Traces

Exploring disabled joy through creative mark-making and transforming preconceptions with four contemporary artists alongside giant wheelchair prints made by local children. 'Traces' takes as its centre-point the work of children and young people who have been working with Creative Producers Morgan Stockton and Pasha Kincaid.

Pasha Kincaid, TRACES co-producer and co-curator, was artist in residence for the Paul Hamlyn Foundation funded SENsory Atelier Programme in 2022. Whilst there, after witnessing the incredibly joyful, wheelchair skills of one young pupil, weaving around the playground, bouncing a car tyre in front of him, she offered wheelchair printing as a mode of creative investigation.

This was the start of an exciting collaboration with Ash Field Academy, a school for children with special educational needs and disabilities in Leicester. In 2023 she returned to the school, this time with Morgan Stockton, Director of Seeds and Dreams, as co-producer along with a number of art activists, some disabled. Together they facilitated ten intensive sessions of wheelchair printing and giant mark making.

Children and young people, ages 4 to 19, were invited to print from their wheelchair wheels, as well as being offered a myriad of art tools to create with; all inspired by the traces made by the motion of rolling. A selection of these vibrant and dynamic artworks will be shown here, at Attenborough Arts Centre, alongside the works of four 'grown-up' contemporary artists.

These contemporary artists were selected for their potential to inspire young people to explore beyond the perceived limitations of disability, they were asked to offer work in response to the children's creative journey, to explore the concept of traces, the traces that are left behind, and the traces that are made through motion. The works include new commissions, co-produced projects and several significant loans.