Learning disabled artists in Leeds are leading their own research into the systemic barriers that keep them from thriving—using art as the primary method of inquiry. This matters because learning disabled people face a tangle of interconnected inequalities in health, social care, education, and public life—what the researchers call “wicked problems”—yet are rarely meaningfully included in decisions that affect them. Standard research methods often exclude their voices. This Fellowship aims to close that gap by fusing inclusive arts practice with Systemic Action Research, making the research process itself accessible and led by the community. If successful, the project could reshape how social care providers, arts organisations, and policymakers collaborate with learning disabled people. It may produce new models for commissioning services, designing care plans, and accrediting alternative ways of knowing and creating. The work also extends internationally: a new inclusive arts studio will be established with the São Paulo Museum of Modern Art, enabling cross-cultural exchange of methods and insights. The ultimate question is whether inclusive art can help systems imagine and enact different futures.
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This Fellowship emerges from my longstanding collaborative practice in inclusive arts, a globally recognised art form where learning disabled and/or neurodivergent artists create work with the support of professional facilitators. Its primary aim is to develop a method of Systemic Action Research (SAR) enriched by inclusive arts practice that enables learning disability communities to identify and challenge systemic inequalities and facilitate change in their lives. Learning disabled people remain a marginalised group within society who experience a range of complex and interconnected sociocultural, health and economic inequalities, referred to here as 'wicked problems', and are often not meaningfully heard in the issues that uniquely affect them. Learning disabled artists sit at an intersection of social care, disability activism, and the art world in a way which makes visible the systemic issues which prevent them from thriving i.e. negative experiences of engaging with decision-makers, inflexible care plans, limited access to supported studios, and a higher education sector that does not support and accredit their ways of being, knowing and creating. Working with Pyramid, a Leeds-based inclusive arts studio who support over 100 learning disabled and/or neurodivergent artists, I will support a team of artists to develop methods and lead strands of research into their experiences. I will also work with international collaborators in São Paulo, Brazil, allowing me to further develop methods and gain new skills in a nation renowned for arts-based interventions, radical pedagogy and action research. My work in Brazil will involve setting up a new inclusive arts studio with the São Paulo Museum of Modern Art. In the UK, I will then use inclusive arts methods to enable learning disability communities to undertake SAR to address wicked problems. Findings and best practices will be connected to national debates and formal decision makers to convene the crucial discourse needed to start to enact change, inclusive of learning-disabled people, alongside national and international arts and disabled people's organisations, social care providers, and mentors from action research, disability studies and policy. There are therefore two key contributions from my Fellowship. The first is a methodological innovation. The novelty of my Fellowship comes from the application of inclusive arts practice to SAR, allowing systemic research methods to become accessible to, and led by, learning disability communities. The second is empirical. I contend that that a transformative inquiry into how to enable learning disabled people to thrive can be generated through attentive agenda setting with learning disabled artists. While outcomes will be shaped by participants, benefits will include a deeper understanding of the interrelated problems that shape the lives of learning disabled people, strengthened relationships with state, voluntary, and private care providers, new ways to collaborate at local, national and international scales leading to improved commissioning and service provision. The scale of the award will facilitate my international collaboration in Brazil through an exchange of knowledge and practice. I will gain experience of working internationally in different cultural, governance and socioeconomic settings and build my profile in disability social care and policy. The duration of the award will enable slow scholarship, responsive to the time required to work with the care plans and support needs of learning disabled people. This ensures the rigour required to better value broader epistemological contributions, in line with the kind of leadership that I want to embody. In a world where inequalities are growing, ultimately my Fellowship enables me to ask; can inclusive art enable systems to imagine and be otherwise? To engage in different ways of knowing and being to collaboratively tackle wicked problems now and in the future?
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