Blog: April 2010 • Colin Hambrook

This month Colin Hambrook interviews Dada-Exchange Artist Advisor Liz Porter

Liz Porter has been a Dada-Exchange artist advisor for the last year. As part of my series of blogs documenting the unique Dada-Exchange chemistry, I asked Liz about her experience of the programme – and how it has helped her develop her career in the arts.

I have met some extraordinary, inspiring artists through Dada-Exchange. As an artist advisor I try to give artists an opportunity to think through what they are doing and where they want to go. I often find myself giving advice I should be acting on too. So in lots of ways being a sounding board for mentees offers reflection on my own practice.

Dada-Exchange has been an important journey, helping me develop communication skills, which has transferred into other areas of my professional life. It takes time to get to know people. So I was pleased when professional development manager, Suzanne Rose took on board feedback to extend the number of sessions being offered to artists, from four to five meetings.

It can take the first two sessions to get to know who you are working with; to build a rapor and to find ways to be a bit more challenging. Giving open questions allows artists to make their own choices. Important shifts happen. Some have found a clearer understanding of their relationship around their disability. The conversations have freed them up to make choices and to think through how they define themselves and question whether or not to use the experience of disability within their practice.

I’ve been able to signpost people to resources such as disability arts online and Shape etc; and to give people a wider perspective on what other disabled artists are doing.

It’s all been good. The continuing professional development bursary paid for me to immerse myself in song at a Song Week run by Wren Music Foundation. And I plan to use the last lot of money towards training that will help me develop my storytelling practice into a one-woman show. I’d like to find ways of weaving my life story with traditional story and song – as storytelling laureateTaffy Thomas did, some years ago, with Take These Chains from My Heart

The Dada-Exchange process has helped me develop confidence in my current role as disability advisor for Creative Landscapes - one of the 15 Accentuate projects funded by the Legacy Trust. We are working in Hastings & St Leonards, and Gosport to encourage access and inclusion for the English Heritage open day events programmes that takes place each year in September (9-12 September 2010).

I am working in partnership with all the team members. As is common in disability, where diversity is everything - we have two very different steering groups for the two projects. They are both made up of local authority officers, museum managers, tourist information reps, and local disabled people who are interested in Heritage.

Each steering group has two local disability inclusion group members. We are actively seeking ways of encouraging involvement and participation with local deaf and disabled people. We want to find out what they want from English Heritage Open Days and to help spread the word about Creative Landscapes.

We want our HOD (Heritage Open Day) organisers to begin thinking about access from the start. These events are more often run by small venues – mostly on a voluntary basis – with little or no money. So we have a small budget to promote a few accessible events - to show people what might be done.

Over the next three years we will be running a series of creative arts residences with deaf or disabled artists taking the lead. Each paid residency will have some community engagement with local deaf and disabled people. We hope that by showing deaf and disabled people in leadership roles, we will encourage heritage open day organisers to think about involving disabled and deaf people more actively and also show how creativity can be used to explore and interpret heritage. We just advertised our Gosport 2010 residency with a closing date of 12 April if you want to find out more please find out more via the ad in the situations vacant section of Dada-News

Our Steering group members are proving to be invaluable because of their local knowledge and enthusiasm. The project will only work if we take on board the views of local people. It is a learning journey for all – and great to be working at grassroots level. We believe we will make a small shift in peoples’ attitudes and awareness and that is everything.