The working language of the project was English, however not all the participants and learners speak English, so it was important to agree on and clarify everyone’s understandings of terminology.
Arts and disability: art created by disabled people that does not necessarily reflect their lives as disabled people.
Co-CreART: A methodology developed and used by Headway Arts in its work with learning disabled people. Focussing on creative group activity, it involves an equitable approach with a high degree of facilitation and learning that overlays practical achievements.
Community: a group of people living in the same area or having a particular characteristic in common or who share a common cultural and historical heritage.
Disability arts: art made by disabled people which reflects the experience of being disabled.
Disadvantage: an unfavourable circumstance or condition that reduces the chances of success.
Equality: being equal, especially having equal status, rights or opportunities.
Equity: being fair and impartial.
Equality vs Equity:
Equality suggests that everyone is at a particular starting point and should be treated the same. It seeks to promote fairness, but it can only work if everyone starts from the same place and needs the same level of support.
Equity, by way of contrast, aims to give everyone what they need to be successful. It focuses on ‘equality of outcomes’. This involves taking into account those structures which might put particular groups at a disadvantage.
Facilitation: helping to make a process easier without interfering in it.
Learning disability: a term used for people who have difficulty learning in a typical manner, usually caused by an unknown factor or factors. The ‘difficulty learning in a typical manner’ does not exclude the ability to learn in a different manner.
Mental handicap: a term used to describe abnormal neurological development in a person resulting in learning difficulty. Nowadays in the U.K this term is considered to have inappropriate and negative connotations. The phrase learning disability is used instead.
Language changes all the time and the words we use to describe a particular impairment or disability change as a result of listening to people with personal experience and as a result of shifting values and attitudes in society. Other countries use different terminology such as Intellectual Disability or Mental Handicap.
Methodology: a set of practices, principles or rules which are used in a particular activity.
Migrant: a person who moves from one place to another in order to find work or better living conditions.
Participatory arts: art which directly involves the audience in the creative process, so that they themselves become participants in the work created.
Pedagogy: the study of the methods and practices of teaching.
Refugee: a person who has been forced to leave their country in order to escape war, persecution, or natural disaster.