In the beautiful surroundings of a small children’s zoo in a West London park, visual artists with and without learning disabilities create, exhibit and sell work alongside one another. Their studio is a converted bakehouse. This is the Brent Lodge Park Act Collective. Founder, artist and advocate Matthew Coulam explains how it all came about.
Working as an advocate for Ealing Mencap I met a number of people with learning disabilities who were interested in creating visual art but found mainstream art classes inaccessible. Local day services held art sessions but these tended to be led by care staff, were not in a studio and were not always focused on a clear end product.
I began thinking of ideas for a dedicated visual arts space and gathered together a steering group of local professional artists, council employees and artists with learning disabilities who had expressed an interest in the idea. Through the group I was introduced to two former art tutors from Southall College, Sarah Fraser and Lynda Elson, who had also identified a need. They had tutored talented artists who had completed the arts course but had very few opportunities to continue to develop their artistic skills afterwards.
Finding a studio
We developed a business case and looked for venues. Brent Lodge Park Animal Centre, a small council-run children’s zoo in a park, was identified as a possible location. Animal centre manager Jim Gregory showed us a disused former bakehouse which would make a perfect studio and gallery space. We made a reciprocal arrangement with the animal centre that the studio building would be rent-free and in exchange we would create interpretive signs for animal enclosures and merchandise promoting the centre. We successfully raised the funds, the building was renovated, and sessions began to take place in 2010.
Four years after we were set up, the BLP Art Collective generates enough income from commissions, sales and art sessions to support itself financially. I voluntarily run a drop-in session every Sunday which is attended by a regular group of artists who work on anything from drawing and painting to mosaics and model-making. We also run sessions during the week led by professional tutors and purchased by individuals privately or using personal budgets.
Achievements
We have had a number of achievements over the past four years:
•Work experience as gallery curators – this included staffing and working as ‘artists in residence’ for the Limbo13 exhibition at the Crypt Gallery in Euston.
• Work with Ealing’s Youth Offending Team – The BLP Art Collective helps the team run their Summer Arts Award scheme. A team of young people are taught an artistic technique by one of our tutors and they then buddy up with our regular attendees and pass the skill on to them through a piece of joint work. In 2012 the Ealing Youth Offending Team gained a prestigious national Gold Arts Mark award for this work. Two young people from the Youth Offending Team now volunteer with us.
• Creating signs for enclosures and making merchandise for a gift shop which opened on-site last year – this has been incredibly successful and has led to the Animal Centre gaining the Small Collection Award from the British and Irish Association of Zoos and Aquariums.
• Exhibitions of work including the Acton W3 gallery – nearly every artist sold work at the exhibition last year which was hugely successful. One of our artists in particular, Keith Miller, has had an offer of a solo exhibition.
More of the Art Collective’s work can be seen at:
