Can you see my abilities

(c) Original Artwork by Debbie Chilton 

When people see me rolling down the street the make assumptions.  Don't tell me otherwise because I am guilty over the same thing.  A large of weight (the 'fat' word often followed by lazy comes to my mind.) struggling to walk towards Macer's in the food court . . . only the keep walking and order at subways.  Our eyes make many judgments. But as I have just illustrated, judgments are often incorrect.  Our eyes often see disabilities that registered in 'our mines' and Aline with other memories to form conclusions. Physical disability = intellectual disability, not so true in my case. 

People can see I clearly have disabilities but my true abilities are hidden.  Not many people in the community would assume I was a writer and artist and ever few would twig I have an Art's Degree.  Just making a general observation here that may be correct or incorrect. My piece of artwork above asks, ' can you see my abilities'?

I've not posted about my artwork or progress of leadership goals for a while.  Been so busy working on achieving them.  I have continued to spend one day a week on creating my art however a large portion of my week is spent developing my ArtISability program. 

   ArtISability is a professional development program I am developing for people with disability living in the Ipswich regional. Artist with disabilities have obstacles other artist don't face in a very competitive industry. Such as phsyical access to venues, art space, travel, finding accessible accommodation, access to training and workshop do to intellectual impairments, hearing impairments, visual impairement and reading written materials and all this is before we begin to deal with the assumptions others make about our disabilities.

One of the main focus of artisability is getting the creative space right.  The difficulty in locating accessible accomondation and art space in Ipswich is challegenes, which is something that tells me the huge need I will uncover for the program as physical access it the tip of the iceberg.  How do I move forward to create an accessible market place on graduation from the program. 

I also need an accessible art gallery to exhibit the work.  Then theres' all the everday challenges that every artist has as the begin.  My employment (earning money) vs my passion art work/life balance even as a arts worker this is a challenge, finance, marketing travel and training all need to be juggled in their too.

Training and learning support is the key component of the program, accessing training is differcult enough, without the access issues, learning support need for those who can't read or write or hear.  A spech impairment itself brings access issues.  So the program in focus around providing accessible training with the phsyical and learning support people need in place.  Things like accessing a support worker without having the burden of the cost.  Just trying to level the playing flied. 

As an artist with disability I know the reality of these challenges which is why I am setting up a facebook page to promote my work.  e 

     Doodles & Dribble

People can read about my work, view my work, find out where my work is on display and even purchase my work.  For now I am doing much of my own design work, so lagging a bit on the computer tech stuff but overall I am building some monment.  At present I have some work in the Ipswich show and next month I am off to Tassie for my first art show.  

From previous posts you have read my advocacy work and I still have six months left in the leadership program. . . 

If you can share the link to Doodles and Dribble with your friends and family I be beautiful for the free advertising. Oh an if you know any artists with disability living in Ipswich Queensland please tell them about the ArtISability program.  They can email me for an application form.

Cheers,

Debbie