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Caregivers Essay by Claire Sawers

Claire Sawers - Caregivers EssayImage Credit: Claire Sawers

We are glad to share Clare Sawers text on the SSW X Counterflows Caregivers residency.

Last May Claire took part in a 1 week residency with her son at SSW to write about hers and other artists’ experiences of the programme.

Through the essay she discusses how arts organisations can become more welcoming to those with caregiving responsibilities and disabilities, how we might go beyond those funding-bingo buzzwords and explore what it actually means to create communities that look out for each other as well as sharing insights into previous caregivers residencies and her own.

Text and Images by Claire Sawers.

Image Credit: Claire Sawers

“It’s too bad that taking care of each other has to be so radical.”

Loree Erickson, Toronto-based disability justice activist and researcher of care collectives

My residency at Scottish Sculpture Workshop in May last year took on a meta role as I was a caregiver invited to do a residency, writing about caregivers doing residencies. Before, during and after my stay I had a lot of illuminating and connecting chats with caregivers and arts workers about access and inclusivity. We all wanted to go beyond those funding-bingo buzzwords and explore what it actually means to create communities that look out for each other, long term. We discussed how arts organisations can become more welcoming to those with caregiving responsibilities and disabilities. It’s not all about funding either, some solutions were free and surprisingly simple – but we need to consider how these approaches can be supported on a structural and societal level. The collective hope was that we can reimagine a future where this isn’t ‘radical’ care, but just part of everyday life.

My first visit to SSW in 2018 left a strong impression on me. I got a last minute invite from Alasdair Campbell, co-curator of Counterflows, who thought I might like to see what was happening on one of the SSW x Counterflows residencies. He wasn’t wrong. Edinburgh-born, Vilnius-based artist and instrument maker Sholto Dobie performed an amazing outdoor set of homemade animal calls in a quarry. During his stay at SSW, he had built hand-held droning instruments out of cheap, battery-operated airbed mattress pumps and musical reeds. He took inspiration from duck bills and Siberian traditional ‘yoik’ songs which imitate animals and insects.

Minds blown, the audience of twenty or so stomped back past fields of sheep and Highland cattle to SSW for bowls of soup and a screening of an incredible documentary that Sholto co-created about Ukrainian folk songs. Sitting chatting around a big long table of homemade food, surrounded by shelves stacked with books on sculpture, dance, experimental music, climate action, gender studies and trees, and watching as a bonfire was built outside, I remember feeling utterly bummed that I had to leave sharpish for the five-ish-hour train journey back down to Edinburgh, and miss the sauna that was being fired up in the courtyard. There was talk of whisky too. “Come back and see us soon!”, shouted Sam Trotman, director of SSW. A glorious powerhouse of a human, Sam had spent the day enthusiastically dodging between artists and visitors, often with her three-year-old daughter balanced on her hip.

What was this remote and magical place where artists were given space to explore ideas and unstructured time for creating? Where locals in the village of Lumsden (population around 400) were also invited to enlightening artist talks and practical bike fixing workshops, where sculptors, ceramicists, silversmiths and wood carvers could work in the studios and workshops, where staff baked rhubarb pies for sharing and chopped wood for saunas?

To download the full essay click here.

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