The Workshops of Everything: September-October 2011
Action Space were commissioned by The Museum of Everything to run a series of free visual arts workshops for artists with learning disabilities over September and October 2011.
The one-day art sessions took place every Monday at Selfridges in Oxford Street. They were part of Exhibition #4, which saw The Museum of Everything presenting artwork by UK and International disabled artists in the windows and Ultralounge space at Selfridges.
Action Space artist facilitator Charlotte Hollinshead was asked to devise a range of activities that would challenge and inspire the artist participants…
“The workshops recreated the studio environment, where artists with learning disabilities worked freely to develop their own artwork. Areas they explored included painting, drawing, photography, film, sculpture and installation. Each week we had 15-22 different individuals attending the workshops and as the sessions developed more and more participants returned until by the last two sessions participants were using the space like a regular studio and we were very full! We had many individuals who had never previously accessed a studio space like this before and thrived in its free and sociable environment. From these workshops many of the individuals we worked with will now be able to join the various Action Space groups around London. This project provided our organisation a wider platform to promote our work, it was an excellent opportunity and something we’d like to build on in the future.”
Action Space would like to thank James Brett and The Museum of Everything for giving us the opportunity to work on this very exciting project.
Thank you to Marta Herman at The Museum of Everything for all her hard work in making The Workshops such a success.
Thank you to Selfridges for providing a wonderful platform from which artists with learning disabilities were able to shine.
For information about Exhibition #4 see The Museum of Everything website
The Workshops of Everything are profiled on Arts Council England’s latest Newsletter
Action Space and Exhibition 4 were profiled in Time Out Time Out on 29 September
