28 June 2018
LEARNING DISABILITY WEEK 2018
Clive Parkinson | Arts and Health Blog
''Now I’m getting whimsical - but collaborating with these inspiring and diverse people certainly made me who I am today. So it was, that last week I scrabbled about in the loft and pulled out a fat portfolio of paintings and drawings from the Royal Albert Hospital, created by people all long dead, but whose names I remembered instantly when I see the work. Outsiders? Well I don’t think so - the people I knew were rightly proud of their work. Raw? Well certainly free of over-cooked art school pretensions, that’s for sure.''
We are delighted that Clive has written a beautiful and insightful post on his blog, 'Arts for Health', especially for learning disability week 2018. Here he reflects on working with learning disabled artists, supported studios across the world and how it has evolved since the 1980's.
Read the full blog post here:
Clive Parkinson, is the Director of Arts for Health at Manchester Metropolitan University; the UK’s longest established arts and health unit. He led on the HM Treasury funded; Invest to Save: Arts in Health Project between 2003 - 2007 and is a passionate advocate for culture and the arts. In 2009 he was awarded an Enterprise Curriculum Fellowship to develop bespoke arts/health training. He delivers regular training for artists and health professionals. In 2016 he was made a Reader at the Manchester School of Art, focusing on Arts, Health and Social Justice and has been awarded a Visiting Fellowship at the University of New South Wales.
After leaving art-college, he began his career as a visual artist, working in a hospital for people with learning difficulties and during this time, undertook a degree in Independent Studies at Lancaster University where his research focused on the relationship between creativity, culture the arts and health.
