Hi David,
the Figment Arts project A Room of Our Own in Hanningtons Lane has been so exciting! Can you tell us about the outlines and aims of the project?

A Room Of Our Own is an exhibition and ‘Open Studio’ where we invite the public to join us in creating large-scale artworks, which in turn become part of the exhibition.  The project is led by the Figment Arts Studio group of around 8 learning disabled, autistic and neurodivergent artists.  Normally we work out of Laurence’s Art Studio in Hove, but for this project we wanted to open up our practice and share this with members of the public.  The aim is to raise awareness of our work, provide opportunities for creativity for the public and to potentially recruit new members to our regular studio group.

Paintings, week one:

Spring – Day 2

We’ve had great engagement and feedback from the public, each group painting has been worked on by approximately 10 visitors, plus at least 4 artists and staff from Figment Arts.  We’ve had a real range of ages and nationalities taking part.  I think because of the great location in Hannington’s Lane, we’re on the tourist trail for Brighton, so lots of people visiting the exhibition are on holiday, or visiting Brighton for the day.  Our artists have been really active in supporting the public to take part.  We give people a lot of freedom to do what they want, but at the start of the day our artists make some key decisions about the overall composition and colour of the piece.

Paintings, week two:

I think we’ve hit upon a winning formula for us.  We will continue our artist development programme with our core group, but we’d really like to take this model out to other locations and communities.  Some people find it easier to talk shoulder-to-shoulder rather than face-to-face.  I feel that there are real benefits that come from working in this way in terms of relaxation and stress relief and also simple things like conversation and collaboration within friendship/family groups and also with people you may just have met.

The next thing for us is probably finding an opportunity to exhibit the work we have made, and when we’re all back together in the studio in June we’ll be evaluating this project and thinking about how we develop it in the future.

Paintings, week three:

AOH is really grateful to our supporters at Hannintons Brighton for offering use of a shop for this project throughout the Artists Open Houses festival.

Comments from Visitors Book:

Figment Arts is grateful to our funders for this project, Arts Council England and Sussex Community Foundation