Developing Community Links

Our program is not about building a hub for visual artists living with disability. Rather an opportunity to develop skills the can share with their local mainstream community. ArtISability is not a destination, rather a stepping stone to the arts community.

Information Session On "The Arts Community In Ipswich"

Living with disability or mental illness shouldn't be a barrier to participating in the arts community. The three staff at ArtISability living with disability are proof that a career in the visual arts is rich and rewarding!

Our focus is on linking our participants to the community. At the commencement of the program each of the artists were asked to nominated some goals to work towards. Some of the goals they nominated were around skills development and extending their friendships and networks.

During the session yesterday Judy, Cynthia, Emma and myself share what we have learnt from other artists and what we appreciated about working with each other to bring the program together.  I also asked Judith Baker, "If she thought she had experienced disadvantage as an artists do to her disability.  Her comment was once her art was hanging in a gallery, her disability became invisible." 

Oceania By Judith Baker 

So in may ways ArtISability is about an artist finding their own pathway to seeing their work hanging on a gallery way.  Many of our artists are keen to sell their work.  

So yesterday we talked about local art competitions as a important stepping stones and how we can assist them to enter the Ipswich Society Fine Arts Session.  Some times knowing how to access information can be a barrier and its one barrier that is easy to remove.  Perhaps we overwhelmed them with information.        

We introduce the idea of working towards a collaborative art exhibition and how that might work.  We explained about the Ipswich Community Gallery and Emma and Judith shared a little on their experience in hosting art exhibitions. We are all impressed with the talent that ArtISability has unearth and most of our artists are ready to explore this possibility.

Examples of "What we're been able

to Unearth!" 

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So next time we meet we're be talking about how we might show the people of Ipswich the work of these talented Artists. 

ArtISability would like to thank ALARA Queensland, the Ipswich City Council in partnership with Arts Queensland, Access Arts Inc. and Arts Access Australia for enabling the artists to access the arts community in Ipswich.