Learning when Disabled

A sort of open letter to those who will listen

This year I took a course in the hopes I would learn something new, every week I dragged myself out of the house, down the street to the tram and into Blackpool before crossing to the university campus. I would read anything that was provided and hoped there would be some sort of information I could use. But being there meant that I was exhausted for 3-4 days afterwards, and then I tended to rest on the day before the course in the hopes I would have the energy to make it down to Blackpool.

A family issue meant I couldn’t go on the final trip but I probably couldn’t have physically managed the coach trip down due to my disability, to date if I sat in a car for more than forty minutes then my back is in agony for several hours.

For the end of the course, they wanted us to do a Presentation on what we are already doing, what we want to do in the future, how will we achieve those projects, and what knowledge and skills we learned from the course that have helped us secure more contracts or opportunities. I don’t personally feel like I covered anything that I haven’t already covered running my own business since 2010, and due to exhaustion I haven’t even been promoting my work to the extent I know I should, I have just been resting.

I had wanted to not be on camera myself and I had planned to make a slideshow of my work, so I wouldn’t be perceived but things have been busy for me, the more I do the less energy I have to do the making that I enjoy, that brings me peace. And I have made so little whilst being on the course due to being exhausted.

My disability makes it almost impossible to share, even putting this out into the world makes me anxious. I know more needs to be spoken about my disabilities and education where I was deemed too much both without and with diagnosis. I was almost thrown out of high school as I was too much like hard work for the head of special needs. The head of special needs at my local sixth-form college said I was the hardest case she had ever dealt with. Teacher training they tried make the course as unbearable as possible so I would quit but they didn’t understand my stubborn streak. Three of the universities I went to weren’t interested in offering any sort of support, one the only support they were will to offer was a dictaphone to record my lecture.

Sometimes I look and I am shocked that I ever managed to finish a degree because there was always a negative view of myself and my disabilities. In fact the reason I took teacher training was to be able to help students like myself. And my five years in education that is what I tried to do, help the neurodivergent and disabled students who otherwise are left behind, especially the ones who go undiagnosed. I have a big idea to help that group through education otherwise but it is a project so big that I can’t do it alone, it needs staff cover for more days a week than I can manage.

I have looked at change recently looked at retraining in engineering but I don’t want to go back to school, I don’t want to take on massive levels of new debt. Moving forward I am reapplying for a failed ACE Project Grant, doing more arts projects here in Fleetwood, and building my general level of exhaustion into any future projects. But I don’t know if I can dream big any more I just want to sit and draw and paint, with music on and forget myself. It doesn’t feel ambitious, but do we have to be ambitious all the time.

How do you bring about change as a disabled neurodivergent working-class artist who is absolutely exhausted?

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The original script if you want to read it:

It’s really hard to confidently say in front of a group of people “Hello, I’m Joseph and I’m a disabled neurodivergent working-class maker from Fleetwood” I make across media, painting pottery, but also wood, metal, plastics and poetry.

I’ve thrown myself into my work as a coping mechanism for my disabilities, my mind races constantly until my hands are busy, I find my flow and I forget my disabilities, my thoughts disappear. I languish in that peace, but trying to be an artist is the opposite of that, it is anxiety and poking your head out into the world trying to get people to take notice.

My work often relates to the seaside where I grew up, and where I choose to live now. I grew up around other children whose fathers and grandfathers were fishermen and their livelihoods have now disappeared but at the time they were under threat and the jobs were disappearing from the town. My work tries to connect with that, though my own family’s stories are split between textiles and mill towns, and builders and blacksmiths who helped build Blackpool.

Despite being a selective mute, who dropped out of so many courses, discovering clay I found this tiny fraction of a gram of confidence and started teaching other students to throw when I was in University, starting my own business as soon as I qualified I taught kids and clay sessions in schools, youth groups and the council. I professionalised as a teacher, I hated it, I studied a master’s in research started working out new ways to connect with people, tell stories, and I abandoned it all for a low-paid job before being lured to set up for myself which has peaks and too many troughs.

I make art every day, just a single page of writing, a single page of sketching with ink and paint 3227 days in a row. If I could I would lock myself in my office music blaring and just create constantly, read and research for inspiration.

Last year I got an Arts Council England project grant to run historical sketchwalks through Fleetwood where I recounted the history of the town and taught people how to draw and paint.

Moving forward the work I want to create is of social-historical engagement, researching the history of a subject, how people are and have connected with a thing or a place, recording their stories, to create art that responds to stories and place, with layers and movement and creating something that was more than the sum of its parts. 

I want to focus on Fleetwood but I also want to take on commissions further afield. I have been working for years to develop my professional contacts in the town and have partners within a number of other organisations, including Fleetwood Museum

My intention is to get more grant funding, recently I was turned down for a grant, but I’m in the process of working with an access support worker to resubmit. THis is something bigger than I have worked on before, it moves away from workshops and teaching being the main focus, and onto a piece of artwork 

But the plan before I started the course was to set up at a CIC to access grant funding from a variety of sources, but at the moment I don’t have the energy I’m burnt out and I just want to focus for a while. Though I started building a website for it, it has email addresses and social media pages I can repurpose for it. Everything is there except the energy to jump

~Joseph