Tony Heaton of Shape Arts is Codias advisor to the development of a Codia Disability Arts Centre in Preston. He is Chief Executive of Shape Arts and is widely recognised as both a pioneering leader in the disability arts sector and a practising artist.
Shape is an organisation with a successful history of championing disabled and deaf artists to break through into the often elitist world of art and culture.
Tony's personal CV as an Artist and Social Activist and examples of his work can be seen on his website www.tonyheaton.co.uk.
Tony Heaton's Report re: Codia and Disability Arts Preston
The new city of Preston is well placed for this timely development.
Urban regeneration and social cohesion are central to Government policy, linked to the growing acknowledgement that Disabled people should have the same expectations and opportunities as the rest of the population.
Geographically Preston is well suited towards regeneration as a thriving arts and cultural centre, particularly with the approaching historic Preston Guild. The development of a Disabilty Arts Centre will give a welcoming and positive message to visitors, this is important because in addition to providing much needed facilities to a wide and diverse sector of the inhabitants of the city it will bring visitors who will add value to the local economy.
Preston has a history of innovation and it is vital that this continues, a key project like this will add significant value to the development of the city and support the voluntary sector who have a rich tradition of self-support.
Community cohesion is a fundamental aspect of this proposal, bringing people together to nurture, support and offer mutual help and assistance, this fosters civic pride and develops both self-respect and respect for others. Utilising a city centre building and placing the Arts Centre it at the heart of the community will make it available for use by the whole community. This will give a very strong message of the values held by the City.
Why the arts?
The arts can be a catalyst for change and can add significantly to the well-being and spiritual health of the population and can help articulate our different cultures. This is clearly evidenced in the recent report to the Arts Council by Sir Brian MacMaster. The MacMaster report, (Supporting excellence in the arts-from measurement to judgement), argued against restrictive box ticking in favour of risk-taking and a greater emphasis on cultural excellence, acknowledging that culture makes an important contribution to identity, self-worth, esteem, health and inclusion, this is the essence of this project.
This leads as to why disability arts?
Disabled people are a marginalised and discriminated against group, Preston has in the past done much to address this and a number of initiatives give evidence to that innovation: Lancashire County Council through its mobility panel produced a code of practice to ensure that access improvements were standardised across all districts, this was radical at the time.
The mobility centre, conceived as part of the regeneration and pedestrianisation of Fishergate was one of the first schemes in the country to provide parking and mobility aids and the Harris Art Gallery commissioned the internationally renowned Sculptor Ian Hamilton Findley to create not just access to the principal entrances to the gallery but to create access via a significant work of art, 'Wave-Rock', this elegant solution is still today one of the most architecturally innovative accessible entrances to a public building in the country. For this project to support and promote disability art would be part of this continuum.
Disability arts and culture has a real part to play in providing both role models and examples of how disabled people have challenged discrimination and oppression, there is nothing else like this in the north west.
The National disability arts collection and archive that exists in Dorset can provide examples and works of art that can be loaned to establish the initiative of setting up Prestons Disability Arts centre and Shape in London is constantly commissioning new highly original and highly professional work, our four recent commissions to disabled artists via LOCOG for the 2012 cultural Olympiad have seen Shape awarded with the 'Inspired by' logo of the Olympic games, we are the first disability arts organisation to have received such an accolade.
As such Shape are well placed to help guide and support Codia in their project. This initiative will no doubt encourage and inspire disabled people from the city to consider careers in the arts or to be more visible consumers of art and culture. This will also have an impact on the wider non-disabled community who will learn much about the nature of disability and impairment and this will add to the wider community offer that the project brings to the city.
"Split" by Tony Heaton
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