Come As You Are: Co-creating Caring Spaces through Collective Artmaking
“You are not too sick, too disabled, too sad, too crazy, too ugly, too fat, or too weird. We live in a white supremacist, patriarchal, ableist culture that values oppressive standards for the sake of centralizing power and making profit. Our ostracism is a result of this system that demonizes difference and not a reflection of your worth, value, ability to be loved, etc. You are not the problem. You are perfect.” Access Centered Movement (Shayda Kafi, 2021).
Come as you are.
This idea is at the heart of collective artmaking for community care.¹ Come as you are across difference: different artistic skills, different experiences, different ways of seeing and understanding the world, different ways of expressing yourself and your identities, different backgrounds, different communities. Come as you are regardless of the day, week, month, or year you’ve had. Come as you are, and make space for others to do the same. Bring your emotions, your stories, your insecurities, your whole selves, and we’ll create something beautiful, together.
We embedded a “come as you are” ethos throughout Art in a Just Recovery, our most recent community mural project done in collaboration with Art Not Shame, the Guelph Neighbourhood Support Coalition, and Social Artist Melanie Schambach. Although we definitely didn’t always get it perfect, we worked to create spaces where participants could show up as their full selves, without judgment or pretenses, and feel seen and cared for.
After the mural was unveiled, we invited those who took part in the project to share their experiences in conversation with Amy Kipp, a community-based scholar, and Nasra Hussein, with the GNSC - who were also participants and organizers with Art in a Just Recovery. During these conversations, many folks shared the importance of feeling as though they could “come as they were” throughout the art-making workshops and feel cared for in a way responsive to the diverse and shifting nature of their needs.
“What comes to mind is a rhythm, like you’re skipping rope double dutch with a group of people and some people can stay in skipping longer than others, and you can take turns and come back after doing whatever you need to do because it’s like a community group project that centers the fact that all the participants have different needs and different experiences and we’re bringing that into the systematic approach. So, it was loose enough of a structure that I felt comfortable doing what I needed to do for self-care and then felt welcome to jump back in when I was able to do so. We were welcome to show up as we are at any given moment. ” Tracey H., AIJR Participant
Offering different ways to take part in Art in a Just Recovery - virtual or in-person; printmaking, photography, bookbinding, mixed-media or painting; large or small group sessions - helped people to come as they were. The artist facilitators, who we called ‘Art Buddies,’ played a key role in practicing and modeling this “come as you are” ethos by working hard to co-create spaces that felt welcoming for all across different backgrounds, identities, ages, skills, and experiences. One Art Buddy described this saying,
“I think that the group as a whole was really welcoming to people who might be a different age or [have] a different understanding of the project […] And my co-facilitator and I worked hard to make sure that was the case by setting some ground rules and understandings of what community care looked like […] how to care for each other and sort of pay attention to our own bodies and minds. Leaving the space for people to leave the room if they needed to for anything, or get up and stop doing their project if they needed to, or come and go when they needed to - basically the autonomy to work at their own pace and respect other people’s paces as well.”
For many, playfulness and an emphasis that everyone is creative also helped them open-up and be their authentic selves. Playful interactions alleviated some of the worries participants had about “not being an artist” and created more comfort in the space. Reflecting on this, Sean, a participant in AIJR shared:
“[when I arrived at the first workshop the Art Buddies] didn’t make a big fuss and they had all of these goodies out, because I was in mixed media, and I started playing with the goodies a little bit. And they took the pressure off and I was like “oh this isn’t so bad.” I was just playing with stuff and you know it wasn’t this heavy, kind of spotlight on me and “are you an artist” and “let’s see your artistic resume, your accomplishments.” There was none of that.”
Another participant told us:
“The space to laugh and not be so serious as well, I think aided in me not feeling stressed [...] that this project is bigger than me and stuff like that. I always felt centered, like, in myself throughout it. I never felt stressed about how other people were perceiving me.”
Many also reflected on the way other participants cared with them throughout the project: providing rides to and from workshops, sharing their art supplies and skills, telling and hearing each others’ stories, and checking-in when someone missed a session. As several participants explained, the feeling that they could come as they were and feel cared for as they did was one of the most meaningful parts of the project.
One thing we learned from Art in a Just Recovery about creating spaces that embody ‘come as you are,’ is that just saying these words is not enough.
It takes intention and planning, that involves hearing from and working with those you are inviting to gather.
It takes time to build relationships of trust, so that people can believe you when you say that their authentic, whole selves are valued and ‘enough.’ It takes creativity, playfulness, laughter, joy, and vulnerability. It takes repetition, practice, and a willingness to hear and respond to one another. It takes a group of people committed to creating such spaces, together. It takes care-filled work.
Written by Amy Kipp
¹“Come as you are” and make space for others to do the same, is a core feature of the disability justice movement. For more on this framework see Kindling: Writings on the Body (2013) by Aurora Levins Morales or Crip Kinship: The Disability Justice and Art Activism of Sins Invalid (2021) by Shayda Kafi.
