So, are partnerships enabling creativity to flourish for those with special needs?

Drawing together the examples described in this blog, the answer for me is a resounding ‘yes they are’. But the more objective answer is more complex, as I have found that through enabling creativity to flourish for those with special support needs, there are also significant benefits to health and general well-being; there is an intrinsic link between the two outcomes. This doesn’t mean that the role of art is diminished in any way and this is well summed up in a quote from the Pallant House Social Impact Study:

“I felt useless, worthless, hopeless, all of those things! But this has taught me that my art, first and foremost must be for me. It doesn’t matter if nobody else likes it, the most important thing is that I’m actually being creative.” Community Programme Participant, December 2015. (Potter, S. (2016), p.24)

Before I started this research, I assumed that the focus of most workshops would be centred on well being and the social benefits of coming together to make art. It transpires that, for both the participants and facilitators, there is so much more that is about art practice and its influence . And, as a volunteer, immersed in several workshops, the influence on art practice has rubbed off on me, giving me ideas and the confidence to explore the theme of reminiscence in my own art practice - something I’d had bubbling under the surface but hadn’t quite allowed out before then.

Also, I found out things that diverge from the main question and would need more space to describe well. In essence, these are about the differences between how and at what pace galleries along the south coast are responding to the ACE vision; differences that are created through demographics, history, board and management views and, for all galleries, the need to serve all their audiences and be financially viable. It was clear that you couldn’t pick up a model that was working well in one place and simply impose it on another as it probably wouldn’t work.

A welcome discovery was that many of the organisations were interested in artist career development, beyond simply making or viewing art, and had broadened their activities to enable learning in skills areas such as curation, workshop facilitation and research. For example Outside In and De La Warr deliver this and Fabrica offers a number of resources for artists and, by making sure they are accessible for those with support needs, they’re ensuring every artist that wishes to can access them.

The benefits of the partnerships I explored are very clear, with the bringing together of skills, experience and values enabling workshops to happen and also ensuring a range of benefits for participants. I found evidence of really positive collaboration and more than one interviewee talked about the active commitment of individuals being a driving force for making partnerships work well.

It does feel that the visual arts have a significant part to play in enabling the creativity of those with special needs to flourish - though in some ways that phrase now feels inadequate to describe some of my discoveries. So I’ll finish with the words of Alex Schady of CSM, responding to my query about the ‘while you’re at art school’ language he used in workshops:

"I want the group to come to an art school and I want them to be art students for a few weeks actually. I think there’s a romance about the art school and I’m so passionate about art education as a different way of being in the world that I love the idea that we might bring that to people who might not otherwise have access to it."

Alex Schady and art students at CSM workshop, April 2022