Immediate Goals
- to further build a professional team of arts facilitators / tutors and studio management who work collaboratively, effectively and consciously for the greater good of their students
- to provide a stimulating, robust learning environment in visual arts and creative expression that is based on sound, effective learning practises and methodologies
- to have the learning environment and processes be safe and appropriately responsive to our students circumstance and complex learning needs
- to progress the individual creative potential, capabilities and achievement of each student through the development of art making abilities and creative thinking
- to support and enable students in their awareness and ability to express and communicate their experience in ways that are unique to their person – and that contribute an experience of aesthetics to their lives
- to provide a dynamic, interactive group environment, developing healthy awareness of others and building creative community
- to introduce and help establish artists with disabilities within the art world and wider community, building artistic credibility and critical recognition
Long Term Goals
- to become a ‘centre of learning’ for visual artists with disabilities
- to establish a full programme of integrated, experiential learning modules covering a diverse range of visual art-creative development subject matter
- to collate and document our programmes and disseminate our ‘educational model’ within the arena of special and other education / related arenas
- to set up workshops, seminars and training opportunities for other professionals in the field of art education / creative expression and disability
- to establish regular, community based exhibition opportunities for our students raising the profile of artists with disability
- to write and publish material to gain recognition for people with disability within the arts
- to work in partnership with communities to generate public awareness and illicit and maximise the opportunities for arts involvement for people with disabilities
To enable Spark Studio to achieve the above, the number of tutors and tutor hours must be increased, the administrative resources must be further developed and the studio facilities and resources expanded; this requires substantial and sustainable funding.
Purpose
To offer visual arts education and self developmental programmes for people with various disabilities, in order to:
- provide a way through creativity to personally resource and empower people who are regularly disenfranchised
- provide a quality learning process in visual arts to people who have not had the opportunity to be part of or had regular access to arts education because of disability
- assist students to develop a greater sense of meaning and purpose in their lives through creative industry
- enable people with disabilities to contribute in ways that are positive to wider society – and that assist them to integrate within society more congruently and effectively
