Last year we worked with 18 brilliant disabled creatives on our Young Artist Development Programme (YADP). Their work is featured in a new zine called “Department for Wonder and Play”, more about this here. In addition to the digital and physical publication, we’re going to spotlight each artist on the blog so you can get a deeper insight into their work and process. Over to Alice to talk about her work.

My name is Alice and I’m a liver transplant survivor. For the past 4 years, I’ve been shielding from Covid at home, due to being immunosuppressed from anti-rejection meds.

Throughout my life, play has helped me to process what I was going through (especially tests and procedures in hospital). During lockdowns, I wrote daily stories involving Sylvanian Families characters for my shielding support group. These stories were humorous, often satirical, and kept my ‘shielding family’ entertained during a scary time. They also provided me with a creative outlet, and a way of connecting with other people by involving them in my stories too.

I love creative writing (especially poetry), painting and drawing, dancing, playing the piano and composing music. I feel extremely lucky to have been able to incorporate so many of my talents into a single piece of artwork for the Young Artists Development Programme.

I have written a poem entitled ‘The Girl in a Glass Jar’. It’s an analogy of how I feel as a shielder (I am the girl in the glass jar). I try to express how important my shielding family are to me, and how I see our place in the world as shielders. The poem is illustrated, and the audio version is accompanied by an original piano composition. It was important for me that the audio version felt like a piece of art, and not just a description of the visual version.

It’s important to maintain a sense of wonder in the beauty of the world – to find time to do something we love every day – and to remember that there are always magic moments to be found, even in times of darkness.

Alice’s audio version is available here.

Thanks so much Alice for sharing more about your artwork.