Cultivating spaces for extraordinary artists
Coronavirus Community Support Fund support for DASH
Disability Arts in Shropshire (DASH) is pleased to announce that it has received funding from the Coronavirus Community Support Fund, distributed by The National Lottery Community Fund and the UK Government.
During Covid-19 DASH has been working remotely supporting Disabled visual artists nationally through mentoring and funding advice, helping to shape their work and their applications for funding.
Disabled artists with whom we work confirm that the impact of the pandemic on them is disproportionately severe, creating feelings of isolation and exclusion which impact on their mental health. These feelings of isolation and exclusion, are increased not only by Covid-19, but for many the very technology, such as Zoom, that is providing an answer to non-disabled people.
This makes DASH’s present work even more essential, as we seek to meet some of the needs of Disabled artists and support their mental health. These include providing Disabled artists with free on-line mentoring support, providing online work sharing, developing online resources in our work with young Disabled people as well as research into making online meeting platforms more accessible to Disabled people.
“Across all age groups, disabled adults make up a large proportion of adult internet non-users. In 2017, 56% of adult internet non-users were disabled, much higher than the proportion of disabled adults in the UK population as a whole, which in 2016 to 2017 was estimated to be 22%.”
Exploring the UK’s Digital Divide – www.ons.gov.uk
Although some of our projects are on hold due to lockdown or the assessed high risk of our artists, we continue to support them. DASH has continued to work with these young artists by buying art materials and supporting them through telephone and Zoom meetings.
DASH wishes to thank the Coronavirus Community Support, distributed by The National Lottery Community Fund, and thanks the Government for making this possible.
DASH looks forward to continuing to support to Disabled Artists in the coming months, responding to new ways of living and working and the challenges it brings.