Accentuate

At the end September DAO was commissioned to cover the Arts Council’s decibel performing arts showcase in Manchester. The decibel event is designed to give artists whose work reflects diversity an opportunity to be seen by bookers from national and international companies. It was an exciting week! With DAOs New Voices writers on board, we managed to cover a huge part of the event with 21 reviews of the work at http://www.disabilityartsonline.org.uk/decibel11-reviews and 11 interviews with artists.and companies at http://www.disabilityartsonline.org.uk/decibel11-interviews

A bigger part of DAOs Arts Council Award engaged us in building a new website for the Creative Case for Diversity, which was launched at a conference at the decibel showcase. We streamed the conference, live and have been publishing case studies, articles and blogs over the last two months that explain and give examples of how a range of arts organisations have diversity at their core.

In short, the creative case is a conversation about Art, foremost; but Art that is driven by a wide range of experience that encompasses responses to issues around race, ethnicity, faith, disability, age, gender, sexuality, class and economic disadvantage.

I’d recommend a browse. I recently published an article by Jo Verrent on the painter Chuck Close. She gives a fascinating insight into how the artists’ originality has been motivated by living with impairment. As an artists Close has always looked for innovative ways to challenge himself. At the beginning of his career, his amazing large-scale portraits were inspired by experience of ‘face-blindness.’ Further impairment after he had already achieved recognition pushed him to develop a new style of portraiture. Up close the paintings are a series of small abstractions. As you move away to a distance of 5 foot or more, photorealist portraits come in view, defying the imagination.

You'll find it at http://disabilityarts.creativecase.org.uk/