Working with Diverse Audiences May 2011

Second Sigh/ Working with Diverse Audience

In May Fabrica presented a series of practice sharing events for artists and other professionals working with the arts in health, social care, education and gallery settings. Jointly devised by Liz Whitehead, a Co-director of Fabrica gallery, and artist Naomi Kendrick, the programme set out to explore various approaches to working with diverse audiences, using the contemporary visual arts. The programme drew directly on Naomi’s research into and practice of a multisensory approach to engaging with people about contemporary art.  It also drew on the perspectives of other artists, researchers, social care and health professionals, to articulate the challenges and opportunities particular to these contexts – both for artists and participants. Aimed at giving participants a rounded learning experience, and encouraging best practice, Working with Diverse Audiences was comprised of workshops, professional presentations and peer critique sessions. 

A Multi Sensory Approach

A Multi-Sensory Approach  This half-day workshop was designed as a practical introduction to Naomi’s multi-sensory method, showing why this method is useful for working with a diverse group and as a way of encouraging participants to think more directly and personally about the many ways an exhibition can be interpreted and explored.

A Multi Sensory Approach

Professional Practice Presentation - Robin Blackledge
Robin Blackledge gave a facinating and moving talk about his multidisciplinary practice, focusing particularly on his three year residency as Audio-Visual artist-in-residence at Trinity Hospice (originally appointed by ‘RosettaLife’), London, where he created a body of legacy artworks in collaboration with the hospice user, and as a collaborative member of a clinical palliative care team. A synopsis and slideshow will be available soon. 

Second Sight / Working with Diverse Audiences

Second Sight
This was an opportunity for people to gain first hand experience of working with a diverse audience in a workshop context, by taking part. Second Sight workshops are regular events in Fabrica’s education programme – two events take place per exhibition.  Lead by Naomi, the workshops explore the current exhibition through an audio described tour, and through sound, touch, smell, and group discussion. After the workshop participants had the chance to take part in a short discussion about their experience of the workshop.

Working With Diverse Audiences Peer Critique The Peer Critique provided a space for discussion about participants’ current practice and working environment, and was a way of participants generating ideas to be taken forward.

A Multi Sensory Approach

Participant Feedback 
' I attended A Multi-Sensory Approach and Robin Blackledge's talk. Both were very illuminating. I found the workshop very welcoming, open and relaxed. Learning new ways to engage diverse audiences with art was very helpful and gave me lots of personal ideas too. The workshop was fun and creative. I have assisted and co-ordinated workshops before and this was a much for flexible way of engaging with art. I would use some of the ideas to help make activities and exhibitions more open to people who respond to work in very different ways.

Robin Blackledge's talk was very interesting, especially finding out more about how artists can work in varied settings in a positive way for individuals and their experiences. Finding out about problems for artists in these residencies was also illuminating.'

For Information about future events please contact clare.hankinson@fabrica.org.uk, or phone 01273 778646. www.fabrica.org.uk

About Working with Diverse Audiences

Second Sight

Fabrica is committed to the concept of diversity in all its forms, it's current project 'Growing an Older Audience' is a way of generating positive effects for diversifying audiences and participants, volunteers and staff. 'Working with diverse Audiences' is a series of workshops, talks and peer critiques developed by Liz Whitehead and Naomi Kendrick, that form part of this wider project.

Working with Diverse Audiences  Nov 2010 - Nov 2012
This programme of research aims to explore the relationship between artists who have socially engaged practices, socially excluded and disabled people and institutions associated with the broad area of health care, including galleries and museums.

Participants involved in the programme can expect, through participation in workshops (Second Sight) that are an existing example of good practice, and through participating in workshops designed specifically for this programme, to gain hands on experience of inclusive workshop methods. And see the importance of an artist’s skills in working intuitively and finding creative solutions.

A programme of talks will take place to include artists whose practice varies in scope and approach but has the common thread of their work with people from health care being an integral part of their practice, rather than an addition to it, and at the heart of those methods is a focus on the individual participant rather than a social category. The perspectives of institutions, socially excluded and disabled participants and other artists will be shared through peer critique sessions, and in discussions during the aforementioned workshops.

That the power within situations where participant, institution and artist meet should lie with the participant will be an important aspect of this research. And how communication, shared approach and a broadening of people’s definition of experiencing and creating art contribute to this.

This research also aims to dispel myths and tackle fears associated with providing valuable opportunities for socially excluded and disabled people to access art from the perspective of artists, participants and institutions. And to demonstrate that risks can and should be taken by all three.

My Work With Fabrica

Second Sight

 I first came to Fabrica as an artist resource volunteer in 2002, by this time I had a fledgling practice of predominantly drawing work and gained a bit of experience in delivering workshops for galleries with children. I also had a desire to research and carry out workshops for visually impaired and blind people. My interest in this area came out of research for my B.A dissertation ‘The Unseen Perspective’ a few years previously. This had been an exploration of making and experiencing art without focusing on the visual, something I was drawn to as my own work had developed multi sensory elements. Though I had not been focusing in particularly on opportunities available for visually impaired and blind people it did not take much time at all to realise this was a shockingly lacking area within the arts.

Second Sight

I recall having a 1-2-1 with Liz Whitehead Fabrica’s Co – Director, taking with me a list of everything I wanted to do as an artist. Thinking back to that list I am now doing most of those things, and the majority of it I can attribute to Fabrica’s support. Fairly swiftly Liz and I established Second Sight, then an exhibition tour and discussion workshop for visually impaired and blind participants, now it is open to all and still attended by some of the same people who came to the first workshop. Liz and others at Fabrica also acted as advisors on ‘Elephant Project’, which I established, with Arts Council Funding in 2003 (and a further grant in 2006). ‘Elephant’ enabled me to provide workshops across the country in galleries and community centers for visually impaired and blind adults and children. I employed other artists to run workshops for the project and established myself in the field.

Second Sight

In 2003 I was also employed by Fabrica as Front of House Manager and volunteer Coordinator, this in itself had a profound affect on my practice as a whole and the way in which I chose to engage with audiences and speak about art in workshops. Front of House could also be called ‘front line’ you know each exhibition from it’s delivery, installation and then through the eyes of each gallery visitor, and the volunteers. My fascination for the audience’s response to art, really started here.

Second Sight

Second Sight /Working with Diverse Audiences

In 2005 Fabrica gave me the opportunity to really explore these interests, and develop my workshop methods. I was Animateur in Residence during two shows that year, the purpose of this commission is to explore an exhibition through the perspective of another artist and their practice, and through doing this provide gallery visitors unique insights and new opportunities for engagement with the work.

Animateur in Residence

Animateur in Residence

Animateur in Residence

In the same year I accompanied others from Fabrica to Avignon and then Paris, where we lived with and learnt from Cemea France, an incredible team of artists from across disciplines who through their example and participation taught me the most important element of my socially engaged work to date - that My role is to provoke others to discover and respond to work for themselves, not to dictate how and in what form that response should materialise. Essentially that working with others in the context of a workshop and beyond is an exchange, collaboration rather than a transfer of a set knowledge from one party to another. Cemea also taught mean great deal about having a sense of fun and play in what you do, and to make use of the breadth of disciplines art has.

Cemea, Avignon

Cemea, Avignon

Cemea, Paris

Second Sight will soon be in its 10th year and it continues to shift and develop as new participants join us. And Fabrica continues to support my practice and most importantly give me the space to pursue and push new aspects of it - Most recently through ‘Working with Diverse Audiences’ and the commissioning of my work ‘Drawn to the Beat’. http://deadrabbit-ablog.blogspot.com/2011/06/drawn-to-beat-fabrica.html

Second Sight & A Multi Sensory Approach

Drawn to the Beat

A Second Sight Profile - 'Drawing Sound - Eno's Paintings'

I have just carried out another Second Sight workshop at Fabrica, in response to their current exhibition 77 million paintings by Brian Eno (guest artistic director of The Brighton Festival). I set up Second Sight in 2002, now my longest running workshop, with some of the participants regularly attending since day one. Second Sight offers a multi sensory approach to experiencing each exhibition, which begins with my verbal description of the work, explaining how it looks. In addition to this I introduce sounds, materials, even smell and tastes to offer further multiple ways in to the work. For some my interpretation is a necessity, to others it becomes another dimension to their experience of the work that they are interested in having............

Click here to read on http://deadrabbit-ablog.blogspot.com/2010/04/drawing-sound-enos-paintings.html

Related Projects

A selection of my consultancy & workshop projects that relate to this research.

'Making Conversation'

'Making Conversation' Manchester Art Gallery 2006 - Present
Making Conversation are a series of three day workshops that happen in response to the gallery's temporary exhibition programme. These adult workshops are self directed, have a multi sensory approach and are open to all. They involve an audio described exhibition tour, disscussion and individual or collaborative self directed making, in response to the exhibition. Making Conversation is attended by a diverse range of people with varying relationships to art from proffessional to first time gallery visitors. Participants work made during the workshops has taken many forms from sound art to poetry, sculpture to dance. For more information follow this link. http://deadrabbit-ablog.blogspot.com/search/label/Making%20Conversation

'Hands On'

'Hands On' Knowsley 2010 - Present
I have been working on this project in partnership with Ticky Lowe, Artist and project manager for 'Access to Heritage'. 'Hands On' focuses on day centers in Knowsley for people with learning disabilities. Through a series of workshops it aims to introduce support staff and their clients to new creative activities and give them the confidence and inspiration to continue using their new found skills them selves. For more information follow this link http://deadrabbit-ablog.blogspot.com/search/label/Hands%20On

'Sensational'

'Sensational', Manchester Art Gallery 2011. Research & Consultancy Project including workshops in response to the work of Anish Kapoor for children with disabilities and their families, and a training workshop for Gallery staff.

Coming soon - Consultancy for Adult Learning, The Hepworth Wakefield 2012. Development of workshops with a multisensory and self directed approach & providing training for the Hepworth's team of Artists.

Guest Speaker Profiles

Dr Amanda Ravetz, November 2011

Guest Speaker Nov 2011 - Dr Amanda Ravetz (Manchester) Amanda Ravetz is a visual anthropologist who uses video to explore creativity, improvisation and play.  In 2010 she undertook a residency at Arts Reverie in Ahmedabad, India, culminating in the short film Entry, made with local residents over the course of one day. In 2009, she and her sister Ant Riviere, made the film Beautiful Colour about award-winning artist Ian Partridge who attends the Barrington Farm Art Barn in Norfolk. Amanda taught documentary filmmaking at the Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology, University of Manchester before becoming a Research Fellow at the Manchester Institute for Research and Innovation in Art and Design at Manchester Metropolitan University. She is the author, with Anna Grimshaw, of Observational Cinema: Anthropology, Film and the Exploration of Social Life.


Guest Speaker May 2011 - Robin Blackledge (Brighton) Author of 'Creative Intervention in Healthcare' Is a multidisciplinary artist dedicated to researching the effects of technology on society and how we negotiate these rapid changes. He has recently completed a three year residency as Audio-Visual artist-in-residence at Trinity Hospice (originally appointed by 'RosettaLife'), London, creating a body of legacy artworks in collaboration with the hospice user, and as as a collaborative member of a clinical palliative care team. A key goal for this work is to create a framework for the inclusion of 'cultural interventions' at the final stages of life so that they will be considered as significant events that can be incorporated into the 'clinical appraisal' of the 'service user' (or put another way- a human being with a wide gamet of emotions and life experience) www.robinblackledge.co.uk   

Date TBC Michaela Ross (London) is an artist and is currently researching 'The role and status of the artist-educator in institutional contexts' at Chelsea college of Art and Design. 'The research is driven by a desire to understand my own practice and how my professional identity as an artist-educator is formed. The themes of my work, inside and outside of institutional contexts, are those of authority and the construction of knowledge: in the studio, I re-work images and text to reveal agendas that were hidden in their original context; as an artist-educator, my work questions hierarchies and power relationships within institutions. By comparing my understanding with others', I hope to discover themes that characterise the perception of the artist-educator as a mode of practice as critique.'
http://www.michaelaross.com/

Date TBC Bronwyn Platten
I am an Australian artist, researcher and curator whose practice explores sexuality, identity, gender and embodiment. I have exhibited my artwork in numerous group and solo exhibitions across Australia and internationally. Most recently I participated in the exhibition ‘Figuring Landscapes’ touring the UK and Australia in 2009-10 that was launched at the Tate Modern, London in 2009. Since 1985 I have also worked with diverse community groups to establish creative art projects most notably the award winning ‘Building Art Project’ in which, with artist John Foubister, I worked collaboratively with 25 artists with an intellectual disability. Between 2003 - 2008 I has been involved intensively in arts in hospitals working as both an artist and a curator for Grampian Hospitals Art Trust, Aberdeen Royal Infirmary and subsequently as an Arts Project Manager for Lime, an arts in health organisation which develops creative arts practice in hospitals across Greater Manchester.

I have received numerous awards for my art practice from the Australia Council for the Arts  and in 2004 received an Arts and Humanities Research Council grant to develop the international research project ‘Imaginal Regions’. In 2008 I was awarded an EPSRC bursary to undertake full-time post-doctoral research for the Health and Infrastructure Research and Innovation Centre in the School of the Built Environment, University of Salford.

Currently in the third year, I am researching the relationship between patient embodiment and creativity utilising a collaborative multi-sensory arts based approach. Titled Mouths and Meaning the research focuses upon representations of experiences of embodiment for people with an eating disorder. By the word, embodiment, I mean the way in which all our experiences, our daily lives are sensed, interpreted and communicated in and through our bodies.

Arts based approaches are often able to connect or represent felt or taken for granted experiences of embodiment. I have in my own practice as an artist produced a number of artworks investigated my own interpretations of embodied experience and in response eating disorders. I had anorexia nervosa and then bulimia between the ages of 16 to 26. I am interested to explore whether similar creative processes could also be of value to others and could assist in the communication of experiences that are perhaps intangible or unspoken.

My thinking is inspired by the fact that the focus of eating disorders is primarily upon body image and shape.  In other words, the current understanding of eating disorders focuses upon the visual perception of a socially desired body shape rather than also including how the body is experienced and communicated. By utilizing other senses – hearing, touch and taste as well as vision it is hoped that the approach may be of value to deepening understanding of the factors impacting on eating disorders. I have been working on the project with a co-collaborator who is in recovery from anorexia nervosa and we are working towards an exhibition of artworks to be held at the Chapman Gallery in May 2011. Also to be included in the exhibition are a series of drawings by more than sixty people who have participated in a creative workshop exploring experiences and representations of the mouth.

How do we want to experience art?

Cildo Meireles and Me from Naomi Kendrick on Vimeo.

How do I want to experience art? I think this is a good question to ask myself, before trying to understand and facilitate other people's needs or desires. I have found it a difficult question to ask myself in recent years, as I am sure other artists, educators and others working directly with galleries do. It is often problematic trying to distance yourself from the ‘day job’ of experiencing art through providing workshops/interpretation around an exhibition. Though this in itself is a fulfilling way to engage with an exhibition, revealing more about the work than your interpretation alone can, it does not really address the personal response required of my question.

Significantly when experiencing an artwork through giving a workshop on it, this removes my choice. I have to see the work through this situation, it is my job. Choice is what I feel all people should have when it comes to their experience of art. You may want to see a specific artist or arform, experience the work alone when a gallery is least busy, with friends or family, as a way of relaxing or of challenging yourself, to research for your own work, or to learn more in general about a given subject. You may want to interact with an artwork, read all the interpretation the gallery provides, speak to a gallery assistant and leave comments, or you may want to be alone with your thoughts.

These are all decisions we make as visitors to a gallery, when choosing the exhibition we want to see. For some people the choices are different and arguably more limited. Does everyone have the opportunity to engage with any exhibition? Or is an exhibition selected by the visitor because of how accessible the venue is, whether it provides audio description, signing, a workshop for specific groups? None of these things are about the art itself, about what you want to see and how, because of who you are and what you are interested in rather than your ‘need’.

One of my favourite ways to experience art is by myself, in the knowledge that I have left a whole day to drift and discover. To become absorbed by work that pulls me in and to leave the work that doesn’t. I will often document thoughts and ideas by writing notes along the way. I had an experience like this recently, visiting MOMA PS1 gallery in Queens, New York. Outside the gallery was an adult play area of sorts; people were drinking beer, lying in hammocks, and soaking up the sun and the live music provided. They were part of a scene, and enjoying it. Inside the large gallery, which is a former school, I was faced with a labyrinth of corridors and rooms across many floors, with artwork everywhere. There was a system, a map giving you a route to follow through the complex layout. I am not very good with maps, and after initially feeling frustrated not knowing where I was meant to go, I let myself wander. It was wonderful. I found work in cellars I was sure know one else had, I let the soundtracks to video art be my markers, informing me whether I had already seen this floor. I saved the films with benches provided until I was tired, found rooms I was alone in where I could close my eyes and absorb sound art completely, and stood looking out the window taking in the city where all this work was conceived. This was an exhibition of Contemporary New York Artists, and I could wander and observe freely, anonymously, and just as I had done on the streets outside.

This all sounds as if I not interested in experiencing art through the very situations I advocate, workshops and participatory artworks. Not so.  I have had many equally profound experiences as a participant in other peoples workshops. And one of the most powerful experiences of art I have ever had was participating in ‘Marina Abromovic Presents…’ for four hours one evening at the Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester. Participating has made me feel part of the work, integral and far more connected than a passive experience. Though the passive experiences have also provoked me to imagine that experiencing art must be similar to the spiritual experience for the devout.
It depends on the work and it depends on you.

The trick for galleries is to get visitors to this point while trying to make everything in between not controlling, invisible.

Many people feel comfortable experiencing through workshops, they know they have signed up for something that will cater for any needs they might have, and a workshop is undeniably a social event that extends beyond the focus of seeing an exhibition. Knowing from discussions with my workshop participants that many people feel intimidated by art, feeling they have to have a certain degree of knowledge in order to ‘understand it’ does worry me however. If there is even a tiny percentage of people who are choosing to experience art through a workshop/tour/talk because they think, they can not intellectually access the work themselves then this makes it even more important to let workshops be a platform for discovering independently in combination with a context/information giving, avoiding the more traditional academic approach of simply transferring knowledge into the student.

I want to experience an exhibition through choice, and I want others to be able to do the same. There are access-based practical issues that need to be addressed in galleries still, but it this intellectual decision that I am interested in. Yes a person can decide whether to attend a workshop, a talk or to visit alone. But in the context of the workshop itself there should be choice, diversity, and openness. A reflection of how we make choices and have experiences outside the gallery - thinking for ourselves, having discussions with a diverse range of people, not just our own social ‘category, having time to absorb, deciding whether to ‘read the label’ … or not.