The arts as a vehicle
Throughout our work, we use a range of artistic and creative mediums as a tool to engage with diverse communities and as a vehicle for influencing positive change within wider society through our partnerships with galleries.
Front and Centre (2025)
with Katie Seymour
Front and Centre showcase and portrait series. © Installation photography by Tod Jones; portraits by Katie Seymour. Images courtesy of the Ikon Gallery and Changing Our Lives.
Front and Centre is a photography project that celebrates the individual personalities of people with a profound and multiple learning disability (PMLD) and the importance of family, featuring portraits by Katie Seymour, photographer and Associate of Changing Our Lives. A direct challenge to the absence of disability representation in mainstream art spaces, the project worked with people with a PMLD from across the West Midlands, who are otherwise rarely exposed to opportunities in the arts as their disability is seen as prohibitive to inclusion.
Front and Centre culminated in a photo book and public showcase at the Ikon Gallery in Birmingham, which was opened in April 2025 by the celebrated photographer, Dr Vanley Burke, who is renowned for his ability to capture the essence of diverse communities and the richness of the human experience. The project was funded by the Inclusive Communities Fund.
Why are we stuck in hospital? (2023)
with Foka Wolf
Why are we stuck in hospital? installation, Foka Wolf (2023). © Photography by Tegen Kimberly. Images courtesy of the Ikon Gallery.
Responding to Why are we stuck in hospital?, a joint research project between the University of Birmingham and Changing Our Lives and funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research, Birmingham-based artist and activist, Foka Wolf, was commissioned to produce an art installation, which took place in March 2023 at the Ikon Gallery, Birmingham.
The installation spoke to the dehumanising reality faced by the 2000 people with a learning disability and/or autistic people in England who, at any one time in England, remain needlessly trapped within the hospital system for prolonged periods, on average upwards of 5 years. In 2024, Why are we stuck in hospital? toured to SITE Gallery in Sheffield and Fabrica in Brighton.
Common Ground (2021)
‘Your new normal. My normal.’
As part of Common Ground, a community connecting project funded by the Co-op Foundation to tackle youth loneliness among young disabled people and young people with mental health difficulties, we launched a social media campaign in 2020 asking for art submissions around the theme of “Your new normal. My normal.”
As the world became increasingly aware of the feelings of loneliness, depression, and anxiety that arose as a result of life in lockdown, deeming this new lack of social contact “the new normal”, we sought to raise awareness of the disparity in what can be considered ‘normal’ about these experiences by capturing the stories of young disabled people and their non-disabled peers through the arts.
The young people’s artworks were exhibited online in a gallery space hosted by Wolverhampton Art Gallery, and a complementary arts brochure, which featured a commentary by each artist into their respective submissions.
Poets First (2014) and Express Yourself (2017)
In 2013, we were one of 15 organisations across the UK to receive a Clore Duffield Poetry and Literature Award to fund a project called ‘Poets First’. Throughout the workshops, we worked with 166 young disabled people aged 11-18, 30% of whom were from minority ethnic communities to produce a book of poetry about issues that affected them, including bullying, racism, teenage pregnancy, difficulties with their education and depression.
For the Express Yourself project (2016-2017), which was funded by an NHS England Learning Disability Engagement Grant, we again used poetry as a vehicle for exploring emotional wellbeing. The design, development and delivery of this project were undertaken in coproduction with 4 young disabled people from local schools, who co-facilitated workshops for 16 of their peers with learning disabilities, and 6 young people with the label of profound and multiple learning disability (PMLD), aged 14-19.
