Art, Aristotle and DANC
I was chatting to Actor Melissa Johns and Katy Boulton of the Disabled Artists Networking Community about the visual arts strand of their work. I have been around DANC in various ways over recent years and wrote a piece about their affiliated Bee Vocal mental health choir a couple of years ago. DANC is a community of around one thousand six hundred deaf, disabled and/or neurodivergent (DDN) professionals working across the arts and screen industries. Their gateway organisation to the arts for DDN people is TripleC Creative Confidence Collective.
My own connections with DANC have been through the performing arts (as an observer not a participant!). And so I was surprised to see their stand at the Manchester Art Fair last November displaying visual arts. Hence my subsequent conversation with Melissa. I was intrigued. It soon transpired that Jennifer Gilbert of the Jennifer Lauren Gallery had helped to ignite this particular spark. Stepping back again, I had also written a feature in 2020 about Jennifer’s work in: ‘Championing self-taught, disabled and overlooked artists from around the world.’ So I got in touch with Jennifer:
“Just before lockdown I was an invited guest to a DANC event in Manchester and I couldn’t help but notice the lack of deaf, disabled and neurodivergent visual artists in the room. I suggested to the team that they might widen their offer to include visual artists into their work. This led me to partnering with them on a series of online creative workshops led by disabled artists and master classes for these artists to learn more from curators working with the contemporary visual arts sector. In 2022 the opportunity came about to present four artists on a stand at the Manchester Art Fair. This not only provided a platform for the artists to be shown on an equal footing with other artists, but more people were able to get to know the work of TripleC DANC.”
Ah, things became clearer now. And so back to the chat with Melissa and Katy. DANC itself was created in 2018 by Melissa and fellow actor Cherylee Houston. Melissa told me, “In the early years visual arts weren’t a focus. Our focus was theatre and screen. But after the conversation with Jennifer Gilbert we realised that courses we were running – training, peer to peer support from professional artists and so on – could also be applied to visual arts.”
Melissa went on to explain that they were working with Plus Tate, a UK wide network of 48 visual arts organisations created to exchange ideas, knowledge and skills. DANC are helping to explore the barriers to disabled and neurodivergent artists exhibiting (and accessing) across the galleries in their network. These include Manchester Art Gallery, HOME and The Whitworth.
And so – as always – very busy times for Melissa, Katy, Cherylee and the whole team in so many areas. I am pleased that these areas now include the visual arts and I look forward to seeing more creative visual works in a multitude of mediums as this particular strand of DANC progresses. Though I am far, far away from being a classics student, a quote from Aristotle comes to mind:
‘The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance.’
