COMMON GROUND: A Living Exhibition of Non-Verbal Dialogue about art and inclusion
ERGASTIRI EIDIKIS AGOGIS MARGARITA
Greece
COMMON GROUND aims to organize a 10-day living exhibition in Athens, led by Margarita’s Atelier (8 artists with intellectual disabilities). During the exhibition, we will host 5 participatory workshops (10 participants each) with artists from peer organisations and representatives of cultural centres as active participants. Co-created works from the workshops will be integrated into the exhibition in real time, so the show expands through moments of encounter where people will use art to overcome speech barriers and communicate in other forms.
The project will turn a socio-cultural venue into a laboratory of civic participation by replacing “talking about inclusion” with co-creation led by artists with intellectual disabilities. Margarita’s Atelier (8 artists) will host a 10-day exhibition in Athens. The exhibition remains open while it grows through five art workshops (10 participants each): large-scale painting, digital media, lightbox painting, performance, automatic writing that create collaborative art.
Participants include: (a) invited artists and supporters from peer disability organisations connected to MARGARITA through The Greek Network of Service Providers, Arts & Culture Working Group and (b) cultural professionals of cultural centres that have collaborated in the past with MARGARITA and are interested to join as makers. Selected outputs from each workshop will be installed within the exhibition, creating a living archive of shared authorship and equal participation. Each session closes with a short facilitated reflection (dialogue with and without words) inspired by the workshop to evaluate the experience for all the participants and how it changed their perception regarding connection and participation.