Shadowlight Artists Crowd Funding Appeal

Please consider making a £10+ donation today to the Shadowlight Artists.

The group now have a crowd funding appeal page on Local Giving, please help this group of artists to succeed.

Local Giving Donation page

Film Oxford supports the award-winning Shadowlight Artists, a unique group of very talented and ambitious artists, each of whom has physical, communication and learning difficulties, incl. Autism & Down’s syndrome. The group have broken new ground (incl. UK’s first playwright with a learning disability), won National Awards, performed and exhibited locally, around the UK and abroad.

In 2016 work produced by the group during the highly successful “Creative Bridges” project received diverse exhibition exposure, winning the Haelo Award at the Haelo Film Festival in Manchester, screenings at the Together! Disability Festival, nationwide television broadcast on the Community Channel, and other screenings in London and Oxford. Creative Bridges was exhibited at Modern Art Oxford and Cornerstone, Didcot. Cornerstone also hosted the production of Russell Highsmith’s play, The Big Shock (a first by a writer with a learning disability). The group were also shortlisted in the top six at the National Diversity Awards 2016 as best disability organisation in the UK. In 2017 three of the groups films were shown at a film festival in Canada, and Richard Hunt won the Shape Open exhibition, judged by artist Yinka Shonibare ,with his painting Totempole, (he was the first artist with a learning disability to win this National Art Prize).

The group were recently successful in an application to the Arts Council of England (ACE) to run a new project called “Platform”. The grant covers about 90% of the project costs, so we are seeking additional funding to allow this group of artists with learning disabilities to create new ground breaking work.This new project will help the group to further to break down barriers for disabled people, and will continue to build relationships with professional artists through creative collaboration and also engage with audiences through exhibition.

During the project each artist will produce a new piece of high quality artistic work that progresses their creative development including a theatrical production, paintings, installation, and photography, with 8 new artistic projects and 8 new films in total. They will also produce a new accessible website and recruit a new member to the group

This small local group is very important for changing the public perceptions about what people with learning disabilities can achieve, by spreading the message that artists with learning disabilities have talents that are equal to mainstream artists, (in a similar way to what Paralympians have done for the physically disabled in Sport)

Local Giving Page to Donate: https://localgiving.org/appeal/shadowlight-artists-platform/