows best, a parent of one of the people we work with:

“[The studio programme at Project Art Works] brings me peace in the knowledge that there is a place I can take my son without him being judged or me being judged as a parent."

“With extensive cuts to any social support for M, we as a family are almost unsupported in terms of addressing his needs on a daily basis. We are unable to discuss M’s needs with ‘outsiders’ as no one in a professional capacity spends a sufficient amount of time with him to get to know him."

“At Project Art Works the individual artist is keen to get to know M and I can discuss and observe with the artist, which makes me see him from a different perspective. I have started to notice and learn things about M that I would not otherwise have experienced."

“Going to Project Art Works makes us feel that we are not alone and that there are other parents and children out there and a community that foster acceptance rather than conformity.”

 

Tom Lepora and Aida Ashall, Project Art Works studio, 2019 ©Project Art Works

 

 

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