Tried & Tested

This report is a case study for the Learning Department,Tate Modern.

‘Words are not my first choice now. I use my eyes and other senses. I find it difficult to decide whether to have tea or coffee: to be faced with an idea or a concept when thinking about art is too much for me to face. First, I need to split things in to small sections’.

The project ‘Drawing on Speech: Structuring Thought’ stemmed from a long term partnership between the Family and Community programme at Tate Modern and Connect – the communication disability network, a charity providing services to people with aphasia 1 . A group of adults withaphasia from Connect’s art group started visiting Tate Modern around 2004 as part of their programme to support people ‘getting out and about’ after a stroke.

The group used Art into Life, which is a free workshop programme for adults outside formal learning, to access the collection at Tate Modern through discussion and making art.Many groups of adults use this programme in many different ways, for example: to make their first visit to a gallery, to complement regular gallery going, to integrate a visit into their own learning programme, to develop visual skills and to find confidence in themselves as learners in the public space of Tate.

1 Aphasia is a communication disability which occurs when the communication centres of the brain are damaged. It is usually caused by stroke, but can also be caused by brain haemorrhage, head injury or tumours. Each person with aphasia faces different challenges with writing, reading, talking, understanding and using numbers. For the majority of people there is very little cognitive impairment. Because aphasia affects communication, suddenly all aspects of life can become ahuge challenge. Visit www.ukconnect.org for further information.

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The idea of accessing Tate was initially a challenge to Connect and to its service users. It is difficult for many to understand modern and contemporary art. People with aphasia are even more challenged. For example, because of their language problems, they are likely to have problems reading environmental signs and maps when finding their way to the museum, and, once they arrive, they are likely to have difficulty reading instructions and captions in the gallery.

As part of coming to Art into Life, issues to do with travel, access and orientation around the building were addressed in a measured way, over time and with the support of volunteers. Confidence was built gradually.

The one-off visits to Tate elicited high levels of curiosity, as well as some level of frustration about lack of time to consider the art more fully.

From these fairly irregular visits for Art into Life grew a loyal and excited core group from Connect who were keen to deepen their experience of the gallery. It became apparent that an extended project could yield significant outcomes for both Tate and Connect in order to further investigate aspects of their partnership and the ensuing gallery experiences.

The project was called Drawing on Speech: Structuring Thought. It was devised by Michèle Fuirer, an artist educator who is situated within the Family and Community Programme at Tate Modern. Michèle conducted two hour weeklyworkshops with people with aphasia. The workshops took place in front of artworks and also in the studio space.

The aim of the workshops was to ‘design communication strategies for opening up modern and contemporary art to people with communication disabilities’. We wanted to find out about the HOW of our own communication in order to better work with people with a communication disability

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visiting a museum or gallery. The workshops involved a two-way creative process for how best to support people with aphasia to access art at the Tate and in their lives.

We asked ourselves the following questions: •What does the gallery offer that is distinctive for people with aphasia?•How does discussion evolve within the group and what does it cover?•How do abstract and philosophical ideas become concrete through discussion?•How do we need to structure the environment we learn in with regard to communication disability?•How does the museum need to respond to people with communication disability - and not the other way around?

A group of people with aphasia was formed for the project which ran from January to March 2010. The group of thirteenadults included a mix of those who had been coming regularlyto Tate over a five year period, people who were completely new to Tate and people who were completely new to visiting agallery or museum. Most of the group knew each other previously, having met through the art and conversation groups run by Connect.

Our methods were based on the principles of the social modelof disability – developing practice ‘No one understands aphasia better than someone with aphasia’. Connect Access to Life project report

The social model of disability is a conceptual frame that emerges from the disability movement. It proposes that attitudes, practices and the environment contribute more to disabling the person than the impairment itself. Inherent in the social model is the intention to equalize power relations between service provider and service user. This shift in control changes the relationship to one of collaboration, where both parties bring expertise, knowledgeand experience to the collaboration.

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As an organization, Connect involves people with aphasia at many levels of its services, not just us users, but as providers. For example, training is delivered to health and social care staff by people with aphasia who have been supported and trained to be trainers. Similarly, conversation groups are led by people with aphasia for others with aphasia

The Drawing on Speech Project was practice based in that it involved a series of moments and opportunities for the participants to be actively involved in challenging and changing their ideas about communication and about using a gallery. We set out to design a model of practice in gallerylearning for both project organisers and people with aphasia. The model centered around the principle that emphatically places the ownership and the expertise needed for learning with the learner.

The project provided the Tate artist-educator involved with the project with an opportunity to consider the practice of the artist within a research context and in relation to art practices. It focused also on ways in which language informs art.

From this perspective the coordinating artist aimed

• to create a ‘laboratory’ learning environment which forefronts the learners’ ability to generate content for themselves

• to partner with the group, not to provide for or ‘rescue’ the learners• to work toward the notion of gallery as a space in

which conversation is valuable as an outcome in its ownright

• to think about conversation as a form of negotiation through which meaning is constructed

• to focus closely on the act of looking and to make a visual record of this process.

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The artist coordinator conceived of her role as that of a go-between, or a messenger conveying ideas between participants. She worked to expand upon participants’contributions using her skills, experience and highly specialised understanding of working as an artist educator with the collection of Tate Modern. For the artisteducator a series of parallels could be drawn between facilitating conversation about art and the processes used by artists to make art.

The title of the project: ‘Drawing on Speech’ references a statement by artist and critical theorist Joseph Grigely. Grigely, who is Deaf, exhibits the notes scribbled to him during conversations by his conversational partners: ‘I suppose also the conversation papers are drawings, drawings of speech: something that’s not quite writing because of how the words lack context – there’s no beginning of a conversation, there’s no end, just the fragments of it’.

The artist Richard Deacon provides a useful commentary upon speech as a form of making art:

‘Speech is not a thing, but rather a product of community, built bit by bit in discourse. Speech is not nature, like stone or rock; it is manufactured. To make is also to bring into being, to cause there something to be’.

The project provided both participants and artist educators with new views, not usually entertained in the course of their lives and work. It provided a chance to rethink not only particular practices for the participants and artists, but also allowed them both to rethink museum practices in general.

One of the primary revelations was the importance of ‘MakingTime for Time’

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The significance of making time a considered and tangible element of the work should not be understated.

‘The artist takes time – like us, when our brain has gone, we need time.’ Sonia,project participant.

Sonia’s comment draws a parallel between the artist’s process of developing work over time and the ensuing work ofthe spectator in taking time for their interpretation and understanding to evolve through different stages. Sonia’s focus of interest was a work by Guiseppe Penone, Tree of Twelve Metres, in the Energy & Process display.. Penone hascarved back from a processed tree trunk to find the originalform of the younger tree within the block.

People with aphasia have a very particular sense of time with relation to the process of communication; they often need more time to negotiate language and express ideas. Thegroup members felt that they needed time to think about the work before discussing their thoughts and ideas with others.Activities needed to be paced to allow time for people to prepare their contributions to discussions. Feeding back an idea to the whole group was more successful when time was given for individual people to prepare their contributions in advance.

‘The more time you spend looking at it, the more reasons you have’. Sharon, project participant.

The second aspect of time relates to the duration of the project. To work with a closed group over a sustained periodof six weeks in order to reach ‘depth’ of experience was a key aim for this project. Working in partnership with the same group of people over several months is not always possible in the need to make programmes accessible to a broad number of people over a short period .The participantscommented how having six weeks allowed them the space to remember and develop thought in an extended way:

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‘And when we come back with a group, all of us, we see, we use memory’. Michael.

Some members of the group used personal time for reflection between sessions: ‘That’s why I write, I go home and I see what I have done’. Michael’s carefully crafted thoughts which he brought back in writing to each session provided the artist with a form of reflective insight that enabled her to understand the partnership more fully.

We developed ways of supporting memory over time. For example, John Lewis, a volunteer from Connect, documented the sessions through photography. John had been supporting the visits to Tate for many years prior to the project. Therefore, he had a very close understanding of what was involved in working in the gallery. He understood what was needed in terms of communication support to participants andwhat to look for in order to capture the experience. His continual process of documentation enabled each week to start with looking at photographs of the previous week’s work and talking over, around and through the photographs inorder to support memory.

What elements worked?

The Ideas Wall – Visual Thinking

Coming here has been very important for me because I have found that, although I have lost so much language, I can learn to see (…) I am discovering that art seems to start with the way I look at things’. Michael, project participant.

In an attempt to give physical shape to some concepts and ideas the group had been investigating from the previous twoweeks in the Energy & Process display on Level 5 in Tate Modern, the artist presented a wall of ideas to the group. The wall consisted of key words which had been distilled from the text panels in the display, images of the artworks,

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contextual images related to the artworks, maps, handling objects etc. In a similar fashion to a ‘mind map’ the material was spread out over the wall in the studio.

The wall and the group’s response to it proved to be a pivotal point in the project. Many of the group rejected the arrangement of information entirely saying there was fartoo much; others wanted to place coloured lines to divide upsections and to separate one idea from another, others suggested colour codes for related themes. The group becameactive in re-ordering, rearranging and agreeing and disagreeing over how the information should be presented in order to access concepts and ideas. No one approach was going to suit all, but modeling the process was a catalyst for further work.

Members of the group wanted to try a mind map approach to support their understanding of one artwork selected from Energy & Process. Supported byeach other, or by the speech and language therapy students, they sequenced drawings, writing, photographs – and a range of materials – to show how ideas connect and flow. These maps were then taken to the gallery and used in front of theart. Members presented the ideas ‘live’, to one another (and to fascinated onlookers from the general public).

In the penultimate week, the group presented a wall display to summarise all the different communicative tools the groupmembers used when discussing art. These might not have been substantially different from what was already known about good communication strategies, however, what was different was a visualised structure for thinking about communication—and one that came from the group. A physical structure on the wall helped to break complex information into smaller parcels or units. Presenting both written and visual information on a similar level enabled people to engage through their preferred communication style. Repetition Repetition Repetition

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‘Repetition is good’.‘The whole thing stays with us because we come again and again’.‘The more we looked at it the more we respected it’.

In order to work towards a more in-depth understanding of content – staying within one display of Tate for the whole period and gaining familiarity through repeated visits was ademanding but ultimately rewarding approach.

The project focused upon Energy & Process on Level 5 and in particular the room Arte Povera and Anti Form. This room makes links between artists working in Italy within the movement termed Arte Povera and makes wider connections to theUK, the USA and Japan. Arte Povera and Anti Form is a collection of works about relationships, dialogue and influence among artists – mirrored to a certain extent in our own process ofworking out meaning together.

The display contains works that are large in scale. They promote, amongst other things, consideration of the materialworld in relation to the sensory and physical capacity of the viewer. When we moved out to look more broadly at Energy & Process it was from a position of existing experience:

‘It seemed so different but when you put it together you notice that they are notso different’.

‘I really see it, where before you just look and walk on’

‘Drawing to each other’ and the importance of the group

‘…and drawing to each other and say ‘yes, yes, do you think so? and ‘yes, yes, that’s what I mean’ and they come back and look again’ Michael, project participant

Working in a group helped to move from the general to the particular, from the abstract idea to the personal response.

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Group work helps promote talk and access to shared knowledgeand ideas. Group reflection is also valuable part of this process:

‘And when we come back with a group, all of us, we see, we use memory’.

In the gallery people were helped by exploring the work in pairs or small groups:

‘We didn’t read the signs , we discussed with each other, we found out more by guessing, research afterwards’

As part of the partnership, Connect set up support from two speech and language therapy students on final year placementfrom University of East Anglia to help with communication ona one-to-one basis and to document and record the sessions. Extending the group in this way was a superb support to the participants and a great benefit to the artist who could continue to think through her own communication strategies in relation to new ideas and input coming from the students.

What elements didn’t work?

Working with a total group size of thirteen meant that the time available for one to one support during sessions was limited. In retrospect, working with a slightly smaller group would have been less pressured for all involved. In the process of recruiting to the project, enthusiasm was so high that it was hard to exclude anyone.

Using the same meeting place each time is important for people who may experience difficulty with finding their way.. For some people with aphasia reading signs, maps and directions can be a difficult task. We were not able to meeteach time in the same place and therefore this created a lotof extra work to help people find new and rather hidden meeting spaces in Tate.

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In their report, the speech and language students identifiedthe potential for people to be quickly overwhelmed by the volume of information, not only in our sessions, but also inTate in general. The gallery displays are visually complex,the spaces are busy and with high noise levels. There are few opportunities for viewing work in smaller, quieter spaces to enable a better paced and more accessible type of learning experience.

Some members of the group were unable to understand the interpretation material in the galleries. They felt the textwas too complex and too dense. It became an interesting exercise to rewrite these texts as ‘aphasia friendly’, not only for people with aphasia, but also for any reader. In the main, this was an exercise in compression and in reduction of large amounts of text to key ideas expressed inshort sentences with pictorial support.

What are your conclusions and recommendations for the future?

To continue to work with the expertise of people with aphasia and find opportunities for them to inform and influence aspects of learning in a gallery at differentlevels –for example, advice on preparation of text panels and public information, setting up and a runninga peer-led workshop.

The communication strategies we identified during the research have broad and general implications for gallery learning, beyond their application to people with aphasia.

The strategies we identified for communicating about art went beyond established strategies for good communication, opening up possibilities for ‘higher level’ and abstract forms of thinking.

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In their report, the speech and language therapy students said: ‘we found that for group members, being part of the research project, just being involved alonewas an important aspect of the project, they expressed enjoyment of a stimulating environment and expressed feelings of increased confidence. This was borne out by the way they were able to present their ideas to others’: ‘… with this we are equal and that is so important because sooften I am made to feel small’.

The space of the gallery offers up an experience that is significantly different from other learning spaces. It presents opportunities for moving from abstract thought with the focus on an artwork as an objective.

Artworks offer a focused topic that positively promotesboth individual and shared interpretations.

At the end of the project, the communication wall represented a map of where we had come from and where we had arrived. The key statement ‘The beginning – Art- a journey – and no end’ was endorsed by the whole group as a manifesto, as a place for others to start on their own learning journey in a gallery. Michèle Fuirer November 2010

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Working in the gallery with a visual map to help access and communicate ideas. Photo John Lewis

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Discussing how we communicate using an ‘ideas wall’ Photo John Lewis

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