Arts Disability Network

Guidelines for arts disability network are up! Please bear these in mind when you are communicating with the team and other people in the group. Arts Disability Network is a part of the Intercultural Roots network. This project is currently funded by The London Community Foundation (Adobe UK Community Fund).

Next Wednesday we make space for feeling rage and grief, our need for rest and the possibility of joy in these wild times. Neurodivergent, long term sick or otherwise disabled? Creative and / or work in the arts? Looking for community, understanding, and somewhere to let some of the current crazies move through you? Join us!

We have another free Making Space session for you this month! Create or work on anything you've been putting off, knowing there are others around you doing the same. Share if you want. Camera on or off. Previous attendees have got to know new equipment, made zines, taken photos, tidied their studio, and much more. Whatever happens (including naps and cups of tea) is the right thing. Tickets are available via the link in our bio. Arts Disability Network is a part of the Intercultural Roots network. This project is currently funded by the Lloyds Community Foundation Funds.

Join us as we connect to our bodies to find creativity, care and solidarity. We will make space for grief, for rage, for joy, for rest. We’ll practice some simple practices that help us connect with ourselves, our needs, and what lights us up. Our society has taught most of us on some level that experiencing low energy equates to being lazy and incompetent. When (as society has taught us) we shame ourselves for needing rest, we are more likely to experience rest itself as exhausting and less likely to find restoration. Come as you are, all exercises will be optional and offered with adaptations. We will support ourselves by feeling our grief AND being kind to ourselves and finding the little joys. Alongside her work running ADN Myra Stuart is a somatic practitioner who uses her practice to tend to her chronic illness and supports many disabled clients, her work is adaptive and responsive. She rejects perfectionism and wellness rhetoric whilst knowing from her own experience that the worlds somatics opens up can be for everyone. Image Description: A yellow to pink faded background with a circular picture of Myra in the middle. Myra has shoulder length grey hair, a bright floral print dress and is smiling at the camera with a woodland background behind. Above Myra’s picture is “Somatics for radical joy and rest”. Underneath the photo is “With Myra Wednesday 13th May 5pm-6.30pm.

We are very excited to announce our Artist of the Month for April Taya Tinsley Bio: My name is Taya, and I am a freelance multi-disciplinary artist, currently working with the medium of photography to document urban environments across the North West. I have a particular focus on the less 'flattering' aspects of life, hoping to frame them in the way I see them- as exciting extensions of environments that are well-used by the communities. I find these environments tremendously inspiring, drawing inspiration from the honesty and unrestricted joy they symbolise to me. Chippy Window, Blackpool, 2019. This photograph was taken through a chippy window, while quietly observing an average dinner service on a Saturday evening in November. The chippy was particularly busy, even for a little backstreet, as the Blackpool Illuminations were on. I loved capturing the routine and comfortable social interactions taking place, as people maneuvered in this liminal space, already halfway home and hungry, just dropping in for something salty and fried before they went on their way. Image description: A photograph, taken through a chip shop window from outside. There is a woman facing away from the camera on the right hand side, taking orders from customers. She wears a rainbow lanyard, has a tattoo behind her ear, and has her light-coloured hair in a bun. On the left hand side is a man in a red wind-breaker coat and bike helmet, resting his hand on his hand, waiting at the counter. There is a jar of pickles on the counter. There are two other figures in the background, who work in the chippy, In the foreground is a greasy window, open at the top to provide a clear view into the chippy. The chippy is decorated in Union Jacks. Would you like to be considered for Artist of the Month? Then please fill out the form which is available via the link in our bio. If this form is not accessible to you then please contact me on [email protected]. Arts Disability Network is a part of the Intercultural Roots network. This project is currently funded by The London Community Foundation (Adobe UK Community Fund).

We have another free Making Space session for you next month! Create or work on anything you've been putting off, knowing there are others around you doing the same. Share if you want. Camera on or off. Previous attendees have got to know new equipment, made zines, taken photos, tidied their studio, and much more. Whatever happens (including naps and cups of tea) is the right thing. Tickets are available via the link in our bio. Arts Disability Network is a part of the Intercultural Roots network. This project is currently funded by The London Community Foundation (Adobe UK Community Fund).

We are very excited to announce our Artist of the Month for March - Arleen Jackson ‘Ways to Grow in the Shade’, is a cyanotype print on watercolour paper (29 x 42cm); created with the intention to represent the expansive experience of being in my own garden when I am usually mostly confined to home and often bed, by chronic illness. Illuminated in white against a midnight-blue background, is an image of a woman in her wheelchair, sitting amongst white imprints of ferns while a circular white moon shines from above. The ferns were picked from under my wheelchair ramp where they thrive in the shade, the moon was created from an old coin belonging to my grandparents and the female wheelchair user template was crafted with pen and knife. Arlene Jackson’s artistic practice spans creative writing, critical commentary, still photography, cyanotype and watercolour to create works which examine embodied disabled/chronically ill narratives. Through these mediums, she centres her own experience of chronic illness/disability, exploring themes of power, gender, in/exclusion, connection and environmental precarity. As a disabled artist, she is interested in the representation of mobility aids as a bodily extension rather than objects of an external ableist gaze, expressing the ways in which a slowing down of the body in both the natural and suburban worlds, brings focus to the adaptive self in an unsettling environment. Arlene lives in Glasgow, Scotland and has published both creatively and critically, most recently in The Polyphony, Ink, Sweat and Tears and Disabled Tales. Would you like to be considered for Artist of the Month? Then please fill out the form in the link on our bio. If this form is not accessible to you then please contact me on [email protected]. Arts Disability Network is a part of the Intercultural Roots network. This project is currently funded by The London Community Foundation (Adobe UK Community Fund).

After a brief hiatus, Artist of the Month is back up and running. Thanks to funding we have funding in the short term for our hugely successful competition.  As a reintroduction:  Artist of the Month is our way of  showing off the amazing talent that we have in the network. Members can submit their artwork and it will be entered  for random selection with one artist being picked every month. That person’s art will then be posted on our social media accounts as well as on our  Basecamp.  We strongly believe that artists should be paid for using their work, and so because of that  artists will be paid a small stipend of £50. If you would like to submit your art, you can do so by filling out the form via the link in our bio. Arts Disability Network is a part of the Intercultural Roots network. This project is currently funded by the Lloyds Bank Foundation.

A practical, access-led workshop for disabled artists who want a clearer understanding of different ways to fund their work. The session will respond to the needs of the network, but will likely explore a range of funding routes (not just grants), with a particular focus on non–Arts Council England options, access support when applying for funding, and within applications. The workshop will be shaped in response to the group’s needs, so please complete the short survey [link to be shared shortly].  Kate McStraw (she/her) is a disabled arts producer, writer and access worker. She has extensive experience supporting disabled artists to access funding across a wide range of art forms, including theatre, dance, circus, visual arts, socially engaged practice and heritage arts. Kate has written and co-written successful funding applications to Arts Council England, Unlimited, National Lottery Community Fund, Innovate UK, Heritage Lottery Fund and a range of trusts, foundations and commissioning bodies, working on projects ranging from small seed grants to large multi-partner awards. Alongside producing and bid writing, she regularly delivers training and workshops on access, leadership and funding, grounded in the social model of disability and a social justice approach. Kate has previously delivered a commissioned funding workshop series for Paraorchestra, focused on demystifying funding for disabled musicians, access within applications, and different ways of supporting artistic work. Arts Disability Network is a part of the Intercultural Roots network. This project is currently funded by the Lloyds Bank Foundation.

Do you struggle to find balance at work and home? Learning a framework to help you work out what is Important and what just... isn't can really free up some mental headspace. This will give you time to get more done and still feel well rested. Come along to learn all about how to make priority frameworks work for you! Tickets available via the link in our bio under ‘ADN Events’ Arts Disability Network is a part of the Intercultural Roots network. This project is currently funded by The London Community Foundation (Adobe UK Community Fund).

Unfortunately we are having to pause our Artist of the Month programme. You can find more information about this decision on these images. The gallery of previous Artist of the Month selections are still available on this Instagram page and on our Basecamp. Arts Disability Network is a part of the Intercultural Roots network. This project is currently funded by The London Community Foundation (Adobe UK Community Fund).

Unfortunately tonight's workshop on Playful Somatics is going to be postponed due to the facilitator being unwell. If you had signed up to attend this workshop you will be receiving an email on Eventbrite about this postponement, however we wanted to put a notice out on Instagram as well in case people missed the email. We are hoping to rearrange this workshop for early February and will keep you posted with updates. Thank you for your understanding Arts Disability Network is a part of the Intercultural Roots network. This project is currently funded by The London Community Foundation (Adobe UK Community Fund).