Monday 12 April 2010
A creative partnership project between the Harris Museum & Art Gallery, Galloway’s Society for the Blind and young people of Coppull Parish Church School is to culminate in an exhibition of ceramic work at the Harris.
The Sharing and Learning group worked with the Harris Museum & Art Gallery’s ceramic collection, through a series of workshops to create their own responses in clay. Overseeing the creative process was Project Manager Viv Booth, who works for Galloway’s, and support for the project came from Harris and Galloway’s volunteers.
Project Manager Viv Booth, from Galloway’s commented
“This project works towards educating the community in understanding that visual impairment is a disability and not an inability. Often, people with visual impairments are excluded from the making of art, so during this project young people were educated through working collaboratively with visually impaired adults to create ceramic artefacts”.
The group of participants began by exploring and handling a selection of ceramic objects from the Harris collection, as inspiration for their own artwork. The project also included awareness raising workshops at Galloway’s Society for the Blind, bringing visually impaired adults and young people of Coppull Parish Church School together. The group worked to identify not just the constraints of having a visual impairment but the capabilities and potential. All participants assumed equally important roles in the project, each being guided in their own way - physically and creatively.
The ongoing collaboration aims to break down some of the barriers and assumptions related to visual impairments, to harness potential, and to embrace inclusion and access. The group’s activities were geared towards intergenerational learning, and towards increasing understanding of inclusion in education, as one aspect of inclusion in society.
Curated by Caroline Alexander, Keeper of Decorative Art at the Harris, the exhibition will be displayed within the Harris Rotunda space from Thursday 29 April until October 2010. The ceramic artworks will be exhibited in the display cases, shown alongside the objects of inspiration, audio guides will also be available.
Community or voluntary groups interested in receiving the project DVD, or handling the artworks created in this project, please contact Kyra Milnes or Caroline Alexander at the Harris Museum & Art Gallery on 01772 905412 or 01772 905411.
