This is an exploratory case study of Creativity Explored (CE), a non-profit art center in San Francisco, California, that serves adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD). The purpose of the study is to address the following questions: How does Creativity Explored facilitate personal and professional growth in adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities? Using Creativity Explored as a model, what can we learn about best practices in community-based art programs that serve adults with disabilities? Multiple methods of data collection were utilized, including examination of pertinent literature and documents, visual documentation, observations, and interviews with administrators and staff, who were selected to provide a breadth and depth of knowledge about various aspects of the CE program. Conclusions were drawn about four major areas of the program: its “art community” model; its benefits for participating artists; the values, practices, and strategies that have contributed to its longevity and success; and the challenges that it has confronted as an organization. / text

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Abstract of Making Their Way—Making Art and Making Money: The working lives of visual artists with disabilities Susan Agatha Maley People with disabilities have marked lower rates of employment than people without disabilities in both Australia and the United States, the countries chosen for this research inquiry. That this is the case decades after the introduction of anti-discrimination laws in these developed democratic countries highlights the continuum of constraints people with disabilities still experience in securing work. Some of these constraints include socially discriminatory attitudes and perceptions, the lack of available accommodations and adaptations in work settings (and the misconception that they will be onerous and expensive to implement), lack of accessible transportation, the unavailability of work within established job markets and the restrictions of vocational rehabilitation and disability employment programs’ past focus on existing jobs in organisational settings. These constraints have a negative impact on the overall quality of life for many people with disabilities as employment is a key component to individual self-sufficiency and personal fulfilment and also crucial to inclusion in community and social settings. Among the notable initiatives to address these persistent inequities are research-informed projects focusing on self-employment as a viable alternative mode of employment to the established job market. Within the last decade, myriad research reports, model demonstration projects, and a US national research program, funded by the Office of Disability Employment Policy, have been demonstrating the success of self-employment in expanding self-determined income generation. Within this burgeoning and productive investigation on self-employment, one gap is that there has been little focused inquiry on creative work. Such a void is significant since the predominant work mode among visual artists is self-employment, albeit sometimes supplemented with other arts, and non-arts related work. This study addresses the lack of investigation of artists’ modes of work by examining the working lives of practicing professional visual artists with a range of significant physical, sensory and neurological disabilities. There are a number of reasons for this research study’s focus on the area of visual arts. Visual arts has been documented to be one of the largest groups among artistic disciplines in studies in both Australia and the US, as well as European countries. Within this sizable arts arena, there are established and emerging markets for sale of visual arts products. This discipline can also offer flexible work locations, hours and adaptations in art making. Thus, there may be numerous benefits to pursuing careers in the visual arts for creative people with disabilities. Yet, little is known about the lived work experience of practicing visual artists with disabilities and their career strategies. Thus, an exploration of visual artists with disabilities working in a range of mediums such as this research study can reveal new, and potentially useful, knowledge about their methods of art-making and marketing, adaptations in the design and execution of their work, their experiences of disability and the facilitators and obstacles they face when preparing for and pursuing their working lives as artists. This research study is based on the results of in-depth, face-to-face interviews of twenty-one visual artists, eleven in Australia and ten in the US, who used multiple artistic mediums. The conceptual lens for the analysis is intersectionality with an underlying critical realism foundation. These theories were used to explore the intersecting social positions of being a person with a disability and a practicing artist and the related interplay of agency and structure in shaping the careers of these artists. The main findings from this research focus on how the artists in this study made their way, made art and made money. These findings commence with an examination of the early shaping and continued sustaining influences in their artistic development and education. It continues with an exploration of the influence of their disability experiences on making art including their adaptive methods and conceptual process. The analysis continues with a focus on factors involving their means of making money, marketing and self-promotion methods and professional progressions. The findings conclude with an analysis of aids and obstacles these artists with disabilities experienced during interactions with a range of organisations including disability employment and vocational rehabilitation counselling and financial support agencies, arts educational institutions, art galleries and arts and disability agencies. Highlights of the findings are that the majority of the artists in the study earned their income from arts and arts related work, that they made active use of their own personal and collective agency to meet their artistic and professional goals and that their actions influenced structural change. They also positioned aspects of their social and personal identity to best suit their career progressions and some made artistic use of their conceptions of disability with innovative impact on social conceptions of disability. Implications of these findings are that artists experiencing disability developed strategic skills to negotiate difficult terrain while forging an income-producing arts practice. In addition, their creation of new options for themselves, and other artists with disabilities, has wider implications for improving equity for artists with disabilities.