Kite Inclusive CIC Artist Residency – August 2022
Kite Inclusive CIC partnered with Upper Court Kemerton for the first inclusive artist residency! Kite Inclusive CIC is a community interest company which means it is not-for-profit. It is funded through fundraising events, donations, grants and delivery contracts with community partners. We partnered with Upper Court Kemerton who provided 3 young talented artists with additional needs accommodation, catering, projects and speech and language therapy during their stay.
From Monday 8th August to Friday 12th August 3 artists joined together to work with the Kite Studios team to create and explore a whole range of work celebrating autism and neurodiversity. Each day the artists followed a schedule that was created together by the kite team, providing a structure to the day on what the classes were teaching, which techniques, group sessions, time for breaks and relaxation etc. This was a great way to keep the familiarity of structure in a new setting. The artists got to experiment with drawing, mixed media, printmaking, clay and learning digital art with different members of the kite team and volunteers at Upper Court Kemerton. Everyone embraced the challenges of new approaches and going out of their comfort zones working on large scale paintings. Alongside the art projects with Kite we also partnered with West London Speech & Language Therapy, each day of the residency the artists had an online zoom session with West London Speech & Language Therapy to focus on group communication.
After a great few days in the heat learning new art skills, developing their own art projects, speech and language therapy, cooking and relaxing outside of London everyone was in high spirits by the end of the week and finished off the artist residency with pizza in the pub! We have developed this artist residency partnership to deliver projects to support and engage members of the community who would not otherwise have ready access to art education. This was the first artist residency and we are looking forward to creating more inclusive art workshops.
