About the Project
What is Irregular Art Schools?
Irregular Art Schools is an action research project. It is exploring what learning disabled people living in the Leeds City Region want and need to grow as professional artists. It began in February 2021 and will end in July 2023.
What is action research?
Doing action research means we are working together to think about problems to make change happen. We try things out in real life and then look back on what we did to think about what we learnt.
What kinds of things are you doing during the project?
We are making lots of art, running many workshops, visiting new places, and meeting new people to think about ways to develop as an artist. This includes:
• Collaborating with Assembly House to experience a different kind of studio and test out peer learning approaches.
• Collaborating with the School of Fine Art, History of Art & Cultural Studies at the University of Leeds to learn about studying art
• Running two national workshops on artist-facilitation.
• Experimenting with inclusive peer review
• Working with social workers and social care commissioners to see how art and social policy can better connected
What do you hope to learn?
• How to better support inclusive artist development for learning disabled people.
• Unsettling what it means to be ‘professional’ in the first place.
• How to support inclusive collaborations between different individuals, organisations, and sectors.
• How to connect different people and sectors in the region so we can advocate for the things all artists need to flourish.
• How to share what we have learnt in inclusive ways.
Explore our research
