Adjustments Debate at Tate Modern on Friday 8 December 2006

byFull Circle Arts

Transcript

Project funded by Arts Council England

The Agenda for the ‘Debate at the Tate’

Adjustments DebateTate Modern8 December, 2006 1pm to 4pm

Agenda

Debate panel : Chair Tony Panayiotou Director, Diversity Strategy - Arts Council England, Sue Wiliams Senior Strategy Officer, Diversity (Disability) - Arts Council England, Nav Haq Curator - Gasworks, Ben Cove Artist, Katherine Araniello Artist, Aaron Williamson Artist. Via filmed interview Milika Muritu Curator - Cell Project Space and Niru Ratman Curator - Store gallery

12.50 to 1.00 Welcome by Chris Hammond - Full Circle Arts

1.00 to 1.10 Introduction by Tony Panayiotou

1.10 to 1.30 Sue Williams - background to the project/issues raised

1.30 to 1.40 Ben Cove

1.40 to 1.50 Filmed interview Milika Muritu

1.50 to 2.00 Katherine Araniello and Aaron Williamson

2.00 to 2.10 Nav Haq

2.10 to 2.20 Filmed interview Niru Ratman

2.20 to 2.45 Tea Break

2.45 to 4.00 Tony Panayiotou to chair “Any Questions” panel discussion, using questions selected from the audience during the break.

The Debate

TONY PANAYIOTOU: I would like to start with a bit of thanks to Sue my colleague and to Full Circle Arts for putting today on, but an extended thank you towards the end. I think today is a really timely and important debate, this Monday like many other organisations the Arts Council published a draft Disability Equality Scheme, and I really encourage everybody to go to our web site and have a look. It is for consultation, and we are consulting until the first week in February. And in a few days time the action plan will be there as well so not only will you see our vision, what we're trying to do, but also the actions that are necessary to make that vision a reality. One of the most important issues today, we're talking about adjustments, and I think that word itself needs exploring, and certainly I will allude to it in a few moments time. So, let's just think about what adjustments, who needs adjusting, what needs adjusting, and what are the outcomes of these adjustments, that we're really looking forward to. But before I continue, I would like to introduce the panel to you beginning with my right, Ben Cove, and Nav Haq, Sue, my colleague, and to my left, I don't know if that's geographical or politically, but Aaron Williamson and Katherine Arrinello, thank you very much for all of you agreeing to be with us today. In terms of my own introduction, I think what we're looking to do with our Disability Equality Scheme, because I think this debate falls firmly within that context, we're looking to make some very significant changes, changes in perceptions, and in challenging stereotypes. Changes in making attitudinal access to the arts and beyond more significant than physical access. Changes in creating an environment which creates opportunities for disabled artists to take their long overdue place within the mainstream of arts and cultural industries in our country. And also changes to grasp the real challenge of moving away from the debate about reasonable adjustments, important as they are, to the adjustments which challenge and change attitudes and views and beliefs, adjustments to real engagement for disabled artists and audiences in the widest possible sense within the arts industries. Adjustments to resourcing and supporting disability arts, to supporting that sector, to the way we view partnerships and relationships. To structural changes within that sector. We're talking about the adjustments of change and in fact the very word "Adjustments" soon becomes an insufficient word to describe this dynamic. This becomes something stronger, more empowering and with greater vision and commitment. It is about putting inclusion and equality within the context of creativity. Often with these kinds of discussions, and we've all been to many of them, we often miss out the most important ingredient itself, namely the art, that's why I am really pleased that today's discussion is taking place within the arts debate itself and not as an abstract or an intellectual whinge. Despite what some may be saying, I am very confident that we're in a better place than ever, these conditions have not really existed before, with a real opportunity to effect and influence changes to those things that disabled artists and disabled people generally have been yearning to experience within the arts for many, many years now. This to me is at the heart of equality and diversity and seeks as its end goal the full and meaningful participation as equals, not as an exotic add on,

in all parts and aspects of the arts and cultural industries. We in the Arts Council have now got to show our leadership and use our thinking and resources to make important strategic interventions and we will be bold and we will be radical and we won't be looking over our shoulder. The changes that we hope to make and to influence both to ourselves and to our funded organisations and beyond will be permanent adjustments. And some may think that we are making unreasonable demands, but let me say this to you now very clearly: there is no opting out and there is no turning back. Equality of opportunity I am sure is everybody's opinion in here is never unreasonable. It is a human right demanded by millions of our citizens. And what does success look like then? For me it is quite simple. A need to no longer use terms as disabled artists or black artists and we let the quality of the art speak for itself. So, those are my introduction thoughts, I am going to introduce now with great pleasure my colleague and fellow conspirator, Sue Williams, who will give us a background to the project and some of the issues that have arisen.

SUE WILLIAMS: thanks Tony. Well it is great to be here today, and it is great to be able to celebrate what I think has been an exemplar project. And it is great to have the artists here as well. So, I am not going to speak for very long, because I think for me it is about giving voice to the artists, and their experience and to the galleries as well. So what I am going to do is I just want to contextualise some of the layers that have existed within the adjustments project, and explore that. I am going to start with 2 definitions, 2 words, and definitions which for me I think are very significant round the whole adjustments project. And the first one is space. Space. The unlimited 3 dimensional expanse in which all objects exist. An interval of distance or time between 2 points, objects or events. 3, a blank portion or area or 4, which is most significant to me in this context, unoccupied area or room. And second definition is disablism. Discriminatory oppressive or abusive behaviour arising from the belief that disabled people are inferior to others. Although you won't find this definition in a dictionary. So, for me the work round adjustments is founded in the inter twining of these 2 definitions. And the notion of what cultural space for disabled artists really means, cultural and creative space. So, for me I want to us to think about space within the arts, the validity of disabled artists within the arts sector. The realm of identity, what it means to be labelled and expectations of people when they are labelled. Space to find opportunities. Space within the creative process. Space to network. Talk to other people. And space to be part of the wider debate, a voice in the sector. And also space to invest in artists and venues. So, the adjustments project emerged from conversations that I had or the diversity department had with the visual arts department and we have Michelle Salerno here from the visual artists department who is very much part of making the project happen. And we started talking about the meaning of reasonable adjustment in the context of a small scale arts venue and what that meant. So, instead of saying oh, let's have some seminars, and let’s look at the meaning of that, why don't we find some creative expression, process, which addresses some of those issues. So, we started, we

identified 4 cutting edge high profile galleries, Cell Project Space, Gasworks, Space and Store. Each of the galleries had been involved in making their venue more accessible, or DDA compliant, but I think the interesting thing that linked all of the venues was that they also understood that they had a need to develop their relationship with disabled artists, and disabled audiences. So, the process began with the gallery's selecting the artists they wish to commission work from and exhibit. And our only stipulation was that the resulting show should be in some way reflect a critical dialogue which should take place between the artist and venue. And we were quite open that all involved should be free to interpret how that process should happen. We also knew that we wanted to put some support in place to ensure that the process ran smoothly, and that artists weren't isolated, but I don't think any of ours were, in the process, and Full Circle Arts were involved in managing and supporting some of the work. I want to raise a few issues here, that I think have emerged round the work, and hopefully we can discuss them in the debate. Firstly, I think there is a lack of consciousness around disability. I think that around disability issues we lack the confidence to address those issues in a generic way, as oppose to around race where there is a much more generic language and common understanding and I think that there is a fear round developing work in this area. I think there are issues about the validity of disabled artists who in habit creative spaces, and also I think for me as a big issue is that in diversity, in the arts, we develop work that does not focus on the creative process, we separate out diversity, disability, from the art, so we in some way are marginalising the issue from the creativity. So, I think we should stop trying to split off and actually look at where the power is within the creative process. To explore these issues and actually create space to work together. So, for me working in partnership is where the real change can start to take place, and I think looking at some of the discussions that are coming up from the galleries today we can actually see that for some of the galleries where disability stopped being hypothetical, stopped being an idea or something over there, and actually became a real issue and I think for me that is really significant in actually changing where people are coming from. I think there is a big issue about disabled artists and identity and as Tony said, finding a place where people are just artists rather than disabled artists or black artists is actually really significant and I think there are a number of issues and challenges that came up round that. And I am in a position where I think we have to be much more open for artists to make that choice, and not be boxed off. But that has actually been quite an interesting issue, it would be good to talk about that. I think also there is a whole issue about access to the creative space round the visual arts, and in particular networks and peer engagement. And I think particularly for disabled artists there is an issue about lack of engagement with their non-disabled peers and a lack of dialogue there and I think this is something that is really, really important. I think traditionally disabled people's engagement in the artistic process has not been seen as a serious one and that art is therapy or rehabilitation or a hobby, or something you do because you don't work or whatever, and I am really pleased to say that this project has really challenged that. And for me the importance of linking up and developing opportunities with mainstream organisations, because I think we tend to concentrate our development of disabled artists and developing disabled artists is

good, but if we're not developing the opportunities for them to move on and to actually engage and create, we're actually creating a place where a bottle neck where people can't develop, where people are frustrated even more because they have the skills and the talent and there aren't the opportunities for them to engage. For me, there is a big issue about quality and choice. And I think this is not just about for disabled artists because I think quality of experiences for disabled artists and the choice of experiences is still very low. And I think that that is important for disabled artists and I think it is also important for the venues, because venues want the opportunity to show as many diverse artists and as many quality disabled artists and that talent pool is not as developed as it should be. It is not that the talent does not exist, it is not developed. So it is about creating quality and choice for everybody. And I think one of the big things is that artists working in a tradition which does exclude them, rejects or misrepresents them as disabled people, and I think what is really interesting for me in seeing a lot of the work that's produced in adjustments is that that work in some ways reflects that, however subtle that may be. And that is quite interesting. A big thing I think around the whole diversity agenda, not just disability, is how do we hold contradiction. How do we hold conflict. Because actually it is never, I think, for me where a lot of the interest and the creativity and engagement is where contradictions hit against each other, where issues conflict, where there is not a clear path through these issues. And I think that that is quite interesting to discuss. I think one of the things that was not an issue, certainly wasn't an issue here, is the quality and integrity of all the artists and galleries involved in this project, and I want to say a huge thank you to everyone, I thoroughly enjoyed the project, I have thoroughly enjoyed being part of something that has created a fantastic body of work for this area and actually does really show that we have some real talent here, so a big thank you to all the artists and also I am sad that Ryan and Juan DelGado cannot be here today but unfortunately we're clashing with the Miami out fair, all right for some, so that's why we're a bit down in numbers. I just want to say that one final thing, that adjustments is that this time unfortunately unique so let's use this opportunity to learn and open up some of these issues as a debate and look where we can go next. Thank you.

TONY PANAYIOTOU: It is my very great pleasure to introduce Ben Cove who will be talking about his work, practical mechanics, Ben, over to you.

BEN COVE: Hello everybody, I will just do this in a bit of a narrative way really, from my initial involvement in the project through to the outcome I think that's the best way to do it. Can you all hear me? Good. I am also not going to talk about my work at all because I've been asked to talk about my experience of the project, so I am not going to mention the work at all. I moved down to London in April to undertake a 2 and a half year research and development residency with ACME studios at the fire station and also to undertake an MA at Goldsmiths which I'm currently doing part-time. So prior to this I have been in Manchester for the last 5 years working from there. I finished my BA in 2001 in fine art

and prior to that I did a BA in architecture, so, I have been working away in Manchester and my last show was a couple of years ago, and since then that was in 2004 so since then I've been consolidating my practice a bit more and not taking on so much, so many shows really. So I came down to London in April, and then I got a call in May from Cell Project Space saying they were looking for an artist with a disability to work with, and I had mixed feeling about this initially, because obviously it is great to get a phone call from Cell, I knew who they were before I came down here and what they did, but also I had slight alarm bells ringing my head in that they were looking 4 disabled artist, I did not know if I was going to be involved in a project that was ticking somebody's box, and when they came and saw me and looked at my work they said that they'd looked at a number of other artists already, hadn't found anybody they wanted to really work with, so I was aware that there was a definite selection process going on for this project, and so my other concern from the outset was whether this was going to be labelled and marketed as a disability arts project, and the reason for that really is I don't necessarily mention my disability in the marketing of my work, because I have tended to find that in the past as soon as someone knows about my disability they tend to often read the work purely in that context, and negate everything else that goes into the work. My work does not directly reference disability, so there is also the other aspect of the fact that as Sue mentioned is that people have perhaps incorrect assumptions about what disabled people working in the arts are doing, and so as an individual come down to London, it is quite important for me not to have this label on the show that I was going to do. So that was my initial thoughts on it, and when I got some reassurance from Cell that they were really happy to work with me and I also got reassurance from full circle and the Arts Council that it was going to be very carefully handled I was obviously very happy to be involved. So the funding was put in place, provided me with some technical support and I never really had a great deal of technical support in the past, I tend to be quite self sufficient in my practice, but I had a 3 month time limit to produce the work, it is all new work, some of which had been in development for a few years, but all new work had to be made for this, so I had some technical support, 2 days a week, and also Cell provided me with a studio to work in, because if you don't know about Cell, they fund the gallery by the money that they make out of the studios that they rent to artists because they are an independent non-commercial space. So, that was great, and the technical support that I had was Cell's studio manager who was an artist called Stuart Gott who was a recent Goldsmith graduate and he was the person that I worked with 2 days a week and he was the unsung hero of this project for me, because he was the one who I had critical debate with the gallery and with full circle about the work I was producing, but on a daily basis Stuart was the one that I kind of discussed the ideas with and the decisions that were being made. It was quite a weird relationship because he was a recent Goldsmith's graduate, I was about to go into a Goldsmith's course, he was a practising in London, I just turned up on the doorstep and was doing a show in the gallery he was working on. And there was this kind of strange relationship where he would tell me what to do and I would tell him what to do, but that was really good and he is somebody that I am still in contact with. As the project went on really, the only real hiccup that I had in this whole process was there was going to

be a decision to make an advertising campaign for the 4 shows, and it was a bit unclear about how this was going to be done because there was a decision that they were going to mention disability but I did not know how the 4 shows would be linked up, if that was the case, because the only real link between the 4 shows and venues was the fact that each artist had a disability, if that was not mentioned I did not know how it would be put together. So, in the end the decision was made that we would do our own advertising and that was really good. So, the show opened on 1st September and attendance was very good for the opening, it was also very good during the duration of the show, I was told by the gallery that there were significant people that went to it. I had some contact with quite a well-known critic who I had met a few times before, who I was hoping might do a review of this but did not in the end, but I think there was all sorts of reasons why and how you go about getting reviews and I think it was just a complicated situation. I also had some interest from a collector at the time, but pulled out, but maybe will come back at a later date. So, from this I really ended up with quite - I was quite pleased with the body of work I had produced, put me in a very strong position now, and having now had a solo show in a decent venue down here in London and it is probably the kind of venue that - Cell said to me they would not have come across me in this stage of my career probably because of being relatively unknown, so in a way I think it has probably pushed me ahead a couple of years at least in my practice. In terms of how the whole project was handled, I think it was dealt with really well and I think the reason it was dealt with very well was because it was quite a hands off experience and I think the fact that all the services were put in place really and the galleries were able to choose the artist that they work with and left to get on with it I think is a real strength of this project really and allowed us to really produce what we wanted to on our own terms I think, and I think that is all I've got to say. {Applause}

TONY PANAYIOTOU: Thank you very much and if there are any questions you want to ask Ben please write them down on a slip and we will address them at the appropriate time. We have now got a DVD to show you, of Milika Muritu {video} MILITA MURITU: I run a Cell Project Space with Richard Priestly. We're an artist based initiative. We're approached by the Arts Council in 2005. To become involved in the adjustments project to give a solo show for a disabled artist. Generally it is probably not the way that we would actually work. We would not necessarily look for an artist that had a particular criteria. It would be more about ... for their work being seen by us in other shows and us following people, in an artist’s career. We found that a lot of web sites saturated with artists with disabilities that were involved in art therapy, which seemed to muddle our view of whether there was any kind of big group of arts organisations that dealt with contemporary art for disability. We started to realise that there were organisations that supported artists with disabilities, we used people like Full Circle as a way of actually finding out more. Working with Ben is that I have realised that there is some artists with disabilities

that actually use their disability as part of their practice and part of their language whereas with Ben it is much more stealth like or intuitive to the way that he responds to materials. And the way that he responds to ideas. Offering Ben solo was right for the programming that we have already undertaken. The show in some ways actually helped us think about access issues, some more hands on access issues. Yes, we I guess decided that we needed the wheelchair access, but there was actually lots of other teething problems about the building that we had not really envisaged. Until we had worked with Ben. Yes access issues became quite problematic in fact during the process, not so much in the gallery because we had actually got the wheelchair access in place. What we did find is the immediate issues with our landlords and how - and their reaction and their ignorance maybe to an artist, a disabled artist working in the building. They were insistent that Ben should be accompanied at all times. We realised there is a real need for maybe more understanding of disability issues, in a much wider approach to the workplace. He's focused on architecture and the Bauhaus because it is quite clear that he is actually making comment about failure, about the failure of these ideas in relation to the way that human beings approach those ideas, like the way they approach a building is very different to the way maybe Ben would approach a building. It is quite interesting how his work can be read on lots of different levels. It is not - you don't have actually be disabled to still understand the failures of the synthetic world and grand statements in architecture, but I suppose once you know that he has a disability it becomes very clear why he's focused on the ideas in the show. I think one of the things that we have learnt is that we have learnt to be much more flexible and ambitious with maybe what we have as a resource at Cell. We offered Ben a situation where he could actually develop the work and pantograph needed about 500 square feet, but again there was issues about access with that. Because obviously we don't own our buildings, that we have realised there are fundamental access issues just with liability of the building, the refurbishments that you have to make in the responsibility and the insurance the round that. It can be a lot more complicated, which should have made - I suppose it made us really think about the day-to-day access issues and problems that Ben has and which we hadn't actually thought about, but something that as we are a studio provider we are now realising that there are a lot of money to be spent in that area. One of the really exciting aspects of working with Ben was that we were able to have full control over the body of work in the exhibition, and that it was very site specific and that it was very much for the moment, for practical mechanics, so the work was conceived and produced within 3 months really. I think it is almost resolved our minds to continue that, to actually continue commissioning and working with the artist right from the roots of the idea and do more ambitious solo exhibitions which we're planning for our future programme. I think it has been really useful, and also Ben was recommended to us by an officer at the Arts Council. I think it is useful to get a picture of organisations round the country and maybe the need for actually some more presence in London and the visibility issues that disabled artists face in what is a very difficult art industry anyway. I think generally Ben was fairly cautious about how the show should be marketed. Obviously really excited about the fact that it was a solo and about the concept of the

show, and I suppose initially most of our conversations were about the conceptual ideas round the show, what the poster should look like, but then of course the adjustments initiative was something that needed to be addressed within the marketing, and I think we both felt, and I think especially Ben felt, that he wanted the backing the funding initiative to be very much separate from the concept of the show. I think he felt that he wanted to rather than to highlight his disability and then maybe people already pre judged the work, either in a positive way, not necessarily in a negative way, I think his worry is that people are not critical enough if they know that the artist has a disability and I think he wanted to really try and gauge what the critical evaluation of the work would be. We may have shown Ben, Ben's work if we'd seen it on the MA show when he graduates next year, there may have been that possibility, but it would have come through our usual channels rather than through disability arts. In some ways I think it was useful being invited by the Arts Council to do the project, in some ways the project was a real challenge and I think it kind of pushed us to look at a whole area that we probably would not have looked at. As curators, I think we'll be watching his career and we plan to do future exhibitions with him. TONY PANAYIOTOU: Our next 2 speakers are Katherine and Aaron and just looking at the blurb in your pack describe as unique collaboration by 2 artists at the forefront of disability arts and put down a marker for the future of disability art as it moves further into the lime light of mainstream recognition. And also looking at the pack it looks like tremendous fun! Very great pleasure to introduce Katherine and Aaron. {Applause}.

KATHERINE ARANIELLO: Hi, I have not written anything down so I am just speaking off the top of my head. Basically, the way it worked for us was we were contacted by the Arts Council and they gave us the opportunity or told us about Gasworks and how the idea of having a show, putting on a show together collaboratively at Gasworks so that is how it started. And the whole process which was absolutely exhilarating, because we actually had an entire gallery to exhibit our work and also there was the opportunity to make new work, that is what we both decided to do, we wanted a new body of work. We found luckily Gasworks were extremely accessible, so there was no problem with access. And the staff were very much, the curator and the directors et cetera were very - I don't know, they just seemed very educated to our needs and our needs were minimal because we just got on with the work and made the work and that's what we like do. We had meetings through the process just to give a glimpse as to what was happening but on the whole we just got on with the work and there was a lot of work that we made. With regards to the budget, it would have been - we actually found that we had to ask for more in order to make the show one of the totally accessible to every sector of the community so we did get some extra budgeting for audio description and subtitles, which proved to be very expensive and I think this is something that needs to be addressed when work is being commissioned, that we need to have a separate budget for access. There is lots more I can say but I think I will hand over - like I say it was a great experience, and it is the first time I had ever had the opportunity to actually put on a show in a gallery totally in collaboration, and I also

have been through the process of doing my BA at Guildhall and I did my MA a few years ago at Goldsmiths in fine arts, so I have an arts background and it was a great opportunity. {Applause}

AARON WILLIAMSON: I realise we're not meant to be talking directly about the work we will make, however it is worth considering with our piece that we actually had a frame round it which was an implicit commentary on institutional values and the marketing of disability in the mainstream. It was very exciting to be working in a situation where we had autonomy over the work we produced, however, there were times when we felt we were working collaborating with Gasworks to market the piece and see how we could try and stretch the parameters that we were initially established with working with the Arts Council. And we found a balance between the 2 situations. But it was not easy. Since our idea was intrinsically ironic and humorous about a fictional idea of the disabled avant-garde which of course does not exist except in our heads, and so the marketing of this ideas about disability and avant-garde was something that we wanted to do to wrong foot people and for them not to quite know if we were straight or twisted with it or whatever. And so we felt like we were sort of contradicting ourselves by trying to do something that was straight, plain, flatly presented to people for them to work out what the object of the humour was, but then on the other hand to try and market it as a disability project. So therefore with the disabled avant-garde today, but then somehow trapped inside of the disability frame as well. So a lot of our discussions the institutional background we were working in was already inside of the work itself. So there was some sort of in built contradiction there for us I think. But it was wonderful to collaborate and make the work that we were very pleased with, and on this occasion for the first time for me in any case to have some provision like audio description and subtitling built into the budget at last but a lot of the time I work autonomously within the mainstream and where as one does not find provision for access in that kind of way, there is an in built process of calibration between a gallery and artist that I think that was something that we experienced with Gasworks and that we actually worked out together on having a systematic programme about how to deliver access in the project. We adapted our work to fit. So, perhaps you could say something? Over to you now. {applause}

NAV HAQ: Thank you Aaron. Just to tell you a bit about what Gasworks does initially. We put on new work with more emerging to mid-career artists, rather than very established ones. And we really have a main emphasis on development of artist’s practice, that is at the forefront of what we do. And I think when we were invited by the Arts Council to take part in the adjustments initiative it is something that caused quite a lot of discussion within Gasworks, not just between myself and the director, but actually throughout the whole organisation and everybody was - we would have a staff meeting and we would all be discussing the ins and outs of participating in this kind of initiative. And mainly because of how we like to think of ourselves in terms of our own programming really, for example we prefer generally not to do exhibitions that have an ethos of being somehow about what has become called " positive discrimination" so

for example we would never do some of the things that Tony pointed out of black artists who practice what might be identified as being somehow black art as its own category of practice somehow. And we even prefer to even take this a bit further, so for example we would never do regional representation type exhibitions. So at the moment in London you get a lot of shows of for example Chinese art or middle eastern art, these kind of regional representation type shows and actually we prefer not to do these kinds of shows either. It is not exactly a policy, but it is something that is a preference really when it comes to programming, and the reason we prefer not to do these kind of shows is because of the kind of frame that is put in place that is there for the artist exhibiting. And what is quite important for us is this idea, which is perhaps something that we could discuss later, is the idea of artists somehow becoming representatives, and it is quite an important ethical question actually, this idea of artists somehow being representatives somehow of social group or region or whatever. It is quite a general question, not specifically to do with disability, artistic production, much more general than that. So we invited Aaron and Katherine to participate in this exhibition. Aaron's practice we knew more than Katherine mainly because Aaron has exhibited quite a lot and exhibited quite a lot at the show room in 2005, and we knew that they had collaborated previously as part of a wider collaborative 15 millimetre group who predominantly were a film making collaborative, but we thought it would be quite interesting to invite just the 2 of them to collaborate together for the first time, thus partly because it is actually something that myself as the curator am quite interested in at the moment in terms of doing shows where you might invite 2 artists together to work on an exhibition, and somehow the connections and all so the differences between the practice somehow culminates through some kind of artistic process and subsequently an exhibition. And so we started a discussion process obviously with Aaron and Katherine, they were very aware of the initiative that it was part of, and obviously it informed how they approached the project in producing the disability avant-garde, the disabled avant-garde, and the way that I actually like to work with artists, it is very much about letting them have the upper hand and really allowing them to think about how they want to be represented within their own exhibition, that to me is actually very important and became very important to how Katherine and Aaron approached the show. We wanted to produce new work for the exhibition and initially I came with the idea of them producing one piece of work that would be a kind of major feature really, they'd worked before as part of the 15 millimetre collective on a film called staircase miracles that was presented at the Serpentine I think earlier in 2006, if I remember correctly, and I initially had this idea that perhaps they could work together on some big feature like that work that they produced, plus also alongside present some of the work that they produced as individual artists. But actually, what I am glad to say is that actually they wanted to produce a whole brand new body of work for the show, and it ended up with them producing 6 works, 6 video works and really it ended up very much about them just actually taking over the gallery space themselves and doing quite a substantial project. A project that I am quite glad to say had an interesting balance of criticality and a kind of slap stick absurdity to it. And I am actually quite glad to say that following on from that they are going to be continuing that body of work in a whole,

that series, to result in a few more video works as part of it. And I think it has been a very good experience for us at Gasworks, certainly in terms of working with artists that have disabilities on the production of work, that kind of process is something that we were absolute new to, also working for the first time with artists with disabilities, and on the whole we're very happy. {Applause}

TONY PANAYIOTOU: Thank you.

CHRIS HAMMOND: Short 5 minute film, then cup of tea, but no cup of tea unless you give us a question so get writing on the cards! If we could dim the light? {video} NIRU RATNAM: The project we developed is I guess the first type of big external project that we had done as a gallery and we're hoping to do one project per year. Ryan's work had been shown in Paris last year, but it was shown kind of in a very interesting arts space, but its not in the centre of Paris so very few people in fact had seen it so we decided that as a fairly major work it would be good to try to re-stage it in London. But in the end we negotiated with Ivana Blaswick a director of the Whitechapel gallery to use their space which will move into next year, kind of what used to be the library and it the seemed appropriate for the actual setting of the work. Then obvious we had to fund raise and that is where the Arts Council came in. And I started talking to Michelle Thomas and I knew that this large project going on. And we were kind of in opposition because we talked to Michelle and we're not officially part of the whole project and we were very much part of those discussions. We also fund raised from other sources as well. I thought it was really valuable to be part of the discussions round adjustments to the project and it reminded me very much of a lot of the debates I have looked at as an academic round black arts in the 1980s, a subject which I researched post graduate level for quite sometime, in some ways I think Ekoshu made a very good point that the instability of these labels is really good in that it kind of it shows that you can't pin people down in any sense, that at certain times a sudden kind of political moments it makes sense to use labels; at other times it does not. There is no need to have a hard and fast rule about it. A lot of discussions round adjustments which took place before hand and probably on the day this was screened will be round that is it necessary to be labelled, is it necessary to talk about something, say, disability arts, in a way that it was with black arts and there is no right answer. I think a lot of artists are very keen not to be labelled, whether that is as a feminist artists or as a black artist or as disabled artists, nearly every artist I have talked to always says I want to be seen as an artist. From a funding point of view, there is a different debate, I think it is really important to split it up into pragmatic way, it is actually saying look, there is art practice, and then there is this debate about funding. And that could be a starting point for debate. I think that is really the point of the conversation that I got to with the other people in Adjustments. I don't think any work in particular should be asked to fit into what is essentially a funding criteria and again it reminds me of there is this whole debate about the Arts Council, I will go back to black artists, something I researched, of should black

artists make black art, and what happens when they don't make art about their ethnicity. And again, it is important to hold those funding labels such as black arts, disability arts in inverted commas and just let artists get on with what their work is. In no sense is the work we showed about disability in the way that in no sense is Steve McQueen's work about him as a black artist, yet his physical presence in that work invites a certain reading and if viewers want to use artists biographies as a way in, well that is a way in, but as we all know the content is always a bit - Jackson Pollock was an alcoholic and therefore he splashed paint everywhere, but therefore you can't stop that so I am very wary about linking what I see as necessarily ways of thinking about funding, where money goes to the actual emotional effect of art works. So, I am sure this is kind of true for number of people in the audience but then an artist might think I want to make work about my own biography, I want to make work about my identity and that is equally valid and again this is something which happened with black arts and what occasionally often what happens is that it is a bit of a mix isn't it so initially you would say that this work was not about its identity but yet have big files of pigment in temples in India so you've got to just have for a nuanced reading of these things and in terms of kind of new audiences I think if thing like adjustments enabled us to get a gallery space and there is still a problem with people feeling they can't come into a white cube setting of a commercial arts space, I think it is really important not just - it is important again for all artists you know not just kind of artists with a disability or artists of colour to reach new audiences and they shouldn't be used as this advanced guard, or every artist we work with when we do future projects, one of the points about being off site is to try and get audiences who might well walk into a public gallery but certainly would not walk into a commercial gallery to come and see it and I think that worked very well with Whitechapel because we did a lot of cross marketing and they were very kind about putting information in their foyer and directing people towards it. I think that with again there is the key thing is not to get to a hung up on labels. Yes they work about one's own background, one's own biography and identity when it's necessary and when it seems this kind of thing that has to be done but never feel the need to be tied down by that or to kind of you know become this artist who just makes the same type of work. I think that was very - I think a lot of artists who I used to talk to about race used to think well if we make one work about our biography will all of our work be read in that way? So it is kind of this idea that it is an identity which is definitely there but should not always box you in.

TONY PANAYIOTOU: Some excellent themes in that film I thought okay what we're doing next is we're going to take a 20 minute break and I make it half past 2 so if we could be back at 10 to 3. Please give your questions to Jade who is sitting in the corner there. And those who are gasping for a cup of tea it is outside just here. And those who are gasping for a cigarette follow me! {Short break} TONY PANAYIOTOU: Okay, are we ready for Question Time? this is where the fun starts. We have had loads of questions by the way so we won't

be able to do all of them so we're trying to group things together. So the first question is for you, Ben. And it goes like this. I really love the image of the 3 skulls on the stakes for me there were so many layers of meaning. Can you say something about what you were exploring in that particular section of your work.

BEN COVE: Yes and no!

TONY PANAYIOTOU: Try the yes bit first!

BEN COVE: Well I will start in a more general way but when I did the work the show, a lot of the work I have made has been quite thought through in terms of like I think I do this, and it gets this and the audience can get this result from it. And that has come partly from being trained as an architect and having that logical rational approach to the decision making, and so I can explain a lot of the work in the pantograph and some of the video work and the text work in that way but I can't really explain the skull piece in that way because I have come to this point now where I'm trying to make some work which is more intuitive, and I had a skull that had in my studio for quite a long time and I decided one day I was going to wrap it in one to change the material properties of it and then I did that a couple of years ago, then I had it sat around and I decided for this show that I would impale them on stakes, and I can tell you that maybe that was because it was a territorial marking of the space, or that it was perhaps to do with my condition, brittle bones so my bones are soft, but these are not decisions that I consciously thought about when I made the work. So, it was also a link perhaps to the coloured wrapping the wool was perhaps linked to Modernist textiles and that design, so there is all sorts of reasons, but I don't really know why. Which is good thing for me from my perspective.

TONY PANAYIOTOU: Okay. The next question we have is to Sue Williams, but I am happy, there is more generic questions, I am happy to invite supplementaries from yourselves. And Sue, this is if talent is not being developed do you think that education is letting people down.

SUE WILLIAMS: I think that is quite an interesting question, because I don't think the talent is not being developed, and I don't think that there is a level at which education is letting people down to a certain extent. It depends which part of the educational process you might be talking about, so there are many more disabled people, deaf and disabled people, going through higher education and going through degrees, fine art degrees. I think what is tending to happen is that people are hitting a bit of a brick wall when they come out of that process, is that actually the opportunities to develop I don’t think it is that the talent is not there or that the talent is not necessarily being developed, I think that actually there is a lack of exposure, there is a lack of engagement with those artists in terms of networks, I think a lot of the issues we're talking about is people are disconnected from their networks, they are disconnected from opportunities and their attitudes around a lot of this work actually are preventing people from actually searching for that talent. So there is a kind of - I think we're trying to plug the wrong plug into the socket if you see, it does not quite connect, it does not

quite fit, so I think we need to find a way of making the right connections and linking people up in the right way. I do think that the education system does discriminate against disabled people in lots of ways but I don't think - I think we can keep going round in circles and talking about that and from my perspective as the Arts Council we have very little control and influence about that process and I think there are other things that we can do that we can actually maximise and support the talent. So I am interested in looking at it in a very optimistic way.

TONY PANAYIOTOU: Thank you. What do other members of the panel think? Is education letting disabled people down? Any experiences you can share?

BEN COVE: I think in some ways it is definitely. I think it is a struggle if you have access requirements, if you have needs to get into an establishment and make your voice heard and get the things done that you need to have done and I think that has a huge drop out of disabled people in courses generally, so I think there definitely is but I think is a lot to do with the fact that you can go through education and you can come out being left in the lurch to some extent. When I left my BA I went out and tried to work and I ended up having to pay a lot of money for an accessible studio because I couldn't rent any other studio, and it ended up that I was quite isolated where I was, so these are all things that go in to it but education is one part of it.

SUE WILLIAMS: I have got an anecdote from a friend of mine who is disabled and does lots of educational courses and just has developed what she calls a portfolio of careers to be unemployed in! So I think that is another way of looking at it as well. TONY PANAYIOTOU: Any supplementaries, anyone want to ask anything on education and disabled people? Okay. Let's move on to the next one then. The next question is - Has the funding/curatorial panel considered exhibiting work by disabled artists without referencing this fact, i.e. avoiding the identification of the artists and subsequent projection of the viewer for example "It's amazing what they can do! " Nav you're a curator?

NAV HAQ: Well I did actually try once to do a project with Ryan Gander a couple of years ago which did not work out unfortunately and Ryan is one of these artists that does not really enjoy being put in that kind of situation I think, and you probably describe his practice as not being disability art, but somehow something more Euro conceptual somehow, but it ended up not working out unfortunately for various reasons. So I have on that one occasion I guess in my short curatorial life.

TONY PANAYIOTOU: Well we don't have any other curators, but from the Arts Council's point of view, what would you say, Sue? Should we avoid identification in this kind of way?

SUE WILLIAMS: I think this is quite an interesting issue and I think this is one of the things that has come up continually today. And I think when I mentioned at the beginning about holding contradictions, I think this is one of them, this is one of the big

ones, because I think from Arts Council perspective as a disability officer in the Arts Council, we want to find the way, opportunity, we want to invest, and also as Arts Council we want to maximise investment in disabled people, so there is a kind of tension between how we actually market this work and how we engage with the issues and how we actually promote that. And there is a tension between actually I would love to be in a situation that we could just do that. Unfortunately I think there are lots of layers to this and I think this is again the whole thing round adjustments. I think I have been very interested and excited by the whole idea of institutionalisation of these issues and naming and identifying people, but I think one of the big issues for me that overarches all of this is that actually what we're failing to say is that actually the issue is the attitudes towards disability in society, particularly as well in some of these areas of work, is absolutely so negative that it does still matter, and so the issue is how do we actually try and redress that? And how do we actually start taking away the stigma without highlighting the issues, so for me there is a huge contradiction, yes, I would love to take just it be about artists and about us funding artists, but how do we actually make change without saying these issues exist and matter to disabled people? So I would be interested in what people have got to say about that.

TONY PANAYIOTOU: Any views from the floor on this? NEW SPEAKER: I agree with you, Sue, I think what excites me are these contradictions NEW SPEAKER: These conflicts that are now existing and that we've got to start tackling and looking at, but I think it is about opportunity and it is about choice and there are many, many disabled artists who don't necessarily want to be identified as disabled artists, and there are good number who really do and it is really integral to their work and I think it is critical that we provide both of those opportunities where disability work is apparent, is focused, is celebrated, and then there are those opportunities for disabled artists who might not necessarily want to market themselves as disabled artists to be able to present their work in the way that they choose to be so it has to be about recognising how artists want to be seen. TONY PANAYIOTOU: You are saying it is self definition basically?

NEW SPEAKER: Yes. Yes. It is about choice. It is about providing those 2 areas of choice that if artists want to present themselves in a particular context they have the opportunity to do that, and if they don't want to present themselves then they also have those opportunities, but it is hard, it is hard now within the disability arts practice do that effectively when the funding is so small that we end up providing opportunities that are fairly thin.

TONY PANAYIOTOU: Anyone else want to make a comment on this theme? NEW SPEAKER: thanks for highlighting that because actually in the earlier part of the day I think it was might have been you speaking, and I realise the issues are very confused, the issues about access or the issues about disability are being all confused with the issues about art, and this is really frustrating. I am an artist, I also have a

disability and I just am so frustrated, I was sitting here holding on to my chair earlier on not to say anything because I want to listen and find out what the real problems are. I make very political work, which is about access and its about obviously it comes from years ago having experienced in my life of not being able to speak or not being able to be listened or, that sort of thing okay so I have worked tirelessly in my practice and now I have the capacity to make work which does not look like it comes - does not make any difference who made the work, it just comes from my experience and now I am really confused myself about how do I apply for funding for this work because it is very political work and it is all about the issues you are talking about, but it does not matter that it was made by me or anything like that and so I am really confused. I get confused by you guy's strategies, your strategies make me confused as an artist. SUE WILLIAMS: Do you want me to answer that? For my perspective, I think I have been - I think we're very clear and we're moving through our Disability Equality Scheme through looking at those complementary issues, how you are supporting generic engagement of disabled people in the arts, whether that be as employees, as artists, as audience members, and how do you then relate also that and support the whole disability arts sector. And I think what we're saying is that we see the absolute importance of doing both, and actually you are right, it should not matter at all and the point being that actually as Arts Council your funding and applying for grants through the arts you should be able to identify in what ever way you want and the work should speak for its self and your engagement in the work should speak for itself and I think that maybe what we need to do is start to have much more discussion with artists about this and about some of these issues and I know that Arts Council England London are going to be starting a series of debates with artists with disabled people about these issues so I think that the it is about creating forums that we can actually look at these in more depth, because for me events like adjustments and events like today happen so rarely, and I know that some of the people have said oh I only see you once every 7 months, when something happens, and so actually it is about getting together and actually really getting underneath the skin of this because we don't have enough time, we don't give it enough time to have these discussions. So we can know what you're thinking as well, you tell us where you are confused with us TONY PANAYIOTOU: With the roving mike if you wouldn't mind introducing yourself. The next question I have in front of me is did the exhibitions get much media and press coverage and if not what could be the reasons for this, and how can we address this issue. This is a really big issue. Let me start by asking you, Aaron if you have any thoughts on this.

AARON WILLIAMSON: We had this discussion with the Arts Council about our exhibition. We did not have a very good experience since it was all - it was just reviewed in the disability arts press that's all, for my experience in the capacity I have been in several situations where editors have commissioned reviews for mainstream publications to come and review quite high profile works I have done in the past and reviewers go to see the show and generally speaking the critical emphasis of the work falls into a vacuum since the art writers do not generally know how to put a critical

frame round the work. In some respects it might be they're worried about saying the wrong thing or offending you in some way or how do they tip toe round the subject, they don't seem to have a critical frame for it. The person who was talking in the video really was making comparisons with black art, and different discourses, and you can see how disability arts is probably about 20 or 30 years behind the debates in how to create a critical form and reading of art made from identity backgrounds without necessarily trying to reduce it down to the fact of identity itself. For our part, I think we made a very complicated exhibition which could have generated a critical discourse round itself without necessarily having to come down to one specific fact of the fact that we're 2 disabled people making art

TONY PANAYIOTOU: Anyone wants to add anything on to that? from the panel first?

NAV HAQ: Just to follow on to speak a bit about Katherine and Aaron's work, about press, there was very little, only in disability arts press, but apart from that nothing. It is difficult to say why, being somebody who actually does write a little bit for various magazines, but I am still none the wiser as to how magazines really make all their decisions. I guess it comes down to a number of things, what else happens to be happening at that same time, whether they just even think it is interesting to even discuss in the first place, and perhaps even with a show - and also another factor that we have at Gasworks is that actually because of our location in the city it is actually quite hard to get people to come down there in the first place anyway to even consider reviewing it and it really varies from show to show. Some shows we will get quite a lot of things, sometimes we'll get really nothing. But I think the thing about Katherine and Aaron's show the fact that people - one of the strengths of the show I think might have worked against it in terms of how critics might react to it, because I think it was one of those shows, despite all the inherent humour within it it was really quite difficult for some people to know how to react to it. Was it all right to laugh at this work? And a lot of people found that quite difficult and actually I quite like the fact that they found it quite difficult and I think that probably would also have had an effect on its critical reception in the press as well.

KATHERINE ARANIELLO: I think this is what we're up against as artists, often we make work, and even if it may not actually have anything to do with disability, the reading of the narrative always turns it into disability, clearly because we are present in the work, and one of the things that came from Gasworks as part of our show is that we had a seminar and we had someone from Goldsmith college talk about the work and we had a very mainstream audience, and they were asking us questions for example "As artists do you prefer to make work that is nothing to do with disability or do we prefer to make work that is inherently about issues round disability", and these were the sort of things that we were asked and it was for me personally quite a strange question because I don't really think about this stuff: am I making a piece of work because it is to try to make a statement? And I just - going back to what we were talking about, the critical response, what Aaron said, people just don't know how to respond. Even though our work was - a lot of our work was so humorous, immediately you put somebody with a

physical impairment within the piece it changes the entire narrative and as artists it is very frustrating.

AARON WILLIAMSON: Very briefly, I wanted to just point out to Nav that the Gasworks press office were very good, no means implying they weren't doing their job correctly but it is worth saying that we've had exhibitions at the icon gallery in Birmingham and also the Serpentine gallery in London and also I had a solo show last year, on all of these occasions those were really the kind of shows you should expect critical reviews back from.

TONY PANAYIOTOU: I will move on to a very easy and simple question here. Is the history and huge image legacy of disability arts now a problem for disabled artists? Whose going to be first? Clarify your question Geoff?

GEOFF ARMSTRONG: What I would like to explore is if the history and the huge legacy/image of disability arts is now presenting disabled artists, visual artists especially with a problem?

TONY PANAYIOTOU: Any volunteers? Silence from the panel!

NAV HAQ: Probably I would say on one level, yes. Because it probably from the outside it is seen as a discussion that is very, very parochial somehow, and this is a problem that happens - parochial? It is caught within its own discussion, and it might sometimes find it difficult to break out from that, despite the intentions of wanting to. So there are a lot of other factors that get caught up within that as well, and there are - and this is where these kind of discussions get tied up with things like the point that you made about funding structure and all of these kinds of things, is that people feel that they are part of the a discourse but they solidified their position within it as a means of just being part of discourse for the sake of being part of a discourse somehow and very often artists, and I am not talking specifically about disabled artists but in more general terms, where artists can go through work that has become known now as a kind of self othering, like they make themselves more black or more whatever in order to become part of this particular discourse. And this very often I think can be to the detriment really of some if those practitioners. SUE WILLIAMS: I think one of the problems with that is that what it is kind of serves is as another box to put artists in, and I think one of the issues is that there is an expectation that that is the kind of work that disabled artists produce, and I think that what a lot of the contemporary artists here that we have been working with have I think also been in some ways consciously or not exploring how they work their way out of that, and how they work their way out of that box and I think that - there is a lot of change going on and I think there is a lot of rebranding and I think you are getting talented artists coming through, you are getting people like Ryan Gander who are actually just completely removed from, and have completely removed themselves from, that legacy and that history so I think it is about exploring A) I think some of that history needs to be contextualised and I think actually that work is incredibly important and

incredibly valuable in terms of the struggle that a lot of disabled people have been on in terms of the way of disability rights and high lighting issues but I also think in some ways it serves to put people in what I call that piss off art box, which is you know is about angry art, or is about very overt agit prop and I think actually we need to - and I think for its time it is completely valuable and relevant and I just think we need to look at how we contextualise that and move on.

SARAH WATSON: I just wanted to mention there was talk about the black art movement in the 1980s and it is one interesting insight into the way in which an artist has repositioned himself, you take Anish Kapoor, in his - when he was in the eighties, nineties he very much would talk about his pigment pieces and relate it to Indian temples and that sort of informed his practice, and I think it is very interesting now that he is so part of the mainstream that he has rewritten that history to say - to completely disassociate himself from that reference point, that they are an entirely abstract conceptual practice and I think it is quite interesting to follow that trajectory where perhaps people might think about identity politics in their early years and find that identification important and I think also in terms of black art movement that was a really important thing in that period of time but whether it is because a number of people have now, black and Asian artists have now become sufficiently successful, there is no need to have that point of reference and it I think is just an interesting thing about how the main streaming of work happens and how then people want to perhaps disassociate themselves from an aspect of their identity or something that they no longer want to be affiliated to. AARON WILLIAMSON: But on the other hand there is quite a famous quote recently from someone asking about why should black artists always be expected to make work about being black?

SARAH WATSON: Absolutely. I just think it is interesting when someone rewrites their own history, that is my point, is how through the mainstreaming that they have rewritten their own history, not that they – absolutely it should not have to relate to make practice which is related to ethnicity at all but it is just the way in which they change their own perception of their own practice. It may be absolutely valid but it is just an interesting pathway

TONY PANAYIOTOU: One more contribution from the floor? On this specific thing, before moving on. Anyone else want to comment? Ben? BEN COVE: I think this is a very - quite a complicated issue really for me. I was brought up going through mainstream education, my contact with other disabled people through my life has been very minimal really and then I went through education, came out into the art world and there is this thing called disability arts, and it is the kind of thing that you can be affiliated with or you can join in with but it is in some ways - I am always struck about how if you are, say, a black artists maybe you have things in common that are very similar to each individual in terms of your experience of the world and maybe as disabled people your experiences can be very different to the next

disabled person, so I think disability arts tries to group everything in this one big happy family is kind of sometimes quite problematic and I think there is a legacy of disability arts and I think that I have benefited from that in the fact that people are now more aware that being an artist does not automatically mean that you are sitting round basket weaving, so, as a personal point of view I have gone from making that kind of piss off kind of art, as Sue termed it, into making work which is not directly reference to my disability and that for me has been a thing that I have come to, as my work has developed, so it is a complicated issue and it is certainly no denying a certain negative connotations out there in the contemporary art world about what disability art is and what it means and what the quality of it is, so it is a difficult thing to negotiate. CHRIS HAMMOND: Can I just make a point? I promised myself I would not speak! But those who know me ...! It was just because we were reflecting and looking at the similarities perhaps with race and disability. Actually there are some differences here. And those are that I think if you ask Joe public and you say disability art what they get, (you know we can sit round this room and we can all have this discussion), but what they think of is almost art therapy, or art as a hobby or that sort of thing and they don't think of professional artists. And that goes even outside the arts world, the sort of assumptions we get as disabled people is that disabled people are recipients, its seen that disabled people might do something as a hobby, but never the professional person. You know? We're not seen as people in professional roles, so I think that impinges on all this as well. It is all very well for us to have these, as Nav said, these sort of discourses within ourselves and our own little circles, but actually what happens is, and I think that starts to touch on all sorts of things, about what Aaron was saying earlier as well, about those people who are out there, whether they are art critics or whether they have nothing to do with arts world, they just occasionally go along to a gallery, not quite knowing how to contextualise our work and the fear of that is the fear that is also outside within our every day lives. People that approach us as disabled people, and they will ask you very personal questions, but I think it is around their fear, you see because people have an inherent fear of disability that they don't have in terms of race issues because people don't think "I could go to bed tonight and wake up in the morning black" but they do think I could wake up in the morning as a disabled person and the fear that surrounds this still gets pushed all the time, particularly by charities {applause}

AARON WILLIAMSON: Speaking as one of those piss off artists earlier, mine and Katherine's work is deliberately confrontational and the thin is that we do have in intellectual strategy behind the confrontation which is to avoid what might experience of being making earnest straightforward work that tries to express my talents as an artist, which is a glass ceiling and I get these patronising responses about isn't it amazing, although he's deaf he can do this and that. So what we strategically try to do with our 15 minute films in and this avant-garde idea was to turn the tables on to the audience and to make work that parodied their perceptions of us, so that the object in question was not how we saw ourselves, or how we wanted to present ourselves to people but how we imagined historically disabled people are perceived by other

people. And so, we made work about that perception, that was the subject of our work.

SUE WILLIAMS: You've got me started, because actually Aaron I am a big fan of piss off art, but one of the things that I just wanted to say, because I think what Chris was saying about perceptions, I think really encapsulates for me when Milly was talking in the DVD about actually that was her perception of disabled artists and that it was very much about art therapy, and I just want to actually push that that is a real reason why we need to keep doing this kind of work and actually engaging in this kind of work because it actually does make change and even if it is that the project, the curator at Cell Project Space actually has a more meaningful engagement with disabled people and a more meaningful understanding offer what disability equality is, and I think that is absolutely fundamental because they are very important to the infrastructure. So for me it is a strong strong reason to do this work.

RICHARD: I am sorry but I find it really hard to follow everything that's coming up on the Palantypist. This is for a big art meeting with a lot of terminology being used and I'm finding it really difficult to follow everything and this is because I have a learning difficulty. And all so it is really important how we the people here today, work together. And really you know you should be using every day words rather than terminology that you are using because it is completely going over my head, I am unable to understand it, even though they have got a Palantypist and an interpreter and this is a big problem that we need to be aware of when working with people and inviting people here with learning difficulties

TONY PANAYIOTOU: I think that's a fair point. And let's all try and make it less technical and jargon free. Okay. If we can move on to the next question. This is a question to the artists. It goes like this, has this experience, your involvement in this, changed the way you might approach another gallery?

KATHERINE ARANIELLO: Okay. Well, the reality is that I have not actually personally A an individual approached a gallery before. So, this is another reason why I feel it is a unique experience. The Serpentine work that Aaron was talking about earlier, that was again a funded piece of work and I was not personally involved in the bureaucracy of that process, so I to be perfectly honest, I probably would lack confidence in that area of actually going to a gallery and approaching them personally and no doubt do it through the processes that one has to go through in order to approach a gallery which is - and hopefully the work we've shown at Gasworks they may have heard of it.

AARON WILLIAMSON: Well, I am in a similar situation to Katherine as well, I don't generally approach galleries directly, I tend to get what comes my way. I work with that. But we do have a plan to continue with the work, and can see the work that we've made that we want to continue doing, which I guess will mean having to approach other galleries at some point. I must admit that in the past it has been quite a daunting prospect just throwing thing into thin air seeing if people will respond or not. I remember once when we first did R&D on the staircase miracles project, I contacted

every gallery in England to see whether or not they wanted to commission the project and we contextualised in the terms of having big funding applications to Arts Council, but the 2 people who came back to us were the icon gallery and the Serpentine out of a list of round 50 or 60 galleries that we approached so I'm not really to a keen to do that again.

BEN COVE: I don't think this project will change the way I approach galleries because again I have not really had to approach galleries, I have had things come my way so far, but actually when I came down to London I had a one to one surgery session with art quest, it is a web site that provides information for artists, and I went and saw somebody there and they said to me, looked at my work and said to me, right, what are you looking for, and I said I'm looking for some shows in some good galleries, like everybody else, and they said well here is a list of places we think would be appropriate for you to contact, and it was shortly after that that I then was contacted by cell, so I was quite daunted at the prospect of plugging away, sending off information or getting in contact with galleries because I know that most galleries - so in terms of how I approach galleries it has not changed that, but it certainly put me, given me a show in a gallery which has links and it is seen by other galleries to be a very significant place so it has put me in a very good position I think generally in the fact that I have had a solo show there so I am not planning on contacting any galleries, I am just hoping something will come through the letter box at some point!

TONY PANAYIOTOU: Let's move on, The next question is the - well we've had some discussion about race, and learning disabilities, gender the question goes: is there a hierarchy within the disability arts identical to that in mainstream arts with a comment, I am sure it is no coincidence that only one female artist was involved in exhibiting. BEN COVE: Well when people came to see me Milly said to me well we were looking for a woman really! So maybe there is, but, you know, not in their line. SUE WILLIAMS: What I find interesting about that, we did identify that, we also identified that all people supporting the project behind the scenes were women as well and that was quite interesting. I think it is an issue. I am really glad that Katherine was one of the artists. I think it is something we need to explore and it is one of the things that we need to look at and explore

TONY PANAYIOTOU: Nice question to open up. Is gender and sexuality and issue within disability? disability arts?

NEW SPEAKER: Yes I think it is seen as a majority of the senior directors and chief executives in disability arts are women. TONY PANAYIOTOU: No reaction to that!

SUE WILLIAMS: And in the Arts Council as well!

TONY PANAYIOTOU: Okay. Going, going, gone, you're going to miss out!

ROSEANNA: I think we need to encourage some of them to get out there and be making their own work, not mentioning any names!

SUE WILLIAMS: I think that's aimed at me

ROSEANNA: Sue does brilliant art work but is to a busy facilitating everyone else to get out there and I don't think that is an individual thing, I think that is a trap a lot of women can fall into.

TONY PANAYIOTOU: Okay I think we've got time for one more question, I am looking for the most generic one and I think I've found it. So, this is back to the artists, and to you as well, Nav, what do people involved in this project now feel should be the priorities for galleries, arts organisations, studio spaces et cetera in terms of providing access and supports for artists with disabilities.

AARON WILLIAMSON: I think I was impressed when we had this discussion about whether education was the way forward or the provision of access. I was very much in agreement with what Ben was saying about that and I think that whereas education does its own thing, but what is really needed is for disabled artists to find access to spaces where art that is not necessarily institutionally supported. I am thinking about the grass roots enthusiasts spaces who can only afford to show things in lofts or in God forsaken places in the east of London or whatever, and this kind of work needs to be seen by disabled audiences as well, but how? It is difficult to see. I wonder if whether the Arts Council might consider prioritising funding, small independent artists run organisations over, say, big corporate or institutional organisations who can deliver access admittedly but whose art is not immediately useful as an education tool to disabled artists themselves

TONY PANAYIOTOU: Anyone else? BEN COVE: I don’t know really where to start on this! I think at the present time I am feeling quite supported by various institutions, I feel like I am being supported on this project by the Arts Council and by Cell and also currently if you like I'm being supported by ACME because they the bursary I'm on is particularly for artists with disability, so at the moment I am feeling like I am quite well supported, but I know I am one individual amongst thousands, but before I moved down here to London I did feel like a kind of come out of education and trying to work as an artist, and I did ring the Arts Council at one point and said well I am here, I can't rent a studio because it is really expensive if it is accessible and I said what can studio and they said fell, nothing really, because it is just ongoing funding so in this situations I kind of felt a bit like maybe we need more provision to funding if there weren't such concrete projects which gave such definite outcomes. So I think it is difficult and I think for every Cell

gallery there is another hundred that do the same sort of thing that have not been affected by the project at all, so obviously you can do the same there

TONY PANAYIOTOU: What do other people think about priorities? Richard?

RICHARD: Because people with learning difficulties can't access college and universities, that is often a problem because simply it is because they can't read the English. So really my question is how do you make sure that they can be involved in arts? How can people with learning disabilities be involved in art? How can that collaboration happen? You know, how can you make sure that information is fully accessible for deaf and people with learning disabilities? Because I really do feel that passionately that is a strong problem and it is happening out there and it is happening now.

SUE WILLIAMS: I think one of the first things we need to do is actually talk to more learning disabled artists about where they're at and what the barriers are for you. Because I think unless we really know and have meaningful understanding of what the issues are for learning disabled people we can't actually start to address that. NEW SPEAKER: I was actually going to contact you and Tony this week, you asked me to try to bring you together with some learning disabled artists to talk about that very thing, so thank you

SUE WILLIAMS: One of the things that we - for me it is very much, yes, we want to provide information in accessible formats and I think we're doing that as a big part of our Disability Equality Scheme. Also we're going to be building into our Disability Equality Scheme lots more conversations with a variety of artists to look at and get information about where the barriers are for artists as part of that. So, we will be building that into the way that we work. NEW SPEAKER: I just want to reply to that question, that comment. That's fine. But there is a but. With TV companies and media the problem is with media and TV companies is that you know they think they know more than we do and they really feel that they are on a pedestal and that we're not equal to them. And we're not allowed to join them and obviously it is very different and that's a problem for us, there is no relationship there. So, like I say, with any kind of media company they're not allowing us to access them and they're not providing information accessible to us.

SUE WILLIAMS: For us, the starting point of our Disability Equality Scheme is that any discrimination is unacceptable, and I think for us it is actually about addressing discrimination where we find it and actually talking to people about addressing that and I think particularly where learning disabled people are excluded, that we will be looking at really clearly at ways about how we really start to seriously address that discrimination. Because we have legal duties to address that and we also have moral and ethical reasons to address that as well so we're going to be looking very seriously about how we explore those issues. Aren't we Tony?

TONY PANAYIOTOU: Okay. Thank you very much, sorry we've not got round to everybody's question and I think we will probably be talking about this for a good few years yet. I would like to thank the panel, Ben and Nav and Sue and Aaron and Katherine; thank you very much first and foremost. And some other thank yous for making today happen. Michelle, thank you very much. And Sarah and Sian in London region. To Charla, thank you, and all the artists and galleries that participated in the project as well, and to Marco and his team here at the Tate, and a very, very big thank you to Chris Hammond and everybody at Full Circle Arts for bringing this all together. {Applause}. Have a good trip home everybody.

This document is supplemented by:A project report

The full filmed debate at Tate Modern on DVD

A transcript from an interview with Niru Ratman Curator of Store gallery

Websites for organisations and galleries involved are:

Arts Council Englandhttp://www.artscouncil.org.uk

Full Circle Artshttp://www.fullcirclearts.co.uk

Cellhttp://www.cell.org.uk

Storehttp://www.storegallery.co.uk

Gasworkshttp://www.gasworks.org.uk

Spacehttp://www.spacestudios.org.uk

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