A Song, Some Stones and the Sea

Sonia Boué, Shadowlight Artists RISING Exhibition publication essay, 2018

Boué was ahead of her time in writing about an equal collaborative exchange with the learning disabled artist, Richard Hunt, in 2018. She collaborated with Richard Hunt from 2015 to 2023 on a series of Shadowlight Artists group Arts Council England funded projects. In 2017, Richard Hunt became the first learning disabled artist to win the Shape Open with the painting Totem Pole, created in collaboration with Boué during the Creative Bridges project.

Excerpt:

What if everything you thought you knew about learning disability was wrong?

You might imagine that in a collaboration between a ‘mainstream’ and a learning disabled artist the balance of support and benefits would tip in one direction. There is a general perception that such work can be ‘rewarding’ (a problematic notion in itself when tied in to power imbalance), but no real concept that creative learning and professional development might flow in both directions.

I think this is due to lack of exposure and opportunity in general. As a culture we don’t know what we haven’t yet experienced – on both sides of the ‘outsider/mainstream’ divide there has been no established forum for experimentation. So with the Shadowlight Artists’ Creative Bridges and Rising projects, a new proposition has been forged. Such has been my collaborative journey with Richard Hunt that, despite a deep personal and professional interest in ‘neurodivergence’, I couldn’t have predicted the level of enrichment this professional relationship brings to my own practice. My conclusion is that more ‘mainstream’ artists should consider such work not only as egalitarian, but also for professional development on both sides of this somewhat false divide.