TYPE OF WORK
Combined arts work with people with disabilities and the staff that work with them.

TARGET GROUPS

• Adults and children in hospitals for people with mental illness and physical, mental and social disabilities.
• Street children.
• The staff that work with the above groups.

GEOGRAPHICAL CONTEXT
UK. Central and Eastern Europe

COMPANY POLICY
Action Space Mobile aims to demonstrate the power of the arts to alleviate the problems of institutionalisation and to give voice to people who are marginalised. It believes that everyone has creative abilities and the right to education and play, creative expression and cultural integration.

Over the last 12 years Action Space Mobile has trained staff of NGOs who now work as partners in training other staff of NGOs and state institutions. The company has organised arts camps that integrate staff and their clients and in 2003, a national conference on Creativity and Human Rights, Therapy, Education and Play.

SCALE OF PROJECTS
Number of practitioners: 1-2
Number of participants: 1-30
Preparation Time: Varies
Contact time: 1 week - 2 months

Gasteni Hospital (Romania, 1992-97)
First visit in 1992 to this home to 500 adults with mental illness and physical and mental disabilities, by invitation of the director and an NGO. Assessed the conditions, made the contact with local musicians and staff ran workshops in drama, music and art.

Year two: Returned with three artists and a performance, brought T-shirts that were designed for each person, ran workshops in music, arts and theatre games. Contacted the local theatres and ran training workshops to recruit people to continue the work.

Year three: Set up a theatre group in the hospital with a local actor and took it on tour. Persuaded the director to set up a club room for the residents with dedicated staff.

Year four: ran the first arts camp with people from the hospital performing . Over the next two years, ran more arts camps, theatre tours, street theatre and recruited and trained a team of Romanian combined arts therapists to work with the more severely disabled.

Action Space Mobile then moved on to more needy hospitals leaving Gasteni to its Romanian partners and the staff to continue, though the company makes periodic visits.

Action Space Mobile is now the mentor for Fundatia deSprijin Comunitar who organise training programmes for five countries and its work is supported by approval from the Child Protection Agency and the Inspectorate of State for People with Disabilities.

International workshops
With people with learning disabilities from Greece, Lithuania, Czech Republic, Romania and France. (January-September 2004, 2005)

Mary Turner
Action Space Mobile
Mapplewell and Staincross Village Hall
Darton Lane
Barnsley S75 6AL

T/F +44 (0)1226 384 944

E contact@actionspacemobile.org
W www.actionspacemobile.org

"I think I'm not wrong to say we achieved the most precious thing: the right to express ourselves, to know and to be known. In a work, we got the most precious fortune - freedom. Freedom that also brought us to show everyone we are on our way to progress too"
A resident of Gasteni Hospital (Romania)

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