The International Journal of
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VOLUME 9 ISSUE 1
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The Art for the Disabled SchemeEnhancing Limb-disabled Students’ Social Inclusion through Integration of Art and PhilanthropyJING YANG
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THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ARTS EDUCATION http://artsinsociety.com ISSN: 2326-9944 (Print) ISSN: 2327-0306 (Online) http://doi.org/10.18848/2326-9944/CGP (Journal)
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The International Journal of Arts Education Volume 9, 2015, www.artsinsociety.com, ISSN 2326-9944 © Common Ground, Jing Yang, Some Rights Reserved, (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0). Permissions: [email protected]://doi.org/10.18848/2326-9944/CGP/v09i01/36179
The Art for the Disabled Scheme: Enhance Limb-disabled Students’ Social Inclusion through
Integration of Art and Philanthropy Jing Yang, University of Jyväskylä, Finland
Abstract: This paper explored how a small group of limb-disabled students enhanced their social inclusion through participation in the Art for the Disabled Scheme, a long-term project aiming to help disabled young people through the integration of extracurricular art instruction and philanthropy. This research was conducted using qualitative case study method. The findings revealed the multiple benefits the disabled students reaped regarding their social inclusion enhancement: financial and material supports; mental well-being improvement; promotion for personal development; positive self and group identity building; and social development. The findings also demonstrated that the successful combination of art and philanthropy through a sustainable, efficient and cross-disciplinary mechanism effectively enhanced disabled young people’s full participation in society, and explored the unique roles played by the artists. This research provided new insight into the integration of art and nonprofit social service work for benefiting people in need.
Keywords: Limb-disabled Students, Art Instruction, Philanthropy
Introduction
ocial inclusion has become a widely used and well-established term concerning the well-being of disadvantaged groups. Social inclusion is identified as a process through which those at risk of poverty and social exclusion obtain necessary chances and resources, so
that they can fully—economically, socially and culturally—participate in society and enjoy a normal standard of living and wellbeing (Silver 2010, 187). The employment of the arts to enhance social inclusion has been part and parcel of a broad inclusive cultural and arts policy, resting on a consensus that participating in the arts has positive impact on individual and social development. Enhancing social inclusion was demonstratively the central concern of a large body of empirical and literature studies on social impact of the arts (Matarasso 1997, Williams1997, HDA 2000, Guetzkow 2002).
Disabled people are often considered the most excluded group in society. According to the social model of disability, the nature of disability is a form of social oppression. Disability is the disadvantage or restriction of activity caused by our social system which neglects or ignores the needs of people who have physical impairments, and therefore excludes them from every realm of social life (Barnes, Mercer and Shakespeare 1999; Thomas 1999). Although there was no large-scale survey on how visual arts can enhance disabled people’s social inclusion, a group of prior studies still revealed that art can generate massive benefits for disabled people’s social inclusion.
Most significantly of all, art provides disabled people a channel to reject the negative perception of disability and disabled people. Artistic expression provides disabled people with a medium for self-expression and for letting their voice be heard by society; through art disabled individuals and groups can expose the discrimination and prejudice disabled people face, counter the stereotyped representation of the disability, and generate group consciousness and solidarity (Barnes and Mercer 2001; Thomson 2000; Eisenhauer 2007). Art education offers disabled people visual literacy, aesthetic and practical competencies with which young disabled people can create powerful alternative images and overturn a negative image of difference (Hermon and Prentice 2003; Taylor 2005).
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In addition, the many known benefits that art can bring to people also apply to disabled people. Participating in art indisputably improves psychological well-being e.g. shifting attention away from negative emotions, facilitating enjoyable experience, and maintaining a positive identity (Boeltzig, Sulewski and Hasnain 2009, Reynolds and Lim 2007; Reynolds and Prior 2003; Reynolds 2000). Participating in art, especially collective art projects, creates a venue for disabled people to interact with others and helps improve their social capital which is significant for their participation in society (Lynch and Allan 2006). Art has positive impact on intellectual development such as cognitive growth relating to academic achievement and full development of personal ability (Boeltzig, Sulewski and Hasnain 2009; Dalke 1984). In addition, art can improve disabled people’s employability and career development (Boeltzig, Sulewski and Hasnain 2009); for example, the obtained artistic skills help disabled people in self-employment.
This Study
The devastating earthquake that occurred in Sichuan on the 12th May, 2008 caused more than 7,000 disabled; among them were many adolescents. After the earthquake, Chinese artist Zhou Chunya and his friends decided to establish a nonprofit foundation to help the disabled students who were, in accordance with their opinion, most in need. According to Zhou Chunya, he had two concerns when he decided to establish the 5Colours Foundation. One concern was employing art to soothe the disabled students’ injured hearts; the other as well as more important concern was passing on artistic skills to the disabled students who would have difficulties in job hunting, as the old proverb said—to teach a person fishing is better than to give him a fish. Zhou’s statement demonstrated the philanthropic nature of this project. Although philanthropy and charity are often used interchangeably; the key difference between them is that charity is more focused on helping someone or something right now, while philanthropy aims of improving the situation of others through long term charitable aids or donations (Dietlin 2010).
The 5Colours Foundation was established in March, 2009 with RMB 1,000,000 donated by Zhou Chunya. Offering long-term extracurricular art instruction as its core, the foundation launched the Art for the Disabled Scheme, which currently provides assistance to over 100 limb-disabled students. The scope of aid-receiving students has expanded to other disabled young people impaired by both seismic and non-seismic causes. There are thus far 11 instruction units. The age of the disabled students ranges from 6 to 22 years old.
The basic implementation mode of the Art for the Disabled Scheme was door-to-door teaching and individual instruction, named “the Mobile Art Classroom”. Professional art instructors, teaching facilities and art books were sent to schools or residences of the disabled students by vehicle to offer on-site art teaching. Zhou explained it “like the door-to-door delivery”. Nowadays, the foundation has five paid full-time art instructors; along with around 50 volunteers periodically coming to offer help.
It is worthwhile to note that previous studies on how art enhancing disabled people’s social inclusion revealed insufficiencies as follows: lacking detailed exploration of disabled people’s participation experience, of the mechanisms of those often long-term and multifaceted projects, and of the roles played by the artists. Concerning the existing research gap and the attributes of the Art for the Disabled Scheme, the first research focus was to explore what benefits they reaped from participation and how all benefits interplayed for enhancing their social inclusion. Secondly, since this project combined art instruction and charitable aids, this study was dedicated to explore how art and philanthropy co-functioned to reach the goals. Thirdly, this study was dedicated to understand what roles the artists played in the implementation process.
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Methods
This paper was conducted using a qualitative in-depth case study approach. Methods of data collection included direct observation, semi-structured in-depth interview, and document study encompassing digital images of the artwork produced by students, media reportage and other official materials owned by the foundation.
This study adopted a purposive sampling strategy to obtain information-rich responders. The interviewees included eleven aid-receiving students, and three staff members including a professional art instructor, a staff member in charge of media communication and project promotion, and Zhou Chunya. The student interviewees were college age students from 20 to 22 years old. They were the first group enrolled in the Art for the Disabled Scheme and all of them had been in this project for at least three years. They witnessed the initiation and development of this project, understood the research background and purpose, and provided detailed and clear interview narratives. Anonymity and confidentiality were assured to all student interviewees throughout the whole research journey. The interview investigation was conducted in a semi-structured way and interview time ranged from one to two hours. The interviewees were encouraged to describe their personal experience, feeling and thought as thoroughly as possible.
The researcher used the qualitative software analysis tool Atlas.ti 7.0 for PC for data analysis. Inductive thematic analysis was employed as the salient data analysis method. Codes were gradually grouped into conceptual categories and finally into five overarching themes. Several pieces of artwork produced by the disabled students were selected and used in this study. Artwork images provided useful supplementary information for their verbal description. Images and interview transcriptions were juxtaposed and compared repeatedly to enhance understanding of the disabled students’ psychological journey.
Five Aspects of Multiple Benefits
Data analysis identified five overarching themes in relation to the multiple benefits the students reaped: financial and material supports; mental well-being improvement; promotion for personal development; positive self and group identity building; and social development. These five aspects often occurred simultaneously, interlinked and interacted with each other. To avoid dull description, a master table (Table 1) is used to illustrate all identified themes and sub-themes.
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Table 1: Identified Themes and Sub-themes Themes Sub-themes
Financial and material supports Long-term free art instruction Financial assistance Accessible environment enabling
Mental well-being improvement
Negative emotion relief Focus on positive experience Enjoyment and satisfaction Sense of achievement Volitional quality cultivation e.g.
patience, perseverance, and self-discipline
Self-esteem and self-confidence
Promotion for personal development
Artistic knowledge and skills Access to higher education Cognitive growth e.g. enhanced
attention, activity planning, problemsolving, observation, and a newperspective of looking at things
Horizon expansion
Positive self and group identity building
Accepting disability as part ofidentity
Rejecting negative perception Transforming to positive identity
Social development
Sense of belonging to a group Interpersonal skills Social network expansion Public attention through media
exposure Respect from others Opportunity for employability
Financial and Material Supports
Disabled people are often excluded from society due to lacking access to various resources and services, the same situation can be seen in art field as well (Boeltzig, Sulewski and Hasnain 2009). Economic insufficiency often hampers their opportunities in many ways. The Art for the Disabled Scheme provided various financial and material supports including free art instruction, financial assistance (free painting material, maintenance grant, higher education tuition fee, travel and exhibition cost coverage), and accessible environment enabling.
The long-term free art instruction was the most significant support provided by this project. In addition, the foundation offered students free painting materials, a maintenance grant around RMB 500 per month before they entered college, and higher education tuition fee around RMB 12,000 to 14,000 per year. The foundation also covered all exhibition costs e.g. flights and hotels, site rentals, and brochures printing. In addition, both students and staff members considered an accessible environment a significant support. The 5Colours Foundation financed a set of campus environmental reconstruction projects to ensure a barrier-free campus life for the disabled
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students; all exhibitions and other events organized by the foundation were held in barrier-free environments.
The financial and material supports offered by the 5Colours Foundation highlighted the philanthropic concern of this project. However, instructors and other staff members did not consider themselves charity givers in position of superiority; there was mutual trust, equality, and interpersonal warmth and closeness between the students and staff members. The findings in this case study suggest that without the supports by the project, the disabled students could hardly get involved in art of their own accord, let alone obtain further benefits from art participation.
Mental Well-being Improvement
It is widely argued that making art can promote disabled people’s mental well-being (Reynolds and Lim 2007; Reynolds and Prior 2003; Reynolds 2000). In this study, the conclusion of improvement to mental well-being was justified as negative emotion relief, focus on positive experience, enjoyment and satisfaction, sense of achievement, volitional quality cultivation, and self-esteem and self-confidence. The students’ narration illustrated a long-term process through “soothing” to “rebuilding”, which demonstrated an empowering participation experience.
All students had traumatic experience of the earthquake e.g. being buried under the ruins for several days, seeing others die around them, losing friends, painful medical treatment and amputation together along with the negative prospect in education and job opportunities. Many of them dissolved into very “low” emotions of anxiety, fear, hopelessness, anger, depression and apathy. Participating in art—doing repeated manual work and seeing immediately the output of their creativity—became a way to fill their empty time as well as a means of escapism to set their mind at least temporarily free from the torture of daily life. This relaxing and enjoyable experience effectively relieved their negative emotions, as mentioned by a girl:
Painting relieved my burden and brought me peace. At that time, I was restless, but when I began to draw and paint, I felt peaceful because I did not have to think about anything else. Practicing art became a spiritual sustenance, mainly for taking me away from all kinds of repugnant fantasies. Besides, I lost my best friends in the earthquake and I felt so lonely; painting became my companion, a way to pass the time.
Drawing and painting as well provided the disabled students the opportunity to focus on the positive side of their life. Many works depicted sunshine, flowers, blue sea, green trees, and cheerful faces, which was consistent with their narration.
Some interviewees spoke with emphasis of their experience of being completely into drawing and painting and the intensive sense of enjoyment afterwards. The mental and emotional full engagement and the enjoyable and rewarding experience were motivational factors for their further participation. The flow experience (Csikszentmihayi 1990) identified in this group of disabled students in this study reveals the optimal experience in non-professional art participation and implies a link to disabled people’s well-being.
Most interviewees mentioned the cultivation of such aspects of volition e.g. self-discipline, patience, and persistence. One student’s experience illustrated that painting enhanced his patience and persistence:
Before, I was restless and messy […] studying art, for example, oil painting requires a quiet and tidy environment as well as needing a long time. When you encounter difficulties, you cannot just easily give up. You cannot just rip the paper down and begin a new one. You need to think through the situation before you start and then you need to insist on painting on the canvas and try to solve the problem.
He added:
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I think the impact is very large. I was careless and I often could not finish what I started, as somebody said, tiger’s head and snake’s tail. Now I am much better, I can be more mentally focused, more able to control myself and more persistent.
The students’ narration emphasized the sense of achievement. Two girls explained their feelings:
When I finally complete my painting, perhaps others see its poor quality, perhaps the professional artists can point out many faults from my work; however, I feel a sense of achievement.
I have had fulfilled time these years. When I was practicing art before coming to college, I made sketches every day and I worked hard. Now if I looked back, it was happy time. Nowadays, I am making oil painting. When I see what I have painted on canvas, I feel proud of myself.
Self-esteem and self-confidence go towards making up a positive experience of self. Data analysis revealed that long-term involvement with this project largely improved the disabled students’ self-esteem and self-confidence, which was consistent with findings from prior studies. One student explained how their sense of self-esteem was enhanced:
Throughout these years, I have learned and seen a lot. I feel that although we are physically disabled, we can still do a lot; so I feel the value and purpose—the value and purpose of our existence—that can be realized through art […]
Most students recognized that participating in this project made them more confident due to the resultant awareness of their capacity to make art and the appreciation and acknowledgement from others. They also mentioned the established self-confidence exerted a positive influence on their attitude to other aspects of life.
Promotion for Personal Development
Identified areas of personal development encompassed artistic knowledge and skills, access to higher education, cognitive growth, and horizon expansion. The center of personal development is obtaining knowledge and building skills generally through school education, for disabled children and young people often through special education. As an extracurricular project, the Art for the Disabled Scheme did not replace the significance of school education; however, in its unique way, it enhanced the personal development in various aspects.
Artistic knowledge and skills were the most valuable competence the disabled students obtained through participation. Throughout these years they greatly improved their artistic skills and they have grown from green hands into skillful painters. In addition, many students mentioned that they learned about art history, aesthetics and artists. Artistic knowledge and skills equipped them with necessary capability for creating artworks through which they could express their thoughts and feelings. Obtained artistic skills also directly led to another outcome—higher education opportunities in art colleges and institutes.
Almost all students demonstrated cognitive improvement e.g. enhanced attention, activity planning, problem solving, observation, and a new way of looking at things. Five interviewees mentioned that participating in this project enhanced their attention as “practicing art really built up a person’s mind and made me more mentally focused”. Two students demonstrated the improvement of their observation ability, especially observations about the details as “I can better grasp the details often neglected by other people”. Two mentioned the improvement in activity planning, and two mentioned the improvement of imagination and creativity—the
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capacity to look at things from a new and different angle. One noted the improvement of planning ability as “since studying art, I have become more thoughtful than many others as well as than I was before”.
Six students recognized that the participation process broadened their horizon mainly due to the various activities organized by the 5Colours Foundation e.g. visiting art exhibitions, travelling, encountering the media, and interacting with artists and different people. One noted:
The experience of studying art has broadened my view. Before, I was like a little frog in the well, and my world was narrow. The foundation often organized us to visit art exhibitions and meet artists. I have learned a lot.
Positive Self and Group Identity Building
Through identifying and addressing the experience of impairment and disability via artwork, disabled people are more able to resist negative perceptions of disability and impairment and therefore move towards a positive and inclusive identity (Hermon and Prentice 2003; Taylor 2005). In this study, building positive self and group identity is one overarching theme which includes three sub-themes: accepting disability as part of identity, rejecting negative perception, and transforming to positive identity.
The students’ work and narration demonstrated that free art making gave them an alternative way to reflect and express their experience with disability and it helped them accept the reality. For example, one girl painted a full-length self-portrait, in which she depicted a gloomy human figure standing by the water with its vivid and bright reflection in the water. According to her description, it represents two versions of “self”—the real self and the imagined self. This juxtaposition of the two illustrated her inner struggle for accepting the reality of being impaired, and demonstrated that expressing the conflicting emotions through painting helped her accept disability as part of her identity.
One student’s work demonstrated clearly the shifting identity through the three years of participation. This student had both legs amputated after the earthquake. He produced a series of oil paintings under the title of Effortless. The following two oil pieces are from this series. Effortless 1 (figure 1) was the first in this series and Effortless 5 (figure 2) was the last one, made about one and a half years afterwards. He adopted a narrative method and depicted his wheelchair pulled by dogs—the hindered mobility and dependence on “others”—even dogs.
Figure 1: Effortless 1 Oil on canvas, 60×80cm, 2009, digital imaged provided by the 5Colours Foundation
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Figure 3: Effortless 5 Oil on canvas, 150×150cm, 2011, digital image provided by the 5Colours Foundation
The comparison between the two pieces is revealing. In the first painting, the huge and robust dog, the somber colour scheme, the downward motion, and the tiny and faceless human figure in the wheelchair stretching his arm to hold the taut reins conveys anxiety, tension, and lack of control. In the second painting, there are three dogs and their size is relatively smaller; while the human figure in the wheelchair is bigger than in the first painting. The colour is bright and fresh. The dogs are under control, the image projects an atmosphere of relaxation and harmony. Effortless 1 demonstrates his dilemma upon returning to society; the dog carries ambiguous meaning, symbolizing both the supports he obtained as well as the difficulties he had to deal with. In Effortless 5, three dogs symbolize more sociability. The dogs are not so fierce looking means that he overcame challenges and obtained more control over his life, and his self-identity moved to a more confident and relaxed perspective.
The humorous, even playful, title Effortless expresses his rejection of the negative perception of disabled people. As noticed in life, mainstream society often holds negative perception of the disabled: disabled people are timid, more sensitive, dull, and lack a sense of humor. This stereotyped perception makes them (especially disabled young people) even more segregated from regular social circles (Morris 2001; Shakespeare 1994; Green et al. 2005). The humor depicted by both image content and title voices his rejection of the negative perception of disabled people, demonstrating his attitude of “I’m not so sensitive because I am mentally strong enough, so I don’t care” and of “I am disabled, but I can look at my disability from the positive side”. His works clearly illustrate the process of shifting self-identity with the experience of impairment and disability through the long-term practice of art.
Another girl painted a series of oil works under the subject of Scars, in which she depicted scars in an abstract style with light and pastel tones (figure 3). The following account demonstrated her understanding of impairment and disability:
Well, before the earthquake, I was also so afraid of scars. After the earthquake, my body was covered with scars, and I found all my classmates had scars on their body. I suddenly realized that scars were as a witness, a witness of survival and rebirth […] the
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scars on my friend’s body are exceedingly strange. When I see them, I just could not help painting them. I think that scars are as a symbol for us which means although we had such tragic experience our life is still wonderful.
Figure 3: Scars Oil on canvas, 80×100cm, 2012, digital image provided by the 5Colours Foundation
The transformation of traumatic experience into creativity in culture and art is a way disabled people can become empowered. She depicted scars—a symbol of physical injury, agony and fear in such an elegant way. When a traumatic and painful symbol is transformed into creative expression in artwork, it implies that her self-identification with the experience of impairment and disability is transformed towards a more relaxed and confident direction. Especially she realized that scarring was not only her experience, but also a common experience among all peers. Her addressing of a symbol of collective suffering implied the identity transformation at the collective level—the transformation of group identity towards a sense of freedom, relaxation and confidence.
Another example is one installation work fashioned from crutches (figure 4), the crutches are put together to form a geometric tower-shaped object. This is a fabulous and moving team effort. According to the members’ explanation, the crutch was important for them because it helped them to stand up and walk. “Several crutches put together is a symbol of solidarity and strength”, they said, “even though we are physically disabled, the solidarity and strength can make us climb up the peak”. Looking through such a symbol of disability with a relaxed heart and transforming it into a symbol of solidarity and power led to a confident and powerful group identity.
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Figure 4, Crutches Installation, 300×150×150cm,2012, digital image from the 5Colours Foundation
The students addressed impairment and disability as well as the potential to conquer their predicament. Through exhibitions and the media, these images reached the larger society and awakened public consciousness of the disability issue.
Social Development
Participating in art can enhance disabled peoples’ social development (Boeltzig, Sulewski and Hasnain 2009; Lynch and Allan 2006). Identified as one of the overarching themes, social development includes sense of belonging to a group; interpersonal skills; social network expansion; public attention through media exposure; respect from others; and opportunity for employability.
The improvement of social development was highly emphasized in the day-to-day work of the art instructors and staff members. Staff members clearly understood that they could not just “create an asylum and put the students in it forever”, in the words of one staff member that “this project was dedicated to pushing them into society”.
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Sense of belonging to a group demonstrated the association of feeling safe and equal, fraternity, and mutual aid and encouragement in the group. One girl explained that in this group, all students were in similar situation and the teachers treated them as their own family members and the students were “like brothers and sisters”. Mutual help was remarkable any time in this group; students who were less disabled helped those who were dependent on wheelchairs. This project provided the students with a means of unification and of mutual stimulation; they often had discussions together and gave suggestions to each other, usually in a relaxing and constructive way.
The foundation organized various social activities for them, e.g. bringing them to visit art exhibitions; helping them hold their own exhibitions in galleries and museums; presenting them to the mass media, and the art and design circles; and holding charity art auctions and dinner parties. For instance this project created a platform to present students’ achievement through exhibition. Up until now, this project has held five big exhibitions and more small exhibitions of works produced by the students. According to Zhou, there is still wrong perception of disabled people in Chinese society, this project has educational significance for changing people’s misconception about disabled people, and in turn, helps the disabled students to consider themselves positive contributors to society rather than only assistance recipients.
The students benefited from the positive interaction. Almost all students recognized that interaction within their group and with the public greatly enhanced their interpersonal skills. The students also recognized the expansion of their social network. The wider social links with the art and design communities as well as with individuals from all walks of life worked as a springboard to facilitate their engagement in more activities and access to more social resources. All students recognized the improvement in employability. They pointed out that the social network expansion, especially the interaction with the art and design circles created internships and job opportunities for them. Information feedback three months after their graduation revealed that with one exception who was in master-degree study and two others who chosen self-employment as a career path, all others found jobs in the art and design field.
It was obvious that in social interaction, being considered an able member of society and “obtaining respect from others” rather than being considered a person to pity was significant to them. As one girl recollected:
When we went for exhibition, people respected us and treated us so kindly and warmly, which made me feel very good. People saw our strong side […] worth respecting and being an encouraging example […] rather than pity us for our disability.
Assessment of the Art for the Disabled Scheme
There are three concerns arising from the study in relation to the mechanism of this project: sustainable and efficient implementation; unique roles by artists; and extensive cross-disciplinary cooperation.
The success of the Art for the Disabled Scheme depended on its sustainable and efficient implementation. According to a staff member, sustainability did not only mean “sending teachers every week and every day to teach the disabled students”, it also highlighted “a long-term and holistic perspective to provide benefits to the disabled students, not just offering help at one time”. Required by long-term and sustainable art instruction, the teaching plans were designed to meet the students’ different psychological status, artistic level, and age. This project demonstrated the “always going forward” principle. The disabled students’ participation experience illustrated a constant and progressive process through which they learnt new skills and techniques, overcame the emerging challenges, and tasted the growing experience of success. Though art is a sublime way to express emotion and feeling, only through long-term practice, can participants master enough practical and aesthetic skills. This finding coheres with a previous
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study on long-term participation in arts (MaCarthy et al. 2004). The highlighted sustainability issue also reminds us the “continuity” dilemma existing in many art projects that aim at empowering disadvantaged groups. As mentioned by artist Judith Baca, “it has to be sustained. You cannot have a flash in the pan and expect that’s going to change things” (Lacy 1992, 34).
As an extra-curricular project, art instruction was carried out at weekends, during summer and winter holidays, and after school in the afternoon. The regular instruction lasted for two hours each time and once per week. However, being an extra-curricular project did not hamper its quality. The foundation set a systematic and definite teaching plan; and the implementation was rigorous and efficient. The art instructors stayed in the key position and carried the primary work, experienced staff members were in charge of teaching planning and monitoring. Staff members often had self and group reflection on their work and tailored their work to suit the students’ changing need, as in the words of one staff member that “our project grew with the students”.
This study delineated the unique role played by the artists. In China, contemporary artists often play the role as public opinion leader and often involve into social action; for example addressing social issues faced by disadvantaged social groups. With the prospering civic society, nongovernmental and nonprofit organizations have sprouted up over the last decade; however, Chinese artists seem to have had little to do with these organizations. This project changed the isolation between art and those organizations and demonstrated that besides the confrontational and symbolic gesture, Chinese artists could fulfill community responsibility through constructive and cooperative channels—integrating art and philanthropy to enhance the well-being of disadvantaged social groups. Zhou Chunya explained his idea about the combination of being an artist and a philanthropist:
As an artist, I believe that the combination of art and philanthropy is very meaningful. In a sense an artist is philanthropist; through his work, he is helping the society, helping people by soothing their soul. Many people, even though they are physically disabled, they have strong spirit; while some people, even though they are physically strong and healthy, their soul didn’t get enough nourishment. That is why I say the combination of art and philanthropy is significant.
However, he distanced himself from the rubric of social artists who took social engagement, often in a symbolic way, as their “artwork”. He recognized his engagement in the project as a known artist donating time and money in philanthropic work and employing his influence to fulfill his social responsibility. For him, an artist participating in philanthropy implies a new mode of combining art and society.
Zhou’s endeavour inspired more artists to volunteer in this project. Around 50 volunteers irregularly participated in this project; most of them are young artists. It is noteworthy that their work played important roles in the 5Colours Foundation. Volunteering artists offered free labour by giving instruction to students and helping organize exhibitions. They also actively donated their artwork to charity auctions, which ensured adequate funding for the long-term development of the foundation.
This project created a unique mechanism to integrate art into nonprofit philanthropy. Art instruction, art exhibition, charity auction, media engagement and volunteerism co-functioned. This project highlighted the wide co-operation with enterprises, the mass media, and individuals both from within and from without the art circle. Different individuals as artists, entrepreneurs, connoisseurs, designers and different institutions like galleries, museums, companies, mass media, and printing houses cooperated with each other. The extensive cross-disciplinary cooperation distinguished this project from any conventional philanthropic work, art education, art therapy, or social work, mobilized more social and human resources and thus maximized the benefits of the students.
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YANG: THE ART FOR THE DISABLED SCHEME
Lack of studies on other aid-receiving disabled student groups participating in this project addressed a limitation of this research. Future studies on these currently not included groups would reach a more comprehensive understanding of the disabled students’ involvement with this project.
Conclusion
This paper offered an overall understanding of The Art for the Disabled Scheme project. The findings demonstrated that the combination of long-term extracurricular art instruction with philanthropy formed a very empowering unity and effectively facilitated the disabled students’ overall social participation.
This project provides new viewpoints for artists who attempt to combine art and nonprofit work. Nowadays, art is increasingly regarded and employed as a device to provide solutions for real social problems, especially for empowering socially marginalized groups. In many projects, artistic and aesthetic components integrate into nonprofit mechanism, and art institutions cooperate with other non-art institutions. The artists integrate their skills and knowledge into the leadership of these projects and play the multiple roles of facilitator, organizer, director, teacher, spokesman, and volunteer, quite different from their traditional role simply as art maker. This paper reveals the significance to study these projects positioning on the fuzzy boundary between art and nonprofit social service work, suggesting researchers to develop a holistic understanding as well as conduct idiographic analyses of these practices.
Acknowledgements:
It is my greatest pleasure to extend my sincerest gratitude to Prof. Annika Waenerberg, Dr. Sari Kuuva, Prof. Raine Koskimaa, Prof. Heikki Hanka, and Dr. Urpo Kovala for their guidance and suggestions, and Mr. Zhou Chunya and all students who have participated in this research for their warm assistance. Many thanks also go to the Department of Art and Culture Studies (TAIKU) of University of Jyväskylä and the 5Colours Foundation for their supports.
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THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ARTS EDUCATION
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YANG: THE ART FOR THE DISABLED SCHEME
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jing Yang: Ph.D. Student, Department of Art and Culture Studies, Faculty of Humanities, University of Jyväskylä, Finland
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The International Journal of Arts Education is one
of four thematically focused journals in the collection of
journals that support the Arts and Society knowledge
community—its journals, book series, conference
and online community.
The journal explores teaching and learning through and
about the arts, including arts practices, performance
studies, arts history and digital media.
As well as papers of a traditional scholarly type, this
journal invites presentations of practice—including
documentation of curricular practices and exegeses
of the effects of those practices that can with equal
validity be interrogated through a process of academic
peer review.
The International Journal of Arts Education is a peer-
reviewed scholarly journal.
ISSN 2326-9944
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