Contemporary arts practices shaped by the interests and lived experiences of people with profound learning disabilities
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he Ideas Team explores the inner worlds of people with profound learning disabilities. Our ambition is to radically interpret these different ways of being through unique artworks that positively impact on the individual’s quality of life. Through observing the most intricate responses and taking time to share and understand awareness of each person, beautiful and innovative practice is emerging. In the Ideas Team collaboration is key; artists, the individual, their families, care workers and invited specialists work
together to grow ideas, defining the nature of each working partnership. New forms of non-verbal communication begin to form and through time and patience, doors slowly open to expansive sensorial worlds and more relevant ways of caring. The Ideas Team is creating a quiet revolution in the daily lives of the people we work with and those who work with them. Through creating collaborative models of practice, the Ideas Team signals a new way of working with and caring for this highly marginalised group of people.
“Many times (within The Ideas Teams) we are inspired by the individual and what they have to teach us about who they are. This has changed our perceptions of people with profound learning disabilities... It feels like the individuals we work with are starting to tell us that we have at last got it.” Liz Davidson Day Services Manager (Learning Disabilities)
“The positive impact and differences Artlink activities have made to Donald and others seems unique to us.” Parent
The Projects
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Singing Buildings
endy Jacob is an artist and researcher, concerned with expanding the sensory dimensions of art, including her research on the tactility of sound for the hearing impaired.
In 2008 she founded and led the Autism Studio at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT); developing new and creative responses to living with autism.
For the Ideas Team, Wendy wants to make a building sing. She has spent the past two years, working closely with care staff and families to identify and compile sounds that interest, stimulate or excite the individuals they care for. The artist discovered that some people liked to feel a sound as much as they liked to hear it, so vibration has become a key element in this work. This has encouraged the more sedentary individuals to begin to explore their environment in new ways.
Wendy’s aim is to create a series of hot spots where people can lean against a wall, or sit on a floor, and ‘hear’ these songs and sounds through subtly vibrating surfaces. Allowing people to move safely through a space on their own terms. For some people this will be a first time experience.
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Collaborative Environments
rtist Laura Aldridge and designer Laura Spring, regularly collaborate on projects with people with profound learning disabilities. Over many years, they have amassed a detailed understanding of how to
encourage participation through play. They will create experiences and objects which invite people to get lost in the nuances of a sensory experience, completely absorbing the individual’s attention.
To open up possibilities and perspectives, the artists have invited new artists to think about objects and spaces which mesmerise. To this end Charlotte Prodger will make a Dream Machine; Lauren Gault will create objects which merge touch with light and water; Yvonne Mullock is developing a series of humorous interactive
costumes. Alongside this the design practice, Old School Fabrications are working with care staff to design a flexible space that changes to suit the needs of each user. The overarching aim is quite simply, to create the ultimate playground for people with profound learning disabilities.
“We are focusing on our activities within the workshops and how we work with particular individuals. through the materials we use and the experiences we have we are trying to make visible the fleeting moments that happen when least expected.� Laura Aldridge Artist
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Rethinking Audiences
cotland’s contemporary music ensemble, Red Note Ensemble have investigated four very different personal relationships to sound. This collective of musicians explored the sound sensitivities of people with profound autism
and additional support needs. They have begun to work with responses to sound; pitch, tone, rhythm, tempo, space and timing. They discovered that by encouraging improvisation, new forms of conversation emerged.
In the next stage of their project, composers will collaborate with individuals and musicians to ‘score’ these conversations, where equity of involvement, empathy, observation and experimentation form the basis of a new composition. This presents the composers with the interesting challenge
of creating music and performances in which the audience and the musicians are one. Promoting collaborations, based on the wider sensibilities of people with profound learning disabilities. Where ‘them and us’ has no meaning and very different ways of being within a performance are given equal space and value.
The Projects
Sensorium
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rtist, Steve Hollingsworth explores the tensions between sound, light and time. His work is influenced by the profoundly different ways of being he encounters through his long-standing work with people in Artlink sensory workshops.
The Sensorium is an interactive light and sound interface that currently exists in prototype form. Built upon a profound belief in the potential of the individual to be our teacher, it is continually informed and re-formed through collaborative work with three individuals with profound learning disabilities.
Steve will further extend the capacity of the Sensorium combining ideas from philosophy, aesthetics and new developments in vision science with the sensory sensibilities of an extended group of people with profound learning disabilities.
The completed Sensorium will provide individuals who are 100% reliant on others for everything, with the complete freedom to change their own experience of sound and light.
The Projects
Slowing Down Time
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elly Dobson is an artist and engineer with a background in medicine. Her work at MIT and Google explores the relationships between people and machines. Kelly has a particular
interest in making vehicles that can enhance the ways people with profound autism communicate with and understand their immediate environments. Sensory overload making communication almost impossible.
Kelly is currently working with Scottish based artists Kevin McPhee and Francesca Nobilucci to research with three individuals, the proposed function and preferred materials of each machine. So far, the materials of choice are wood, wool and cardboard. Merging hi and lo-tech elements, Kelly will combine her technical know-how with the very particular making skills of each individual, to create vehicles that reduce over stimulation and encourage interaction.
In each vehicle, the user will interact with the outside world, on their own terms and in their own very particular time.
Next Steps We are now at a crucial moment as the work developed through each Ideas Team is ready to come to fruition. The Ideas Team will culminate in a large-scale exhibition and international conference at the Tramway in Glasgow in 2018,
with a follow up exhibition at the Baltic, Gateshead in 2019. Highlighting collaborative practices which make real and lasting change to the ways we care. This exhibition will be the first of its kind anywhere in the world.
“Art within this context interrupts the usual mundane normality of existence and allows a mutual language to emerge, it takes time, long duration, commitment and patience, also an open-ended, unframed engagement in art ... can allow new agency to occur.� Steve Hollingsworth Artist
Ideas Team Blog
www.ideasteam.org
Wendy Jacob
www.wendyjacob.com
Laura Aldridge
www.lauraaldridge.co.uk
Laura Spring
www.lauraspring.co.uk
Charlotte Prodger
www.bit.ly/cprodger
Lauren Gault
www.laurengault.co.uk
Yvonne Mullock
www.yvonnemullock.com
Red Note Ensemble
www.rednoteensemble.com
Steve Hollingsworth
www.stevehollingsworth.com
Kelly Dobson
www.bit.ly/kdobson
Kevin McPhee
www.kevinmcphee.co.uk
Francesca Nobilucci
Contact Alison Stirling alison@artlinkedinburgh.co.uk 0131 229 3555
Artlink 13a Spittal Street, Edinburgh, EH3 9DY www.artlinkedinburgh.co.uk
Artlink Edinburgh & the Lothians is registered in Scotland No. 87845 with charitable status Scottish Charity No. SC006845.
www.francescanobilucci.com