Our Community Collaborator:
Headway East London
Meet Headway East London to hear more about their work supporting people affected by brain injury and how Barbican Guildhall Creative Learning has been collaborating with them so far.
We are delighted to be working with Headway East London as our first Community Collaborator.
The Community Collaborator programme is our new partnership model, where an in-depth collaborative relationship with a charity or community organisation is nurtured over a three-year period.
Headway East London has exceptional artists as members and the charity already produces a range of innovative creative work. As part of our early conversations, Barbican Guildhall Creative Learning have been exploring how we can complement, develop and showcase that work, and in turn how the charity can support us to develop and work in new ways.
As part of Headway East London’s current campaign #HomeNotAlone we've invited the Headway team, along with a couple of their members, to reflect on our collaborations together so far.
If a person can make something that didn’t exist before, then they have proof of their own reality and agency
One very simple definition of the word culture is ‘to make and to give.’ This can take many forms – sharing food, performing music, exhibiting artwork – and each and every one is a powerful, hopeful act. If a person can make something that didn’t exist before, then they have proof of their own reality and agency. If they can then offer that creation to someone else who will appreciate it in turn, then they find social reality and value too.
For the people we support at Headway East London this has added significance, as brain injury is most associated with loss: of jobs, function, relationships and identity that are suddenly taken away. Part of our work is to move this narrative on, to help our membership avoid the worst outcomes associated with acquired disability, and to begin building new lives based on their talents and passions. The act of making therefore becomes an integral part of our work.
At our day centre in Hackney, we run a range of projects supporting more than 200 survivors to engage in cultural practice (whether it’s art, food, music, writing…), whilst constantly looking for new audiences and partners to help develop it further. Over the last year Headway East London has been working in close partnership with the Barbican Guildhall Creative Learning team to do just that: to open discussions about who gets to create and engage with culture, and to showcase the amazing talents of an often-overlooked community of makers.
The culture of community
The opportunity to create culture today is a privilege – and one currently offered on an unequal basis. Making up 19% of the working-age population (Department of Work and Pensions, 2018), but just 2% of the arts workforce (Arts Council, 2015), people with disabilities are dramatically underrepresented in the cultural industries. The experience of living with brain injury and the artistic contributions of survivors remain largely invisible. The opportunity therefore to work with an internationally renowned organisation like the Barbican, an institution that shares our vision of opening up culture to new audiences and artistic collaborators, was an enticing one.
Making up 19% of the working-age population, but just 2% of the arts workforce, people with disabilities are dramatically underrepresented in the cultural industries
In the last few years alone, the Barbican’s public programming has championed the work of marginalised practitioners through their exhibitions (including 2018’s Basquiat: Boom for Real and Another Kind of Life: Photography on the Margins) and interactive performances (such as 2019’s CRIPtic Pit Party in the Pit Theatre). Behind the scenes, the Creative Learning team have also been working hard to increase inclusivity in their localised work: reaching schools and community groups who previously faced barriers accessing and engaging with large cultural institutions.
We worked informally with the Creative Learning team at first, organising trips and discussing our shared aims, before solidifying a three-year partnership that would see Headway artists engage with many of the Barbican’s art forms, not only as audience members, but as practitioners.
The experience of living with brain injury and the artistic contributions of survivors remain largely invisible
Collaborating on the Barbican exhibition Modern Couples: Art, Intimacy and the Avant-garde (2019) – a show about unpicking the role and influence of artistic partnership - felt like the perfect place to begin the next step in our relationship. Headway East London artists were invited to the gallery to draw their own interpretations of the exhibited work and artists before developing a series of interactive workshops for a Community View: an evening of free art, performance and tours for local community groups.
Read
After their visit to Modern Couples, a few Headway members shared their reflections on what constitutes collaboration alongside their artwork in response to the exhibition.
Poetic partnership
Central to our partnership is a commitment to not only showcase the existing creative talents of our membership with a wider audience, but to introduce them to new skills, practices and art forms. The opportunity to work with the Barbican Young Poets in Spring 2019 was one such example: allowing some of our established writers to explore and develop fresh methods, whilst also supporting others to try out poetry and spoken word for the very first time. Using The Curve Gallery exhibition Daria Martin: Tonight the World (2019) as inspiration, the group explored the show’s central themes of dream and memory to create new work over the course of three workshops, resulting in a printed anthology performed at both the Barbican and Headway East London.
'When you first suffer a head injury everything gets scattered around, and unlike a broken arm that can heal, sometimes that part of your brain is lost (and the memory that was there too). It can reorganise and refocus itself, but you’re then in a weird land, because you don’t always remember what you were. Actually writing the poetry; getting my thoughts into a rational order and getting that down, I really enjoyed that because it concentrated my mind... It focuses the mind on other things outside of yourself, outside of the box that you’re in'.
John L
Read: After Viewing by John L
A lot like my original thought on ‘life’.
A ‘jumbled’ reflection of parts of an earlier life,
or rather of another’s ‘memories’.
So; past, or part of, presence or part of,
future possible…given the past and
re-organising its meaning now.
All ‘P’s’, past, presence and possible future,
So; p is the new me…in principle
…….Perhaps!
So; ‘P’ is the new me
different than before
but maybe…
a better place
than now,
a new adventure or a new Playground
of possibilities and adventures
Read 'Where a Memory Lives' anthology by downloading the PDF below.
A digital foresight
In addition to working alongside the Barbican and Guildhall School's vast network of artists and collaborators, the partnership has also allowed Headway East London’s members to exhibit the work and collaborations already happening at the charity’s day centre. Last summer, as part of the Artist and the Machine event inspired by the Barbican exhibition AI: More than Human (2019), we were invited to develop a brand-new piece of work. Member Graham, from the charity’s onsite art studio, Submit to Love, paired with external artist and studio friend Nicky Deeley to create an innovative short film, Blue Planet Black Hole, with accompanying workshops that detailed Graham’s experience of brain injury, his passion for environmentalism, and his reliance on technology to communicate. Much of the project was documented and developed via WhatsApp and the resulting film showcased the fruits of blending modern technology with traditional storytelling and the visual arts.
Watch: Blue Planet Black Hole
‘Artist and The Machine’ day was supported by Wellcome as part of Life Rewired
Read
Discover how artists Nicky Deeley and Graham Naylor met and came up with with the idea behind Blue Planet Black Hole.
This work now holds particular significance as we navigate the challenges of a global pandemic that is forcing many of us to rely on the digital world to connect with others. Whilst many of the partnership’s projects are being rapidly redeveloped as a short-term response to the Barbican's closure, important questions are being asked about how we now best share this work moving forward. The online world offers one such forum for collaboration and creativity. In the past month we have worked together to create an online workshop with Headway East London member and artist Billy, who has developed a 'cut price' printing technique to make bold and colourful portraits that can be recreated in homes up and down the country.
Originally intended as part of a Community View event for the Barbican's exhibition, Masculinities: Liberation through Photography (2020), restructuring the workshop has unexpectedly created an opportunity to share it with a much larger audience: reaching those who previously may not have been able to access the centre.
Create your own Cut Price Portrait
Join Billy Mann as he leads us through a quick, 'cut price' printing workshop inspired by Masculinities: Liberation Through Photography. All you need to take part is:
- A handful of crayons
- Some plain white paper
- Any image to trace over
'Working with the Barbican Guildhall Creative Learning Team has been a joy because collaborative work is not easy right now. Artists are often loners, but I get my artistic energy from others, and from looking out rather than looking in. Finding partners who share that outlook is exciting and inspiring. Finding one that sits at the heart of your local community is even better. Beyond the new skills I've picked up, my Barbican experience has taught me above all else that the artist is a citizen, and a society that stands by its artists is a strong one.'
Billy Mann, Headway member
It’s not a perfect solution. We cannot ignore the vital discussion about the accessibility of the digital world, nor forget those of our members who do not regularly use the internet or other technologies (and it is our job to support them in overcoming these barriers). But crucially – in this strange and scary and socially disconnected time – it offers a space to make and to give. And so we return to our initial question of just who gets to create culture and who gets to enjoy it.
For us, it’s people like Billy in his makeshift home studio, and the people watching from home with a handful of crayons and a sheet of blank paper.
Before the Barbican closed, a few Headway members were able to visit the Masculinities exhibition, including Billy, to get inspiration for his Cut Price Portraits.
Headway East London members visit the Barbican's Masculinities exhibition
Headway East London members visit the Barbican's Masculinities exhibition
About Headway East London
Headway East London is a local charity supporting people affected by brain injury, offering specialist services to survivors and their families. Working across 13 London boroughs they offer specialist support and services for over 200 survivors, family, friends and carers in the local area each week.
Find our more on their website
About Barbican Guildhall Creative Learning
Our Barbican Guildhall Creative Learning programme supports people of all ages and backgrounds to discover their creative voice and access world-class arts for free.
We provide access to the best arts events, platforms for creativity, opportunities to gain skills, jobs, and working together to help people find their creative voice.
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