People with disabilities Embrace creativity

THIS year’s Embrace exhibition opened in Glór last Thursday, marking ten years of the Clare Arts Office initiative to help local people with disabilities to access the arts.
Many of the founding groups, such as the Brothers of Charity, Enable Ireland and the Dulick Centre, continue to regularly take part in the twice yearly programme of workshops that are part funded by the Arts Council, Clare County Council and the groups themselves.
Since its beginning in 2002, the Embrace Programme has helped many hundreds of participants from around the county to enjoy a wide variety of creative activities including painting, drawing, ceramics, textiles, mosaic, music, dance and drama.
The county’s first citizen, Mayor Pat Hayes was at Glór to launch the exhibition and he praised the work that went into getting it ready.
“It gives people with disabilities the arena to express their own artistic interests and the people who help them out do great work. They work with a lot of different groups from around Clare and I was humbled as Mayor to open it.”
Alan Shoosmith is the co-ordinator of the programme. “I was working as an artist on the programme when it first started and three years ago I became the co-ordinator with the Clare Arts Office for the programme. It involves matching the needs of the organisations representing people with disabilities with the artists that have expressed an interest in working on the scheme. They would be across all the disciplines,” he says.
A lot of people are reached by the programme, according to Alan. “Altogether there have been 20 different workshops running over the spring. Some of them would have been painting, some of them music, some drama. Some of the music was performed at the opening and there were groups from around the county there.”
The exhibition focuses on visual art and Alan says there are different types of work there. “It shows a collection of the visual art that has been produced over the last six months or so, in various workshops on the programme. There are a lot of paintings there, also structural work that was produced for St Patrick’s Day parade by Enable Ireland. There are hand-made mosaics made by one of the Brothers of Charity Groups and ceramic works made by children of the Clare Crusaders.”
As well as co-ordinating the programme he also works as an artist with some of the groups. He says it is about the participants enjoying what they do.
“The main aim is that there would be a fun element to it and they all enjoy the creative process. It’s about having fun mostly, exploring different ideas and techniques that help to get good results.”
It’s something he takes a lot of satisfaction from. “I thoroughly enjoy it. It’s always a great pleasure to see the look on people’s faces when they achieve something they didn’t think they were able to do. To be able to help so many people do that is a great thing.”