Blog: February 2010 • Colin Hambrook

Colin talks to Jon Adams about his work on the Dada-Exchange programme and how it links with his current practise.

The Dada-Exchange programme aims to establish a community of Disabled Artist Advisors. The programme supports the eight advisors in providing others artists with opportunities to talk about their professional practice with peers. It also provides the advisors with a small bursary to give access to creative professional development opportunities including attending conferences, seminars and other relevant events.

In the coming months I intend to use my blog to focus on the artist advisors to get a flavour of how the programme is moving forward.

Firstly I talked to Jon Adams about his experience of being an advisor. He was very positive about the mentor / mentee relationship: "Having the opportunity to talk and swap stories on a one-to-one level with other artists is invaluable. I've learnt about listening to others and that process has made me reflect more on how good I am at taking my own advice. You have to believe in what you're saying. You have to live it. Another benefit is that by virtue of helping others see where their practice could be going, you are working on your own aspirations."

"A lot of the advice I give mentees is around the practical issues you need to get your head around as an artist. One of my aims is to boost artists' confidence and to provide some positive guidance that will help their practice take off. It is very hard for artists' to establish their practice without some kind of peer support. If you have some experience of disability then it can be doubly harder."

Jon Adams has also worked with David Dixon - another of the artist advisors' - on another aspect of the Dada-Exchange programme. Dada-South held the first PUSH creative career seminar in November 2009 in partnership with Enham < http://www.enham.org.uk/>, an organisation based in Southampton, which provides opportunities for disabled and disadvantaged young people.

Jon said: "We want to catch younger disabled and disadvantaged kids before the point where they switch off because they have had enough and get side-lined. Without Dada Exchange these teenagers wouldn't otherwise have the chance to meet artists like us. It is about opening their horizons a little with some encouragement drawn from our own life experience. I think if I'd have had similar opportunities when I was young, then it would have helped me overcome many of the barriers I've had to face in becoming an artist."

As part of this initiative some further workshops are happening in Portsmouth on 1 March - which also happens to be the fifth anniversary of Dada-South.

I also asked Jon how he has used the bursary provided by the Dada-Exchange programme: "It's enabled me to do things like take out membership to the Tate Gallery and Hayward Gallery on the South Bank. It's been liberating being able to see the same shows more than once - but for shorter amounts of time to concentrate on particular works of art."

"I really enjoyed the Rothko exhibition at the Tate because they gave you the opportunity to go behind one of his pictures so you could see marks, names, lists and words that informed the making of the work. I love to find things that are hidden. In fact it would have been great if they had hung the whole show with everything turned the other way so you could see the accumulations behind the pictures. In some ways it's more interesting than the finished works."

Lastly I asked Jon what work he has lined up so far, this year: "I am artist in residence in Portsmouth University. I will be looking at making some large-scale interventions in a similar vein to Word Wall - the vinyl pieces I made for Southern Railways that were shown at London Bridge station. www.disabilityartsonline.org.uk/?location_id=358 I am also working with the Geology Department looking at hidden boundaries - seeing how I can mix up the idea of personal and scientific boundaries.

There is also a Creative Campus commission on the horizon. It's a South East Universities initiative which

will showcase inspirational cultural events in response to the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games. http://www.ucreative.ac.uk/index.cfm?articleid=27246

To find out more about Jon Adams go to:http://www.axisweb.org/seCVPG.aspx?ARTISTID=13799http://fig1-ground.blogspot.com/http://www.port.ac.uk/special/artistsinresidence/Artists/JonAdams/