Challenging Outsider Art: how are artists with a learning disability informing contemporary art?

This timely study is situated within and builds upon current institutional research excellence areas (see below for more details). It will explore how artists with a learning disability are participating in the arts across Manchester and the north of England, and will set this within a European context. In the past, artists with a learning disability have struggled to have their work taken seriously but there is growing interest in creative diversity and in how the participation of diverse people in the arts can enhance and enrich culture. This project offers a lens through which to consider a number of current debates in contemporary art / social art practice including: participation, marginalized creators and creativity, and disabilism. It builds on existing university partnerships and speaks to the devolution Manchester agenda in term of services offered to people with learning disabilities and the social movement agenda in arts and health.
The project aims to:
1.explore collaboration between artists with a learning disability and other artists in contemporary art;
2.consider how the presence of artists with a learning disability influences collaboration and informs the practice of artists
3.explore how participation in the arts can create opportunities for the emergence of counter-cultural narratives that challenge images of people with a learning disability which focus only on the exceptional, the sensational and the negative
4.consider, if and how, participation in the arts creates opportunities for community connectedness that are different from other forms of community participation
5.showcase the art and the research, working alongside community partners, and to participate in a number of opportunities offered by the partner organization such as Sick festival 2019 and the Musgrave Kinley Outsider Art Collection at Whitworth Art Gallery.
6.develop an evidence base to inform policy and practice across Greater Manchester, the north and nationally, for people with learning disabilities.

These aims will be met through the following research phases:

1. Co-produce research design

Establish stakeholder forum with Venture Arts for the duration of research with the ambition to co-produce research design with partners and representative stakeholders.
Review sources and develop a conceptual framework that links salient areas of enquiry (collaboration, artist development discourse; counter-cultural publics, disabilism and social art practice) together with appropriate methods/methodologies (practice-as-research/artistic research, ethnographic methodologies, co-production/co-produced research design).

2. Experiential practice/data collection and testing period

A period of artistic and ‘practice-led’ research to meet the aims above to include:
◾models of collaboration between learning disabled and other artists in contemporary art that presently exist (review of theory and practice in field);
◾experiential and reflective review of what happens at Venture Arts (participation, interview, etc.);
◾co-production with stakeholders of what best practice would look like in light of findings;
◾resources that would be needed to achieve this: policy, political, economic, cultural, aesthetic.

3. Analysis

Analysis will be iterative and involve stakeholders and participants in workshops to address each of the research aims above.

4. Outcomes and outputs

The project is expected to generate an exhibition(s) that will take the conversation into communities and strengthen links between the partner organization Venture Arts, the university and European organisations working with marginalised creatives.
The research team will work with the student to develop pathways to impact for the research and to co-author high-quality research outputs (exhibition / professional and academic articles) (REF 2021 +).