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Department of Wonder and Play - Artist Spotlight: Alice

7th December 2024
A watercolour painting of a wintry blue landscape, with sparse tall blue trees in the background, without any leaves on them. Across the landscape are five differently coloured glass jars, some closer to the foreground and some further away. They are all surrounded by white butterflies and white glitter-like specks. The jar closest to the foreground is a faint purple, and shows a young person playing the piano, surrounded by bunting, toys, flowers, books and an easel. The other jars are green, orange and yellow, and become more distant - but within them, someone is singing, or painting, or playing with an animal.

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.…

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Department of Wonder and Play - Artist Spotlight: Hope Shooter

6th December 2024
A poem titled ‘Paper Planes’. The poem is on a page that you can cut out and fold, to make the shape of a paper plane. Because of this, some words are upside down, and some paragraphs are split apart - so that when the plane is made, they can be read the same way up, or together. A picture of a paper plane is also included on the page. The poem reads: The world can be weighty, and hardened and cruel and keeps us all grounded with their tests and their rules They say we cannot before they see if we can And built fences and stairs so we steer clear of their ‘plan’ So we make our own wings from paper planes and dropped feathers we give ourselves grace during the storms that we weather Though we may never glide like a bird in the sky we steady our wits and like always we fly

Department of Wonder and Play – Artist Spotlight: Hope Shooter

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.…

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Department of Wonder and Play - Artist Spotlight: Ife Sonaike

5th December 2024
Artwork on a wall. A circular mirror has been painted with earthy red, brown, orange and black tones, and is placed beside two painted pieces of red and brown cardboard. Three grey PlayStation memory cards are laid over the top of the cardboard.   At first look, the mirror seems to show abstract shapes of different colours, but from a different angle, it shows a person with wavy black hair standing on top of a wiggly pink line, against a brown and orange background. Some of the person’s features are unclear, but three sets of legs have been painted for them, kicking outwards, which makes it look like they’re moving. Smooth red, black and pink shapes decorate the space surrounding the person. Text has been written in white on the colourful cardboard next to the painted mirror, but it’s too small to read.

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.…

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Department of Wonder and Play - Artist Spotlight: Rosa Thorlby

4th December 2024
This page shows a radical compost generation device, and instructions on how to make it. The device is formatted like a paper fortune teller game, which can be folded into an origami shape with different openable flaps. The fortune teller game is square, and has brown and green sections each numbered 1 - 8. There are eight types of illustrated creatures on the fortune teller: mycelium, mite, protozoa, bacteria, rotifer, nematode, actinomycetes, springtail. Written challenges are also on the fortune teller - like ‘compost’, ‘grow’, ‘write or draw a dance for a manifesto’, ‘look at or listen to your surroundings’, ‘use your green to make a map’. The instructions for the radical compost device read: 1. Cut around the perimeter and fold your device according to the video. Always be kind to your scissors. 2. Choose 8 greens and 8 browns and number them from 1 to 8. For example - greens might be numbered into taste, groove and rhythm, light, sound, electrical frequencies, smell, shape and texture. Browns might be numbered into capitalism, fungicides, heteronormativity, patriarchy, neoliberalism, white supremacy, colonialism and tidiness. 3. Watch the video to see how to use your radical compost generation device to select one green and one brown, and then generate a prompt. 4. Compost! Use the generated prompt to make radical compost and see what grows. You can interpret the prompt however you like. Maybe your radical compost grows a drawing, a story, a song, a new flavour of ice cream, a dream garden, a dance, a mutual aid network of flowers and pollinators, a public transport system modelled on spaghetti and playfulness, an immigration policy according to migratory birds, a recipe for food sovereignty written by seeds, a manifesto of decolonised smells.

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.…

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Department of Wonder and Play - Artist Spotlight: Cara Compass

3rd December 2024
A bright blue background with a digital photograph overlaid onto it, decorated with bright pink spiky shapes. The photograph is of a CCTV camera on a bus at night time - everyone on the bus is dressed in dark colours, apart from Cara, who is wearing bright red and purple clothes.

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.…

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Department of Wonder and Play - Artist Spotlight: Kit

2nd December 2024
A photographs of Kit and Kit's artwork. The back of Kit’s electric wheelchair is visible, and Kit has turned around in the chair to face the camera, smiling. Their chair has been decorated with a practical and beautiful textile piece, which is shown in close ups in different shots. The fabric fits across the back of the wheelchair perfectly, and is an off-white colour, with a running green stitch creating a border. Different things have been stamped onto the fabric – including a magpie mid-flight, green leaves, red apples and strawberries. Patches of blue fabric have been sewn on top of the off-white piece, and there are lots of different sized pockets holding Allen keys, notebooks and more. There are even 3D objects like pebbles, keys and safety pins which have been stitched onto the fabric. In the distance of the shot, a Moomin keychain is dangling from the wheelchair arm rest. White text on the image reads: Things I find at 4mph

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.…

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Department of Wonder and Play - Artist Spotlight: Bryony

2nd December 2024
A colourful digital collage. At the centre of the image is a black and white portrait of Bryony, a young person with long wavy hair wearing a floral dress and patterned shoes. She is leaning forward, blowing a kiss. A yellow crown has been overlaid onto her head, and her mouth has been covered with a red kiss mark. A compact mirror has been overlaid onto her hand. Digital red text is overlaid onto her body, which reads “mirror mirror in my hand, let’s stop all bullying across the land”.   Bryony is framed by a glittery collage of lots of different colourful items, images and shapes. The overall colour scheme is red and pink, with some pops of green. Some of the collage items include: drawings of Frida Kahlo, fists raised in protest with some holding anti-bullying signs, tubes of lipstick, flowers, stars drawn from gel pens, and words like “be brave”, “proud of myself” and “fearless”.

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.…

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The Department for Wonder and Play Zine: Volume 1

1st December 2024
A photo of stacks of Touretteshero's Department for Wonder and Play zine - the other DWP. Piles of moss green, A5 booklets tumble across the image, one slightly more upright than the rest faces the camera a yellow hand holding a pencil that draws a pink squiggly line. Flashes of colour are visible on the back of the zine.

At the start of the year, we transformed our Young Artists Development Programme (YADP) into a zine. Zines are small booklets like magazines, which have been used by lots of different communities to communicate ideas artistically. Our zine, called The Department for Wonder and Play, brought together the brilliant work of 18 young disabled creatives working in lots of different ways.…

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Bean and The Busses

17th November 2024
A drawing of two red London busses, one behind the other, the first bus has a ramp stuck half out. In the foreground there is a a children’s drawing of a family of four that includes two children and one wheelchair user, they are waiting on the pavement, unable to get on either bus.

Yesterday being Saturday, Fat Sister was looking after Sausage and Bean (my nephew and niece) without King Russell, while he took care of some chores. I hadn’t been able to find a support worker who could do my care so my sister, as she often does, generously covered the gap.…

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Pleasure Beach

12th November 2024
A photo of Jess Thom, a white wheelchair user wrapped up warm and grinning at the camera. Jess's wheelchair has a power attachment on the front that turns her blue manual chair into a powered trike, she is racing along a sandy beach towards the camera, a bridge that is a Scarborough icon is visible in the background.

The sun brought a gentle warmth to my face as I weighed up my next move.

To my right, Scarbrough’s cliffs rolling up towards the sky, echoes of grandeur sprinkled over Victorian hotels.

To my left, the rhythmic rumble of the sea and a satisfyingly simple horizon.…

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