Image description: Sonia Boue is a white middle aged woman, wearing a black jumper and black rimmed glasses. She has short cropped hair and the photograph shows her using a brush and mirror set which has been collaged with photographs of her face. 

Click for audio file version of this blog

Click for Origin Story – my new online exhibition 

So, somehow it’s June and I’ve just prerecorded my artist’s talk with the fabulous Jennifer Gilbert, founder of the Jennifer Lauren Gallery! Hosted by Disability Arts Online this talk will be streamed to celebrate World Autistic Pride Day on June 18th, with live Q&A to follow. It will have closed captions and BSL interpretation, and has also been a wonderfully affirming and accessible process. I felt completely supported by Jennifer in every aspect of organising and curating the the talk, high professional values really do equal access I often find. Working with known and trusted professionals is also vital.

In fact, this project has been an access dream, in large part due to the superb support of my longtime mentor Miranda Millward, whose collage work is also amazing and can be found @scissorspaperpaste on Instagram.

Together we designed the project around my specific needs, and as longtime collaborators we had a good bank of learning and knowledge to draw on.  Using my innate autistic navigational methods, I’ve worked through each phase of my project intuitively. I’ve used no checklists, and not referred to my project activity plan, because my project is in my mind’s eye. My brain is just not wired for these more conventional methods of working through a plan, and unless the task absolutely requires fine detail, lists and written notes just get in the way. If my projects are well designed I can feel my way through. It’s been exactly as it should be. I’m so grateful for the opportunity to work in this way and also to share my learning with others.

The way Arts Council England ask you to structure an activity plan can feel daunting when you have a brain like mine, but it is vitally important to interrogate a project ahead of submitting an application. I find the activity plan helps reveal the gaps in my thinking, so I understand it as a useful tool in preplanning the work. The trick is to find the format that works for you. I can’t think in a linear way, but I can think in metaphors and I can create mind maps. In this case, as soon as I imagined each task needing to hang on a calendar (like fruits on a tree) I could draw it. It helped me provide a sequence recognisable enough  for linear brains. What seemed impossible became much simpler, and this task does get easier with practice.

I don’t work sequentially, I work circularly, and so each distinct phase of the project (on paper) is (in reality) more fluid, with a great deal of overlap. My project is all the richer for it, and my outcomes have already exceeded expectations. Unexpected events have occurred, and I’ve had the flexibility within my project design to work round them.

I’ve also been on an access journey in preparing my online exhibition Origin Story, making sure it has as many formats as possible for improved accessibility. An experiential learner, I found it important to think it all through and curate it myself, after consulting other examples. I now have a real sense about the ways in which making sound files and writing image descriptions (for example) add layers and texture to the work, and my exhibition feels like a more generous and richer offer because of the access features.  I feel positively evangelical about this!

I’m extremely excited to share some of the fruits of the Neurophototherapy tree in this next phase of the project, which is all about disseminating the work to engender conversations. I do hope you can join us for the talk, and even pop in to my website to see the show!

 

 

 

 

 

 


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I’m somewhat overawed to be supported by Arts Council England for my new R&D project, Neurophototherapy!

This time I haven’t rushed onto social media immediately to announce my good news. It’s taken a few days to process what I want to say, in all the mayhem. It’s difficult to celebrate – at the time of writing, the UK has left the EU and the NHS is teetering on the brink of overwhelm, during a 3rd (and insufficient) lockdown. So I’m writing a brief blog post about my thoughts and feelings instead.

To my astonishment, ACE turned my application around in precisely 6 weeks to the day. Christmas and the pandemic notwithstanding, ACE is doing a remarkably efficient job of processing artists applications, and I’m hearing of many more individual artists getting funding than previously. I’m in awe of, and grateful to everyone at ACE who administers the system of grant giving at this time of national, not to say, global crisis. I feel so much about the system itself needs to change, but there is now (I perceive) more take-up of ACE’s Access Support by artists to help them make applications, and Access Support is becoming more known about. This is something I’m part of too. I’m delighted to be currently supporting two excellent neurodivergent projects in the making, through the Access Support provision. It’s time consuming, but I do as much of this as I can.

My project will begin in earnest in February, and I look forward to writing what Neurophototherapy is about, and share my soul journey into immersive and iterative, practice-led research, both in this blog and a new Instagram account.

Meanwhile, thank you so very much Arts Council England for believing in my project.


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