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.

This post is about K.G, whose contribution to the zine was a short essay about playfulness and drama across different generations. We’ll share what K.G wrote, but first they wanted to introduce themselves through a biography. K.G says:

K.G picked up a sock from the road at ten years old, took it with them, chewed on it in class, and is still chewing on the aftertaste. K.G is 14.91233 (rounded to five d.p) on the date of this being written. K.G is an enigma, a self-proclaimed infant, a self-diagnosed hypochondriac — and least importantly, a writer. K.G only claims about one-fifth of what they write is theirs; the rest is strange happenings in their head and energy potential from bottled tears of Doctor Who enjoyers. K.G has written a short play, a million half-finished drafts, a billion quarter-finished fanfictions, and the words ‘S(he) be(lie)ve(d)’ to explain to a friend what it means only for their maths teacher to read it and misunderstand them to have been unironic about it. K.G thanks you for reading this biography.

Now that you know a bit more about K.G, I hope you enjoy their piece, titled Life and Stories and All In-Between!

“Drama’s always been something I’ve enjoyed.
The arts are an extension of drama – or maybe drama’s an extension of the arts – so I chose to centre both of them in the pages of this zine. And they are, like everything in my life, going to be a bit of a rollercoaster. Anything but underwhelming… I hope.

Let’s start with how drama affects play for the little ones. For a while,
I volunteered with a youth theatre group on Monday afternoons. These kids were seven to about ten, old enough to be menaces on purpose. Every time I came, they’d be as raucous as little lemmings, infesting the community centre with their excited energy.

They buzzed around without a care for the lesson they should be learning. To the untrained eye – my eyes – it looked more like a playground than a drama group. It looked like chaos and disarray.

They’re taught that obedience without question, silence, and stoicism in the face of discomfort are the qualities that make a good human being. They aren’t taught to be humans; only little worker bees. And whilst Year Fives in bee costumes would absolutely be a sight to behold, it’s not a great idea to squeeze your children into boxes. Giving them a space to unwind and play is incredibly important for their development.

If we take a look at the other side of the age spectrum and the other part of ‘drama and the arts’ – I present to you a second-hand experience from my lovely mother. She took part in – and partially ran – a group for older, South Asian women. They would share their stories with the rest of the group, and then create poetry out of it. My mum went to this group on Tuesday mornings, so when she picked me up from school, she’d sometimes give me an idea of what was going on.

If we think about the elders of our communities, we discover an important sentiment. All these people were children, once. And raucous teens, nervous young adults, and hard-headed working people. There were tales of the Partition of India; forging a life in Britain; families, and fellowship, far-away lands…and furthermore. They have so much to say, and so little time. Every human has a life of their own – and in that way, it’s an almost unfathomable travesty that we don’t listen to them.

Drama (because the poems ended up being spoken word) enables any sort of story to be told. The wonder of children from the art of the elders. Then those children grow up, develop stories of their own, et voila! Circle of life.

All in all, there can be no life without art. There can be no art without drama, and there can be no drama without life. See? Told you it was going to be dramatic.”

Thanks so much to K.G for sharing their wonderful writing with us.