Equal and Inclusive Art Spaces
Artwork often reflects the lived and living experiences of people and communities, inviting connection through our own experiences. This can evoke both powerful and subtle responses from within. When this impacts our sense of safety and wellbeing we need to be able to access an informed, supportive response that navigates us to a place where our need for restoration is understood and cared for by the gallery or museum creating the space for us to experience the artwork.
Committed to creating equal and inclusive spaces we collaborated with Fruitmarket Edinburgh to create a self-care and wellbeing support guide to ensure the wellbeing of visitors to the Howardena Pindell: A New Language was supported throughout their visit.
Howardena Pindell’s work explores traumatic historical content including themes of colonialism and slavery. When we are exposed to any form of traumatic content it is normal for us to feel impacted and have a response. Our response varies depending on our lived experience and life history. The self-care and wellbeing support guide offered trauma-informed support for visitors during the exhibition and aftercare for when their visit ended.
Howardena Pindell’s first solo exhibition in a public organisation in the UK after Fruitmarket Edinburgh her work travelled to Kettle’s Yard Cambridge and Spike Island Bristol. We worked alongside them to understand their community needs and facilitated delivering bespoke support and care alongside the Howardena Pindell exhibition.
‘...the abstract works are more like an intense relief, a kind of visual healing, so that you get some distance from what you’ve seen. Then you can have a more peaceful or critical way to acknowledge what you’ve seen. And it helps you maybe overcome some of those deadly emotions that come from being shocked. So I want people to see... It’s like using beauty as a healing element, and for me making them has a healing side to it.’
Howardena Pindell, 2020