Inclusive Arts Practice and Research ─ A Critical Manifesto

Inclusive arts describes an exciting and newly emergent field: the creative collaborations between learning-disabled and non-learning-disabled artists which are increasingly taking place in performance and the visual arts.

In Inclusive Arts Practice Alice Fox and Hannah McPherson interview artists, curators and key practitioners in the UK and US. The editors introduce and articulate this new practice, and situate it in relation to associated approaches. Fox and McPherson candidly describe the tensions and difficulties involved too, and explore how the work sits within contemporary art and critical theory.

The book includes essays and illustrated statements, and has over 60 full-colour images.Inclusive Arts Practice represents a landmark publication in an emerging field of creative practice across all the arts. It presents a radical call for collaboration on equal terms and will be an invaluable resource for anyone studying or already working within this dynamic new territory.

Alice Fox is a Principal Lecturer and Assistant Head in the Faculty of Arts, University of Brighton, researching inclusive arts practice and education. Fox is also the Course Leader and founder of the pioneering MA Inclusive Arts Practice and the external examiner for the MA Arts Health and Wellbeing at Birmingham University. Alice is also Artistic Director of the Arts Council England funded Rocket Artists group and a steering group member of the new Tate Research Centre: Learning. Since 2003 Fox has been the Artistic Director of the learning disabled Rockets Artists Group.

Dr Hannah Macpherson is a senior lecturer in Human Geography at the University of Brighton. Her interests include post-structural and post–phenomenological theory with a research focus on the spaces of disability and disability arts practice. She has published numerous book chapters including a chapter on ‘disability aesthetics’ and her work has appeared in a range of peer reviewed academic journals including Environment and Planning, Cultural Geographies and Senses and Society. She co-ordinates the disability ethics and aesthetics research group at the University of Brighton and has just completed an Arts and Humanities Research Council funded research project on visual arts practice for resilience.