Author: h3np3stk1ngsh0d

‘I thought you were going to look over that job’. Stories of disabled people in the Criminal Justice System in Ripon in the Victorian era.

An Exhibition co-created by a group of people with lived experience of disability at Ripon Museum Trust. October 2023.

What is the lived experience of disability? What is its history? What was it like in the Criminal Justice System in the Victorian era and what do we know about the lives of disabled people who encountered it? Is it any different now? What will it be like in the future? What do we hope for? What do we fear?

This artwork explores the lives of seven disabled people who encountered the Criminal Justice System in Ripon for various reasons during the Victorian era. These were court cases that were heard at Ripon Court House and people who were held at Ripon House of Correction. It is based on fragments of their lives captured in censuses, newspapers, and police and court records.

In telling these tiny snapshots of a life, we have sought to present a creative, and hopefully respectful story.

Created during September 2023 by, Carol Turnbull, Charlie Dunning, MaryJane Olivier, Margaret Crosfield, Glen Griffiths, Linda Richardson, Anna Moore, Nicola Bradbury, Stephen Lee Hodgkins and the Artmakers from Henshaw’s Arts And Crafts Centre for RIPON MUSEUM TRUST. Special thanks to Jenny Clough, Pat Wilson, Jean Berry, Claire Greensit, John Holmes, Moira Smith and Mark Cronfield for their voice over recording, as well as Andy Bates and Laura Allan who coordinated and supported the project throughout. The project was funded by the Arts Council. See https://riponmuseums.co.uk/

Created during cultural awareness week at York and Scarborough Teaching Hospitals NHS, this digital ‘culture collage’ piece is celebration of all people and their cultures within the trust.  It highlights our shared connections, influences and humanity that are both local and global.  Made from photos of people, precious objects, foodstuffs, words and insights shared as part of cultural awareness week in April 2023. 

‘Care’ is an emotive and under resourced issue that affects all of us. We can do it well and also very badly.  At its best it enables a level playing field, it heals, and empowers people to reach for the stars. At it’s worst it is limiting, isolating and torturous.  And at the moment it is in crisis.

Yet Disabled people* and their families have achieved much and shown how caring, inclusive and supportive communities can and do work. But careless budget ‘cuts’ and rationing of resources devalue support, that if invested in would otherwise promote independence and inclusion.

Care has multiple meanings too and people talk about care in different ways. Overworked, undervalued professional’s focus on ‘needs’, ‘functions’ and ‘safety’. Whereas ‘frustrated’ disabled people and their families just want to get on with ‘being independent and included’, ‘having a life’, ‘participating, contributing, achieving’.   

So what is the future of care?  What could it be? What should it not be? How does it work well? How does it fail? What do we need to do to to make it better, now, soon and later?

These are the questions I am keen to ask.  And I’ve built a handcart, with a big space on it for people to say and draw what they think, or let me record their voice, take a photo or to tell me and I’ll capture it from them.

I’m going to wheel the handcart around York and talk to people and communities with, or without, an interest in care and disability.

Then once this is done I am going to use the things people have said to create a doodled summary of the themes and issues about how care is now and how it can be in the future.

Involving everyday people, and what they say and think, valuing their contributions about how the future of care can be better or worse is crucial to positive change.  And I hope that this approach of a ‘creative, conversational arty cart‘ will help gather some ideas for this. Care’ what ever its form can be better.  

To find out more, please do get in touch.

Stephen Lee Hodgkins,

07951050153

hiya@stephenleehodgkins.net

@HodgkinsSL

 *By ‘Disabled People’ I mean, in the widest sense, those who have diverse bodies and/or minds.  That is also, those with impairments that are physical or sensory, or experience mental health issues, chronic illness, long term health conditions, learning difficulties, learning disabilities, autism and associated labels, neurodiversity and other issues. 

With some young artists at Door 84 it was a delight to create this local York history collage. We used an old pub sign from the Castle Howard OX and a range of old guide books, maps and postcards.  The approach was rip up the books etc and paste photos on the ox and text on the Oxen, adding then an outline in black.

The finished piece is fantastic and now hangs on a wall in Door 84.     

With near on a thousand years of events and happenings, it was a pleasure to create this timeline for Hull Minster. 

Hand drawn, digitised then printed the piece stretches over 8 metres in the newly refurbished entrance and welcomes visitors with many quirky doodles representing the many goings on of this magnificent space.  

Here is an image file of the whole timeline.  

Find out more about Hull Minster here –  https://hullminster.org

Here is a three minute audio visual summary – ‘How educational systems respond to diversity, inclusion and social justice: Disability, power, discipline, territoriality and deterritorialization’. By Navin Kikabhai, and published in The British Journal of Sociology, 73 (4), July 2022.

Original article – https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-4446.12969 for the original article. 

Plus see here a one page doodle summary created from the clip.

…Looking within, to look out for folk, from a hidden corner…’

Celebrating all the very hard work of Scarborough Hull York Pathology Service (SHYPS), with this huge doodled wall art recently installed in York and Scarborough Hospitals. Plus also, 200 #letterpress prints for the staff based on this piece were created as part of this work. 

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Following a visit to SHYPS service I doodled a shared spoken word piece based on what staff said to me about their work, wellbeing and generally how they go proudly about their business to get stuff done together.

I then set this in letterpress type, sent it for review, did some edits, then with digital magic created the wall art piece using both the doodles and letterpress text forms.

Then, visiting SHYPS again I created 200 letterpress versions of the piece on an vintage #adana8x5 machine on handmade lokta paper. One for each of the staff.

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