Having a learning disability informs your art and helps you produce work of a high quality. I have found that my confidence has grown because I perform my work to audiences. Thinking about quality will help you develop your skills, especially as you work with your company and your director. I take my performance work very seriously. This gives me great confidence in my art.
by Bethan Kendrick
Coming from a contemporary performance background I often source my own learning disability and other people’s disabilities as a stimulus to create theatre. I find it awakens new theatrical codes that go beyond traditional theatre practices and illuminates a new way of looking at aspects such as time, space and language within performance. When working with others with disabilities I learn more about these possibilities, they go beyond my own ideas and develop organic concepts that I can work with. The result is a visual theatre that has the potential to enlighten audiences about learning disabilities. The difficulty lies in the marketing of these performances to avoid performers becoming a spectacle for their disability, to make audiences acknowledge the disability but to also notice the aesthetics involved. It’s a complex discussion that requires thought. I am looking forward to discussing matters such as these and others with you all.
Hannah Randall
being a visual artist /youth worker alongside kids and young people can be great fun and a lot of hard but fun work. you as an artist must develop ways of showing the start and the development of the people taking part. plus your own development of self as a artist