'Special' Histories
visual evaluation

'Special' Histories is an art and history project made by people with learning disabilities.

 

Lucy Dix, Tim Curtis, Tessa Lighthowler and Robert Thompson are running the project. 

We will have 10 learning disabled participants in the project. 

The participants will work with:

an artist, Tim Curtis, 

two dancers, Laura Liddon and Beth Kent

a writer, Asma Malik

and a researcher, Jennie Kiff.

There will also be 3 coaches to work with our participants. 

 

Everyone will work together to look at what life was like for people with learning disabilities in the past. They will look at what life is like for people with learning difficulties now, and what we want the future to be like. 

 

Some of the information we look at might be difficult or upsetting. For example pictures of people being treated badly in the past. 

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Some of the information might feel very good. Like pictures of people living happy lives in the way they want to.

We will have a counsellor on the project so that anyone can talk to them about how they are feeling. 

 

The project will last 6 days. In the 6 days the participants will decide what ideas they want to explore. They will choose what art form they want to use. They will make a piece of art to go into an exhibition. 

 

It’s important that the participants can make their own choices about their work. The artists will just help them create their ideas. 

 

We don’t know what the exhibition will look like yet, because it depends on what the participants chose to do. But we think it might be a mixture of happy ideas about the future and sadness about the past. Told through a mixture of dance, art, spoken words and written words. 

 

We hope the exhibition will make people think about what lives for learning disabled people are like now and what they were like in the past. We hope they will want to make things better.