Why and How? 2016
Engaging Children with Special Educational Needs in Creative Experiences and Making Art
Saturday 19 March 2016 10.30am - 6pm
Burlington House, Royal Academy of Arts
£75. Reductions £55. Booking required.
This conference will provide a space for attendees to consider approaches and develop ideas around the nature and value of cultural and artistic engagement for children with special educational needs and disabilities.
Join us for a day of talks, workshops, networking and discussion sessions to explore, stretch and question creative approaches to engaging children with SEND.
This conference will provide a space for attendees to consider approaches and develop ideas around the nature and value of cultural and artistic engagement for children with special educational needs and disabilities.
This year’s presenters were selected from an open submission process and include SEN teachers, artist educators, disability consultants and gallery and museum professionals. Attendees will explore their own creativity and share ideas and experiences while taking part and contributing to talks, round-table discussions and practical workshops.
This conference is generously supported by Robin Hambro.
About the conference
The day begins with refreshments and an opening talk by Heather Stack addressing the current contexts to creative engagement for children with special educational needs and disabilities and articulate ways we can explain the value of it.
Participants will then attend a selection of three practical workshops or creative discussion sessions with a break for lunch and refreshments for networking.
The final element to the day will be a politically focused panel discussion exploring the policy and research that surrounds the role of the arts in the lives and learning experiences of children and young people with special educational needs.
Anyone who is interested in learning and contributing to learning about how and why we engage children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities in exploring and creating art.
Last year’s attendees were a range of artists, artist educators, teachers, consultants, gallery and museum professionals.
£75 / £55 reductions
Includes:
• Access to the day’s range of talks and workshops
• Course learning materials and handouts
• Lunch and refreshments
Booking
If you are unable to book online, please contact us on 020 7300 5732.
Once you book you will be contacted to provide further information and to choose your preferred workshops.
Each workshop has a limited capacity and although we will always strive to ensure your choice of sessions, this may not always be possible.
Workshops, talks and discussions
Opening Talk
by Heather Stack (Independent SEND Consultant)
“Life beats down and crushes the soul and art reminds you that you have one.” – Stella Adler
In this opening talk, Heather explores the transformative power of art and creativity to awaken and challenge damaged concepts of the self. It explores themes of self-concept and identity, acceptance and understanding, curiosity and exploration, freedom and liberation.
For the child or young person facing the daily onslaught and challenge of special educational needs, disability, disadvantage or diversity, art and creativity provide a safe harbour, restoring equilibrium, awakening the senses and allowing the soul to emerge, undamaged and unencumbered temporarily, by daily struggle.
In discovering joy, inspiration and talent through creativity, art has the power to create magnetic moments in time. It is these moments that will linger long in the hearts and minds of all those caught up in its wake. It is the adults that children encounter in their passage through life, that have the ultimate power: to destroy the soul or to liberate; to affirm a growing sense of inadequacy, incompetence and disinterest, or to foster a love of art in all its vagaries, and a love of the all-powerful, creative self.
Structured Sensory Art
with Joanna Grace
Joanna's workshop will draw on insight from her research and ongoing project, The Structured Sensory Art Project.
She’ll be encouraging attendees to explore what makes for a great sensory experience and how these approaches can be used to engage individuals with a wide range of needs and abilities with art and art making.
Circle, Square, Triangle – Engaging with Shape in Space and Time
with Agnieska Kolek
A creative session exploring shape, creative problem-solving and techniques that inspire independent learning. This practical workshop will also involve a discussion about a range of assessment and feedback techniques, including approaches to self-evaluation and peer to peer evaluation.
Illustrating a Journey of Engagement with Children with Social, Emotional and Mental Health Issues (SEMH)
with Jhinuk Sarkar, Robin Johnson and Matthew Johnson
In 2015, Jhinuk Sarkar was Illustrator in Residence for Nuneaton Museum and Art Gallery. Part of her work involved engaging SEN schools with the museum’s collections and finding ways of supporting them to explore their own artistic skills. This led to a collaboration with nearby schools to develop workshops for students with Social, Emotional and Mental Health Issues (SEMH). This session will include a short taster of the workshops delivered, and a round-table discussion that will explore ideas and opinions to help progress methods for this type of engagement and partnership.
Understanding Creative Empowerment for Children and Young People with Learning Disabilities
with Corali and Greenside School
This session will showcase the Corali / Greenside School Creative Award. It will use the partnerships’ performance-led, mixed-media methodology as a provocation to discuss inventive and original ways that children and young people with learning disabilities can be artistically and creatively empowered to engage in the arts.
The visit – a holistic experience
with Cash Aspeek and Ben Connors
Visiting a cultural venue is an experience from start to finish. From the moment you have booked a trip to a gallery or museum the journey begins, for a child with SEN everything from this point to the journey home afterwards can propose moments for creative engagement or become barriers to it. Moving around the building and exhibition spaces, attendees will explore their personal responses and reflect on the idea of the cultural trip as a holistic experience, working to address and problem solve issues and propose ideas to ensure these cultural excursions are a positive experience for all parties involved.
Curriculum, Art and Multi-Sensory Experiences: How Does It All Fit Together?
with Michelle T. Lee and Paul Anderson Morrow
Michelle and Paul work at Queen Elizabeth II Jubilee School, a school for learners with severe, profound, and multiple learning difficulties (SPMLD) aged 5 to 19. A group of eight secondary-aged learners have been participating in a collaborative art project with The Orpheus Centre, an arts college for learners with mild learning difficulties aged 16 to 25 located in Surrey.
This session will detail their approach to this creative project and will be both experiential and conversational, exploring understanding of how SPMLD learners engage in artistic experiences and how multi-sensory experiences can support the curriculum. They will also work with attendees to develop understanding of how multi-sensory art can fit into the contemporary art paradigm.
Getting Political
with Rachael Christophides, Susan Potter and guests
We conclude the day with a panel discussion exploring the policy and research that surrounds the role of the arts in the lives and learning experiences of children and young people with special educational needs.
An invited panel of speakers will share their research on how involvement with the arts affects outcomes for disabled children and young people, speaking about their experience of how policy is shaping this type of engagement.
The session will provide delegates with the opportunity to share their expertise and experience and to bring greater clarity to the challenges and potential outcomes of this field of work.
Presenter Biographies
Joanna Grace
Joanna Grace is a special educational needs and disabilities consultant who works internationally to support the inclusion of individuals with profound disabilities in all aspects of life. Joanna is the founder of The Sensory Project.
The Sensory Project provides bespoke training sessions on sensory engagement techniques to a range of settings including: schools, adult care and heritage settings. The Sensory Project also creates affordable sensory stories on a wide range of topics for use with individuals with profound and multiple learning disabilities, dementia, autism, sensory processing disorder and, of course, anyone who enjoys a good story.
In 2015 The Sensory Project ran the Structured Sensory Art Project which enabled seven artists with profound and multiple learning disabilities to independently create works of art. These art works then formed the exhibition ‘Uninhibited’, which toured the UK raising awareness of the abilities of its artists, as well as of the artists themselves.
Agnieska Kolek
Agnieszka is an artist and educator currently teaching at Mandeville School in Ealing, London. After completing her Bachelor Degree in Fine Art Education back in Poland she moved to London in 2002. She taught art at Sybil Elgar School part of National Autistic Society between 2004 and 2006. She worked with 16-19 year old students. She moved on to teaching position at Mandeville Primary School before starting her MA in Fine Art at University of Arts London, Wimbledon College of Art. She graduated in 2009.
Agnieszka has gathered her experience teaching art within the SEN school settings with pupils’ needs ranging from ASC through SLD and PMLD. Agnieszka has exhibited her own work in UK, Poland and France. In 2005 she exhibited her joint project with Sybil Elgar students at Salon des Art Gallery in London.
Robin Johnson
Robin Johnson has been the Cultural Learning and Development Officer for Kedleston Schools since 2011.
Kedleston schools are a highly specialised educational company founded on the principle that children who don’t fit into the mainstream are entitled, as much as any other child, to a quality education so that they can achieve their maximum potential in life. We recognise that all children are individual with their own personal hopes, dreams and aspirations and we are committed to ensuring they can get the best possible outcome from their time in school. We run ten schools nationwide catering for children with a variety (and complex array) of social, emotional and mental health issues.
In 2013 Robin was nominated for the Learning Outside the Classroom Outstanding Educator Award. In 2014 his project with English Heritage, Making Your Mark, was nominated for the Educational Initiative award at the Museum & Heritage awards.
Previous to this he was the Senior Learning Officer based at the Herbert Art Gallery & Museum in Coventry where he was involved in numerous award winning projects including the Educational Initiative Project Award (2005 win, 2008 nominated) at the Museum & Heritage Awards, the Guardian Family-friendly Museum of the Year award in 2009 and also being named the ‘Outstanding Individual’ in the 2011 West Midlands Museums ‘Best-of-the-West’ awards.
Before re-training in museum education, Robin was a primary school teacher and has always championed learning outside the classroom environment and the benefits thereof for both children and educational partners.
Matthew Johnson
Nuneaton Museum & Art Gallery is a local authority museum. It is a community focused venue and was recently selected to be one of 6 undertaking the Arts Council, Creative Museums Programme in conjunction with Battersea Art Centre. The responsibility for learning rests mainly with the Museum Outreach Officer. More recently its learning programme has offered opportunities for S.E.B.D to work more closely with its collections. One of the emerging priorities in the museum’s new Learning Policy and Action Plan is to more effectively establish the value of learning experiences to its participants.
Matthew Johnson has been Museum Outreach Officer for Nuneaton Museum & Art Gallery since 2004. He has led a number of successful externally funded projects, which have impacted on learning. Tales of the Tundra was the Arts Council Funded Project that sought to find new connections between the museum’s collection of Inuit items and local audiences through the intervention of illustrative artist Jhinuk Sarkar.
‘I’ve had a lifelong passion for social history and a fascination of making connections between people, objects and the stories that can emerge when the two meet! I began my museum career in 1992 and since then I’ve worked throughout the Midlands as a Collections Assistant, Exhibitions Officer and currently as a Museum Outreach Officer at Nuneaton Museum & Art Gallery’.
Jhinuk Sarkar
Jhinuk Sarkar is a freelance Artist and Illustrator based in East London. She studied Illustration at Norwich School of Art & Design, and at Central St Martin’s College.
For the past ten years, Jhinuk has continued to develop her practice through residencies and through exhibiting her work nationally and internationally. She has delivered illustration-related workshops to children and adults with physical and learning disabilities for Hackney Museum, the V&A Museum of Childhood and the Royal Academy of Arts. She is also an Education Illustrator for House of Illustration: the UK’s only public gallery dedicated solely to Illustration.
Her varying career in the Arts has included building museum exhibitions, delivering art workshops and supporting illustrators as a commercial agent. She also supported disabled artists in delivering their commissions for the London 2012 Cultural Olympiad and assisted access advisers training arts venues in Brazil, in preparation for the Cultural Olympiad in Rio 2016. Alongside her Illustration practice, she currently works in the University of the Arts London’s Disability Service supporting disabled students.
In all of her work, Jhinuk enjoys the opportunities that illustration and art brings to educate people about the world around them. Drawing on her work experiences, she proactively seeks to ensure her illustrations and workshops are accessible to diverse audiences.
Paul Anderson Morrow
Paul currently works at Westminster Special Schools as a Lead Practitioner of Creative Arts working across both Queen Elizabeth Jubilee School and College Park School. He teaches a wide range of young people with barriers to learning such as Profound and Multiple Learning Difficulties (PMLD), Severe Learning Difficulties (SLD), Autistic Spectrum Disorder (ASD), Complex needs and Emotional, Behavioural and Social Difficulties (EBSD).
Within his teaching practice one of the many ways that inclusion manifests is through Assessment for Leaning (AfL). These approaches have been both liberating and exciting with the possibilities they present.
Michelle T. Lee
Michelle is currently the Head of Upper School and a teacher of a class for learners with Profound and Multiple Learning Difficulties at Queen Elizabeth II Jubilee School in Westminster. She has been a teacher of learners with a range of special educational needs for 12 years. Prior to this, she had aspirations of becoming an archaeologist. This sparked an interest in human behaviour which has crossed over into her career in education – in particular, observing how learners engage and interact with multi-sensory experiences.
Rachael Christophides
Rachael is a senior communications and campaigns professional with over 18 years’ experience of influencing in the public and voluntary sector. She has a long standing personal and professional commitment to campaigning for the rights of disabled children and adults to ensure they are supported to reach their full potential.
Rachael started her career in Parliament where she worked for a backbencher, an opposition spokesperson, a Minister and a Secretary of State. She moved from the House of Commons to the voluntary sector and has spent the majority of her career since working for national disability charities. She played a key role in shaping the Disability Discrimination Act 2005 as part of a consortium of charities and has researched and published two key reports on disability issues - Young, disabled and forgotten and Freedom to Live: Transition for disabled young people – as well as contributing to numerous government consultations aimed at securing enhanced rights for children and adults with disabilities.
Rachael has been a keynote speaker at a range of events including national conferences on disability issues, fringe meetings at political conferences and panel discussions in Parliament to develop new disability policies.
Susan Potter
Susan Potter has a background in creative and cultural learning, with over 25 years’ experience of working with museums, galleries and arts organisations across the UK. Her expertise is in arts evaluation and research. Evaluation commissions with SEN pupils and students include: Open Doors delivered by Sinfonia Viva; Relaxed Performance delivered by Children & the Arts; START Hospice Project delivered by the Fitzwilliam Museum and the SEN Schools Programme delivered by the RA.
Her current research is focused on the psychology of participating in the arts, with its specific impacts upon individual mental health and wellbeing. She has recently completed a scoping study for Arts Council England investigating early intervention mental health support via the arts.
Heather Stack
Founder & CE, The Local Offer Independent SEND Consultant
Heather has worked in the field of SEN & Disability for over 25 years. She held teaching posts in a range of mainstream & specialist settings and worked in a number of local authorities as an advisory teacher, before transitioning into independent consultancy. Her background is in childhood Autism, learning difficulties & emotional, social & mental health needs, (0 – 25 years) working with public, private and third sector education settings & related services.
As an independent consultant, Heather’s work and client base is diverse and includes local authority school improvement, contractual work with schools to develop whole school SEND provision, policy and practice, as well as pupil and specific staff group focused work. Delivering training events, both UK and overseas together with speaking at national conferences on SEND policy and practice are core elements of contractual work. Heather is a regular contributor for a number of specialist journals and magazines, including SEND digital & SEN Leader.
Heather has long been an advocate of the need for the pupil voice to come through strongly as a driving force in provision and planning, a directive that is embedded now within the Children & Families Act (2014). Her passions are many, but include the power of art, culture and creativity in transforming young lives. She holds the belief that every young person needs an army of relentless advocates, always on their side, always alert to their fears, challenges, aspirations and desires.
“We do not believe in ourselves until someone reveals that deep inside us something is valuable, worth listening to, worthy of our trust, sacred to our touch. Once we believe in ourselves we can risk curiosity, wonder, spontaneous delight or any experience that reveals the human spirit.” – e. e. cummings
Cash Aspeek
Cash Aspeek is a visual artist who is engaged with inclusive arts practices, she predominantly makes artworks by collaborating with marginalised groups, focusing on adults, teenagers and children living with learning disabilities. She runs a regular programme of creative family workshops for children with special educational needs at the Royal Academy of Arts. Cash also delivers regular sessions at the Horniman Museum and Gardens and the Islington Museum encouraging the use of collections as inspiration. Her decades of experience working in the field of art and design are reflected in her deep understanding of the opportunities that can be created for everyone through art. Cash has an MA in Inclusive Arts Practice and her research focuses on collaborative creative processes. In 2011 Cash founded Redstart Arts, which aims to foster individual creativity, develop critical thinking and challenge ideas around inclusion and acceptance by working with artists with learning disabilities, enabling them to work collaboratively with creative professionals to create high quality art, installations or products that have a valued place within the visual and applied arts world.