Claudiaexpat gives us a snapshot of London and tells us about InPractice, a wonderful initiative of the Royal Academy of Arts.
As you know, I do not live in London, unfortunately. I love this city with all my heart, and what I am about to share is yet another reason for it.
My youngest son luckily decided to settle down in the UK capital, and I recently spent a whole month there, helping him find a room. While I was there, a dear Expatclic friend, Eleonora Oleotto, invited me to an event organized by the Royal Academy of Arts, where she was going to talk about her work with therapeutic photography.
I did not have the time to check in advance what InPractice was about, so it was with great joy that I discovered that this event is an amazing human experience. As you can read on the RAC website, “At this event we invite disabled artists and creative people facing barriers accessing the art world to share their practice with others”.
I sat all through the event in awe of these amazing artists who stepped on stage to present their work. It was an amazing gallery of brave and creative human beings: a lady with Muscular Dystrophy; a man who has spent more life in prison than out, and is struggling with mental health problems; Eleonora, who told us about her deep depression and how she overcame it with photography, which she now uses to help others; a lady with such severe cerebral palsy, that she could not speak and had to use a device to voice her thoughts and feelings; and many others facing different kinds of barriers, who opened up generously to share their stories, their difficulties, but also and foremost their love for art and the power of creativity.
Most of their works were amazing. There were paintings, sculptures, poems and more. I particularly loved the works of Keith Honeyman and Bridget Peachey, who participate in a programme that matches artists to produce their works together. They showed us a video of a day when they went to a lake to paint birds (Keith’s big passion!). It was fascinating to watch the whole process, from finding the place, to setting up all the tools, and then do the actual painting. Look at their works:
We all laughed and enjoyed Vera Freire’s presentation of the lovely works she makes with cutleries. She was witty, energetic and fun. Look at this lemur, isn’t it something?
I found the initiative fantastic and meaningful. It was a privilege and an honour to be able to connect with artists I would have never discovered otherwise. InPractice is a regular event that takes place at the Royal Academy of Arts. The next one will be on Friday 1st June 2018 from 6 to 8:30pm, and I strongly recommend you not to miss it if you are so lucky as to be living in London, or simply, like me, passing by.
Claudia Landini (Claudiaexpat)
March 2018
Jakarta, Indonesia
This article is part of a section we call “Snapshots”. We write short articles on a specific aspect of our host country. Like opening a window of our home and telling you what we see. We would be happy to publish what YOU see. Get in touch with us!