Making and Gifting Belonging: Creative Arts and People with Learning Disabilities

Abstract

Creative arts are understood to be a mediator between positions of social exclusion and of inclusion for marginalised people and places, building self-confidence and strengthening social networks. Although there are undoubted benefits from involvement in creative arts, the author critiques the assumed shift from excluded to included positions. Instead, he adopts the nuanced notion of ‘belonging’ to reflect the experiences of attachment and desire or yearning for recognition, of one marginal group—people with learning disabilities. Drawing on case studies of two creative arts organisations in Edinburgh, Scotland, it is argued that: first, the making of arts objects and performances provides opportunities for embodied and emotional expression, and belonging; second, the act of ‘gifting’ objects and performances to people in wider society transmits emotions and creativity into nondisabled spaces, with possible outcomes of connection and recognition; and third, the intimate communities and safe spaces where creative art is made provide bases for ventures into public spaces for gifting, and the generation of senses of belonging. The author concludes hopefully, arguing that through the doing of creative arts, people with learning disabilities can transcend the exclusionary landscape (albeit temporarily) and begin to reimagine and transform understandings of learning disability and difference in society.