HYBRIDS: Live! was a participatory performance produced as part of a Royal West of England Academy (RWA) artist residency, Many Minds, 27th February 2024 – 13th May 2024
I fulfilled the Access Worker role during this series with Many Minds, an arts-based mental health charity in Bristol, UK. I also performed alongside members, supporting in-the-moment.
During weekly workshops I supported Many Minds members in the devising of a response to the RWA exhibition 'These Mad Hybrids: John Hoyland and Contemporary Sculpture'.
Over the course of the series Many Minds explored what accessibility meant when visiting a grand establishment like the RWA. We made made mini-performances alongside smaller groups who visited the RWA as part of the RWA Learning team's projects: a group for people living with dementia and their carers; a group for blind and partially sighted people; a session with babies and their parents/carers. The participatory nature of these performances led us to develop new ideas around how people can experience artworks within a gallery. We also collaborated with artist Johnny Morgan-Jones, exploring ideas of identity and hybridity, and with this, created costumes for our performance.
These ideas were incorporated into a larger piece of work that was performed at the RWA, taking the audience on a journey with us starting outside the RWA and travelling through to the exhibition, exploring access and new ways of seeing, feeling, hearing and being around the artworks. This was a participatory performance where we moved with and around the audience, and eventually the audience became a part of the performance itself, where we all celebrated our responses to the exhibition.
These Mad Hybrids was curated by artist, curator and educator Olivia Bax, who we also had the opportunity to work with, exploring her creative process and working with her method of creating sculpture.
