Project Art Works collaborates with people with complex support needs, families and circles of support. Our practice intersects art and care, responding to neurodivergence, its gifts and impacts. Challenging paradigms of inclusion, it spans direct practical and holistic support, film, events, projects and exhibitions.
Our studios provide the conditions for a broad range of autonomous and collaborative practices with neurodivergent artists, who take part on their own terms. Alongside the studios, the Support Collective brings together people who care for people with complex support needs where we share our experience and protect our rights through training, resources and advocacy.
Human connection and what it reveals about identity and how we view each other are explored within our work. Our practice continues to respond to the functional and ethical structures of diligence and care, respecting self-determination and privacy whilst working towards greater visibility and understanding of neurodiversity in culture.
Project Art Works is an Arts Council England National Portfolio Organisation. Alongside neurodiverse artists and makers, the collective includes paid and unpaid caregivers who help each other to navigate through the complexities of health and social care systems.
From our studio base in Hastings and in temporary studio set-ups during off-site projects and workshops, we facilitate personalised creative pathways for artists and makers. The studio spaces are without hierarchy where events and happenings unfold, and artists work together in purposeful collaboration using total communication. Gesture, sound, signing and empathy allow for more expansive and freeing forms of connection.