My Original 'Mentoring' proposal for Fabrica

Outline - Naomi Kendrick Mentoring Scheme
Potential Audience: Artists, educators, museum and gallery professionals and volunteers, and staff from community organisations that provide services (including arts activities) for visually impaired and blind people.

Aims
•    To promote (through creative thinking and direct experience), my multi sensory and inclusive approach to engaging with contemporary art.
•    To increase opportunities for all people to engage with contemporary art, with a focus on those who are not regulars within a contemporary gallery setting. And for this to take place in the context of workshops attended by a ‘mixed audience’ with a diverse set of existing relationships to art.
•    To look beyond current definitions of ‘access’ and towards an emphasis on artist led creative thinking and solution finding in response to each individual set of circumstances surrounding a workshop. And within this to explore ways of removing fear, and social barriers (from both parties) in the relationship between potential gallery visitors and galleries.

Background
I am an artist and have been carrying out workshops on behalf of galleries nationally for almost 10 years, the majority of which have been focused on and attended by visually impaired and blind people of all ages. From 2003 – 2006 I was twice funded by Arts Council England to set up and run a project called ‘Elephant’ during which I developed my multi sensory and self-directional approach to workshops and exhibition tours for visually impaired and blind people. ‘Elephant’ enabled me to build long lasting relationships with galleries and community groups, which I have maintained since 2006 by freelancing for several galleries on a regular basis. Over the last couple of years I have been increasing the number of ‘mixed’ groups of participants in the workshops, this comes out of the realisation that discussion and self directional making, often in groups is the real focus of these workshops, and for this a range of people who would not normally be brought together works best. I also disagree with existing default policies of separating out different social groups for each gallery activity, where it can be avoided.

Therefore my workshops have been regularly attended by friends and family members of existing participants, volunteers (often recent art graduates) and representatives from organisations such as Tate Britain and The Royal Academy to increase their knowledge of workshop methods and working with visually impaired and blind people. I have been asked to present my artwork, which has been influenced by my workshops through its multi sensory and participatory context, and talk about ‘elephant’ at sensory art, access, and professional development seminars, talks and exhibitions. (See attached CV for further details).

I feel I have developed a philosophy that is in demand and warrants dissemination, which is why I have decided to set up this mentoring scheme.

Content
I intend to achieve the aims, outlined above, through providing workshops within Fabrica for people booked to attend this mentoring scheme. The workshops will include learning through participation as a reflection of the ethos behind my workshops and practice as a whole, and drawing upon my own training through Cemea. I will also be consulting Second Sight and other workshop participants on a regular basis, and passing on this feedback through the mentoring scheme.
The content of the mentoring workshops will be as follows:

Evaluation/Legacy
Participants will be asked to complete a questionnaire (during a round up closing discussion) on the mentoring workshops, to establish their value and how they can be improved upon.

The outcomes of these sessions will be documented and contributed to an ongoing blog for reference. The blog will become a resource and as a network.

Benefits
The artists, organisations and regular workshop participants will have the opportunity to share good practice, gain direct experience, build links, expand audiences, build confidence, and improve the quality of experience for workshop participants. The ‘host’ galleries involved (Fabrica) will; increase the number of people engaging with their current exhibition, be an example of good practice, potentially build links with the artists and organisations on the mentoring scheme, expand upon their artists resource events.

Naomi Kendrick will benefit from this scheme by; gaining greater exposure for her practice as a whole, making links with other artists and organisations, gaining satisfaction from realising long standing desire to pass on her knowledge of running elephant, in a recognised way. Including giving more people the opportunity to experience art in a way that promotes: openness, values a workshop as belonging to the artists creative process as a whole, and is centered on the individual participant rather than their intellectual or physical ‘category’.