The “Post-It” wall

From the Creative Minds Conference “post-it” notes on 10th March 2014

It’s a tricky issue and of course everyone has their own ideas. One of our conference participants said: ‘People are very nervous about deciding if work by learning disabled artists is of good quality. It seems difficult to encourage honest discussion. Discussion needs to continue.’ That discussion started at our conference – here’s what people were saying:

• Judge/appreciate the result for what it is – it doesn’t matter who has done it!
• It can be hard to judge what’s good, it can be very personal – an emotional response tells me its good
• Create work that’s inspiring, creative, new and un-cliched. Go for quality. Be clear about the purpose of the work – be they projects, quality art works or participatory events
• Allow people to criticise – this will get people to think of learning disabled art as credible and valued as much as any art as it should be
• Production values need to be high
• Not all work by learning disabled artists and performers is ready for a public platform and it can do a disservice to serious learning disabled artists to make work public before it is ready
• Quality is important, what counts as quality, I’ve always won competitions so that tells me my work is good
• My art is about expressing who I am and producing powerful high quality work
• Ignorance – people don’t know how the art is good