Thinking Through Making: A Curatorial Approach to Working with Learning-Disabled Artists
Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: This essay examines a long-term collaboration between writer and curator Dr George Vasey and the London-based organisation Intoart, which supports a group of 24 artists with learning disabilities. Throughout the collaboration, a broad array of practice-based curatorial methods have been employed—including field recording, creative writing, and drawing—to develop an interpretative framework for a growing organisational collection of over 6000 artworks. Drawing on John Dewey’s writing on art as experience, the essay expands on Dewey’s concept of thinking through doing in the context of disability arts, arguing for progressive studio provision as a site of exchange and community learning that emphasises an art of lived experience. The essay explores what an artist-led approach might mean in the context of disability, revisiting Dewey’s practice-led approach and foregrounding embodied and experimental forms of engagement. By centring the voice and intention of learning-disabled artists, the project focuses on facilitative strategies that merge the disciplines of art criticism, visual arts, curating, and pedagogy. The essay contributes to ongoing debates in curatorial and disability studies by demonstrating how facilitative and practice-led approaches can reshape interpretative frameworks, artist agency and knowledge production.
Source: Arts
DOI: 10.3390/arts15090195
Author: George Graham Vasey
Institution: Teesside University
Language: English
Topic: Art, Politics, and Modernism
Subfield: Visual Arts and Performing Arts
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: gold
Estimated APC paid: $1,689
OpenAlex ID: W7204130683