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listening to the I Am An Artist podcast from Inspire Culture, Learning and Libraries. This podcast is hosted by Annie Warren. During the series, Annie talks to artists from the project and also members of the Inspire team in a bid to share valuable insights and learning gained from the project. Hi, and welcome to episode one of I Am An Artist podcast. I'm your host, Annie Warren, and today I'll be talking to Rachel Hayes, an artist on the project.

Rachel Hayes is a passionate and self-taught artist whose work is deeply influenced by the natural beauty of the local countryside. Her approach to art is vibrant and intuitive with a focus on colorful collages, acrylic paintings, and mixed media pieces. For I Am An Artist, as well as delivering workshops for adults and children in libraries, Rachel was commissioned to work with the Oasis Community Center in Workshop, a place where people can meet and feel welcomed, valued, and supported to co-create new pieces of artwork with a mixed adult group. Hello, Rachel.

Hi Annie, it's lovely to be here. Lovely to have you here in our beautiful studio. So I'd like to talk to you today about Continuous Professional Development or CPD. As part of the I Am An Artist project, the very first element was to offer two types of training for the selected artists. So I was hoping that you could tell us a bit about the CPD training that you took part in. Yeah, okay. As you said, there's two types of training that we did. The first one was around early stage dementia awareness.

and the second was access and inclusivity for the arts. So the early stage dementia training was an online course, six hours long. It was quite a large group of people from all different organisations, as well as the other artists on this project and some of the Inspire ladies. There was lots of breakout rooms and discussion with other people about dementia. And the overall course looked at types of dementia.

symptoms of early dementia and how you can tailor workshops for people with early stage dementia. The second training, the Access and Inclusion for the Arts was really interesting. This was an in-person training course just with the people from this project, so a smaller group, and we covered quite a lot of topics. It was quite an intense day, there was quite a lot of learning from this one. So we started off with looking at

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the words and terminology around disability. And one of the main points I took from that section was that don't be afraid to get things wrong. If you're using the wrong terminology, you can always ask someone, you know, how do you like to be referred to and what words do you use? So don't be afraid to have a go and use the correct language. Other things that we learned on the access and inclusion, one of the things I found really interesting was the social model of disability. So I've always sort of looked at

disabled people as a group of people who, for example, might be in a wheelchair and therefore that makes them disabled. But that is a medical reference to their disability. It doesn't fit a medical norm, therefore they're disabled. But the social model says, well, hang on a minute, it's society that is putting barriers in people's way, making them unable to do things. Therefore they're only disabled because of the barriers that we're putting in their way.

And I found that absolutely fascinating because then you can move on to thinking about, well, it's us that can remove those barriers. And first we have to identify what these barriers are for different people. And then how can we move them so that everybody, including people who are disabled, can take part in things. From our point of view, we're running workshops. If someone had to end up with a disability that couldn't fully take part, it's how do we work around that and how do we help them to take part and be able?

That's really interesting. sounds like a real like a view shift to removing barriers rather than kind of making things accessible, getting things out of the way in order that everyone can take part. So that's a real, that's really interesting. I'd never thought of it that way either. So it sounds like the training was really useful to you. Were there any benefits that you felt to taking part in the training and did you do feel that it prepared you well for the workshops that you ran? Yeah, I mean,

The general benefits of training apply. So learning new knowledge and terminology and therefore having the confidence to go into a situation where there may be people who have early stage dementia or a disability of one type or another. And knowing what to do about that and follow a process. Even if you don't know exactly the situation you're going to find yourself in, you know you have some tools that might help. As well as

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the training, helping you as a person and shifting your outlook on things and it therefore trickles into all parts of your life. Yeah, so not just professionally, just learning new things that help you in your daily life anyway. That's so interesting, that's great. Were there any challenges that you faced on the training? Probably with the dementia training because it was online, I found that quite tricky sitting still at home for six hours, even though there were breaks and not being able to interact.

properly with people, it's all on screen. And when you've got people in groups talking, you don't get to get your say and ask questions. And so it's not as intimate as having training in person. I found that a bit of a challenge. I guess it's also partly to do with my learning style that I'm more of a reader than a watcher. Yeah, that makes complete sense. I feel like since COVID, we've all sort of, it's great that everything is much more accessible and online and we can do these kinds of things online, which is great. But also I completely agree with you that sometimes

It's just not the same as in person. Things can be easier in person for sure. Great. So you were one of five artists working on the project, all of whom had really varied backgrounds and experiences. And how did you feel about taking part in the training as part of a team? I guess this fits back with what I was just saying, that when you're part of a team and you get to meet in person and you get to exchange ideas and learn about each other, it helps you.

prepare for what you're about to do because I was brand new to all this. So some of the others had lots of experience. This was my first time doing any community artwork. So listening to other people talk about what they've done in the past was really useful. So being in person with people and being part of a team is really beneficial. Yeah, that's really nice. So can you tell us a bit about the group that you worked with at the Oasis Community Centre? Oasis is a registered charity in Worksop. They have a large community centre building.

and two acres of grounds. They run activities all through the week for all different age groups from like toddler clubs right up to the craft club that I was involved in. They have volunteers that take part in lots of catering and gardening and so on. Lots of festivals through the year, lots of big projects that they have. So it's a very busy place. And I was working with the craft club, which is for adults of all ages and abilities. And they would normally be sat doing a little.

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craft items, either as a group of people or they'd take their own project with them. Maybe they'd take the knitting and do the knitting or something like that. And was it a weekly group? They were meeting once a week, yes, at that time. And could you tell us a bit about some of the workshops that you and the participants did together? Yeah, so we had four weeks, four workshops, and I split out the activity into four sections so that we could just do each one at a time.

So the first week we made abstract backgrounds. So big pieces of paper, gave everyone some limited colors and said, right, just make marks on your paper. Just have some fun, do what you want really. You can scribble, you can paint. Just pick something up and use it. And I've got mixing colors. There's a lot of people who are afraid to get colors together and make different shades and tones and things. The second week we made collage papers. So some smaller pieces of paper where you could then stamp.

scrape, we had lots of tools. I don't focus a lot on paintbrushes in my work. I like scrapers and dabbing things and wiping things. So just if you want to get your fingers in and make a mess then that's what you can do. So we just made all these different papers. The third week we then put them together. So the collage was then put onto the backgrounds. So you tear up the things that we've painted in week two and stuck them onto things from week one, including

bits of book pages and text and things that been handwritten onto tissue paper they were stuck on as well. So it all became a bit more personal. We had different words that were put into the artwork. And then week four we were cutting these up then into even smaller pieces and then putting them into mounts ready for showing. That sounds like so much fun. I really love the idea of you talking about kind of getting messy and like putting your hands in it and then also mixing up colors and things like that. Because I can really relate to that. I can imagine that if I were a participant.

to start with, wouldn't want to get it wrong or mix the wrong paint or I wouldn't want to make a mess. But it sounds like you're really facilitating them to kind of go for it and like get a bit messy if they wanted to. Yeah, I chose abstract art because there is no wrong way of doing abstract art. You're not trying to copy a photo. You're not trying to make it look like something in particular. You're just going with your intuition, your gut and just making marks. And anyone can do that.

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So it really works for people of all different abilities. And if they've never painted anything before, this is the perfect way to start. Yeah, I love that. I love that idea. You can't get it wrong. So just go for it. I love that. And do you feel like the CPT opportunity supported or prepared you for working in this setting? Yeah, I mean, I didn't know exactly when I did the training what the group was going to be. So I didn't know what sort of people I was going to be working with. After the dementia training, we also looked at one of the points that they brought up.

We collectively decided that we should work with one group over the four weeks rather than four different groups because they brought up in the training how building relationships with people with dementia was a really good idea. As it turned out, I wasn't aware of anyone with dementia. I was trying to look out for things where maybe I could change how I was communicating with different people. So although it wasn't dementia specific, it still applies. And I had three people who were neurodivergent.

They didn't all tell me exactly what level it was and what type it was, but they were all very different people with different needs. So I found that quite interesting that just because someone has autism does not mean they're a certain way because you can have three very different people all with autism next to each other and you still got to treat them all as individuals. Yeah, yeah, that's really interesting. The idea that, yeah, just because it's one specific diagnosis or neurodivergency or things like that, it doesn't mean that

that they all have the exact same needs and they're all still individuals. And I would imagine that that's much the same with dementia as well. If you, you know, each person with dementia is still an individual and still has different needs or access needs. That's really interesting. But even the people who haven't necessarily got a form of disability, they still have individual needs. Yes. People who don't like certain things. They don't want to get paint on their hands, you know.

it's how do you work with that? And then other people, don't want to paint at all. They'd rather draw, they'd rather have the pens. So you're always tailoring to everybody's individual needs. Yeah, that's really interesting as well, because it's like what you said, it's like about removing barriers. It's kind of like, well, that's sort of the same for everyone, whether you have a disability or not, that's the thing. And also what you were talking about not getting it wrong. It's like, well, you can't be wrong if you don't want to use the paint. That's not wrong. That's OK. That's so interesting. It all kind of fits together.

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And so of all the artists working on the project, you may have had the most intergenerational group to work with for all the targeted workshops. And so were there any challenges that you encountered that were particular to working with such an intergenerational group? And did you adapt your plans to overcome those challenges at all? I didn't find it a challenge at all really, because they're all adults. If it had been a mixed group of children and adults, then that would have been a different game altogether. But because they were all adults, even though some had

different needs to others, you can still talk to them as a group of adults. So that didn't really bother me. My biggest challenge was really that this wasn't a workplace setting that I was used to. And because it was a new community project for me, I was a bit taken aback with people coming and going all over the place and not trying to work out where people had gone.

and who was following which instructions and then someone else would turn up and I had to start again with them and then trying to move people onto their next set of instructions when I'm still trying to deal with people who've just arrived and then someone disappears and you think, well, where have they gone now? So it's very flexible and people were coming and going and I wasn't used to that because in a workplace setting, people would turn up at the time for the workshop. You'd then go through your tasks, you'd achieve your goals and then the workshop would end.

So I was used to it being a lot more rigid in how things work. So it was a big lesson for me in being flexible. Going with the flow. And so we've talked about this one a little bit already, but outside of the project, do think that the CPD will have an impact on your own future development as an artist and as a person? And if so, in what way? I think so, because it has opened my eyes to lots of different things.

like people with disabilities that I hadn't thought about before and how you can tailor things to different people in different community settings. And like we said before, it's not just people who have disabilities, it's everybody can benefit from this sort of knowledge. So I'll definitely be using all this going forward. And what have you enjoyed about the project as a whole? I have had fun and if it wasn't fun then I wouldn't want to want to do it again.

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It was fun making art with people, was fun sharing what I know with people and giving them an insight into my process because I use a lot of collage and abstract in my work as well. It was nice to meet so many lovely people, so not just at the Oasis Centre itself but the lovely Inspire team as well and the other artists. I feel I've gained quite a lot of confidence in doing community artwork now. I've got a project that's in progress at the moment for another piece of community work.

And I really enjoyed seeing the output of all this in the library. And we had the exhibitions and seeing the photos, it just made me smile because I helped do that. I helped make those and that was very satisfying as well. Yeah, it sounds like a really rewarding experience. Yeah. And now you get to make a podcast, which is really fun as well. And so finally, what piece of advice would you give to other artists looking to expand their delivery experience and their own artistic practice? Just give it a go.

If you see an opportunity to take part in something like this and you've never done it before, you've got nothing to lose by applying. You've got nothing to lose by asking for more information and to see if it's something that you could do. They've really accepted a wide group of artists. We all had very different backgrounds, so some more experienced than others. The type of art we did was all varied, so it doesn't matter what sort of art you do, there's a place for you in Community Out.

Yeah, and I can imagine having such a varied group of artists as well really adds to the strength of the project because you have, as you mentioned at the beginning, everyone bringing different ideas and that's, I think, really enriching and that's how interesting and good art is made, I believe. I think that's a really lovely note to end on. So Rachel, thank you so much for coming into our studio and I hope I get to join in with one of your workshops soon because it sounds absolutely amazing. So thank you. Thank you very much.

You've been listening to the I Am An Artist podcast from Inspire Culture Learning and Libraries. I Am An Artist is the second stage of our I Am A Creator programme, which is funded by investment from Arts Council England through our status as a national portfolio organisation. To find out more about the project, our artists, the audiences who took part and the outcomes, you can visit our website at inspireculture.org.uk forward slash I Am An Artist.