How are partnerships in the visual arts enabling creativity to flourish for those with special needs?

Two key, personal reasons exist for my deciding on this area of research. One stems from my past career, managing services for health and social care charities, the other from my current involvement in art as I realise a long-held ambition and study for a degree in Fine Art. Eighteen months ago I was very happy to bring these two interests together by signing up to support the workshops run in partnership with arts organisations by charity Arts 4 Dementia. So, when I came across the vision stated by Arts Council England in their latest strategy I was intrigued and wanted to explore more; to find out what other partnerships there were and how they were responding to the following vision:

‘By 2030, we want England to be a country in which the creativity of each of us is valued and given the chance to flourish’

(Let’s Create - Strategy 2020-30, (2020), Arts Council England.

It’s a vision based firmly on inclusion and strengthening communities and is backed up by a clear development plan and significant amounts of funding for institutions and projects, made available through a relationship with the Big Lottery.  

All the key art galleries along the south coast of East and West Sussex receive funding from ACE and so I was curious to discover how they were using the funds to realise the vision. To this end, I researched their websites, annual reports and evaluations to gather broad information about their community programmes, partnerships and organisational objectives. I similarly explored several voluntary organisations who appeared to be working in partnership with one or more of these galleries and I have remained actively involved with Arts 4 Dementia throughout. 

Wanting to get a first hand feel for how each organisation was approaching the work, I requested one-to-one interviews with the community programmes managers at the south coast galleries and the appropriate representative at the voluntary organisations. The majority of requests resulted in online interviews. Interviews were carried out online between February and April 2022 with:

Pallant House Gallery, Chichester: Lucy Padley, Public Programme Manager, Community

Fabrica, Brighton: Clare Hankinson, Audience Development Manager

Towner Gallery, Eastbourne: Esther Collins, Head of Learning

De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill on Sea: Dee Haughney, Head of Learning & Participation

Arts 4 Dementia, UK: Nigel Franklin, Chief Executive Officer (to February 2022)

Central St Martins, London: Alex Schady, Programme Director, Art Programme

Geoff Hands, Brighton: Artist and Art Critic

Outside In, UK: Hannah Whitlock, Artist Development Programme Manager

Approaches were made to and followed up with Project Artworks (Hastings), Superstar Arts (Worthing), Rocket Artists (Brighton) and Hastings Contemporary Gallery but I was unable to secure interviews.

Given the amount of factual information gathered, this is made available through the websitewhich provides summaries of projects and activities and links through, for example, to each organisation’s website.

Discussion and findings, particularly those forthcoming from interviews and secondary research, is drawn together within the blog so that common themes and other points of interest can be explored and compared. As a public online publication, the collated information, research findings and an option to comment will be available to those who view it. It will be published as a website available to all.