School of Fine Art's Dr Jade French receives UKRI Future Leaders Award
The School of Fine Art, History of Art and Cultural Studies, and the Faculty of Arts Humanities and Cultures, are delighted to announce that Dr Jade French has received a UKRI Future Leaders Award
The School of Fine Art, History of Art and Cultural Studies, and the Faculty of Arts Humanities and Cultures, are delighted to announce that Dr Jade French has received a UKRI Future Leaders Award for her project ‘Inclusive Art for Wicked Problems’.
The aim of the Future Leaders Fellowship is to develop the next wave of world-class research and innovation leaders in academia and business. The fellowship enables researchers to develop their careers while helping to advance the UK’s vibrant research and innovation environment.
Working in partnership with Leeds-based inclusive arts studio Pyramid, her fellowship will enable an innovative application of inclusive arts practice to systemic action research to mobilise the expertise and creativity of learning disabled people across the challenges of the social care system.
The Irregular Art School exhibition at the University of Leeds 2023. Photo credit: Victor De Jesus
This methodological expansion, based on ongoing research by Dr French, will be generated by working with three UK-based inclusive arts organisations, as well as an international collaboration with partners in Brazil – Dr Viviane Sarraf and the São Paulo Museum of Modern Art – where together they will co-create new arts led infrastructure with learning disabled citizens in São Paulo by establishing the city's first inclusive art studio.
Dr Jade French. Photo credit: Victor De Jesus
In the UK, the fellowship will then bring the method into practice by enabling a locally embedded systemic action research project in the Leeds City Region led by artists from Pyramid, facilitated by Dr French, into the challenges and issues which affect them. Areas of interest include service commissioning, flexibility of care and support, the issuing of ‘Do Not Resuscitate’ Orders during COVID-19, employment, independent living, and access to Higher Education.
Learning disabled people have been long overlooked as research leaders and innovators. My fellowship will test a distributed leadership approach, exploring how varieties of expertise, agenda setting, and decisions can be shared amongst the many, and not the few, using creative and collaborative approaches generated through inclusive arts practice.
James Hill, Director of Pyramid adds: “This fellowship offers Pyramid as an organisation and the artists we work with an opportunity to directly tackle some of the most significant challenges that they face in their lives as people with learning disabilities and as artists. It is rare for a project to give enough time and space for it to be really meaningfully led by people with learning disabilities, and I can't wait to see what changes we can make together over the next four years.”
In response to Dr French’s award Professor Joanne Crawford, Head of the School of Fine Art, History of Art and Cultural Studies, said:
“Jade’s work exemplifies all that we strive to attain, undertaking arts-based research that opens-up the spaces that make a difference in real and socially committed ways. Within such participatory research Jade consistently and constantly proves that art can be truly inclusive and transformational and that no-one should be excluded from its remit. Her work with Pyramid has created a number of spaces within the School in which arts communities and educators come together and learn from each other so that each and all benefit.
“We are all delighted that with this much-deserved award Jade can now extend the reach of her research both locally and internationally to continue her advocacy for learning disabled artists; engaging and enabling these talented and exceptional people so that they claim their own spaces within the very institutions which have, until recently, excluded them.”
