Differently Various
Last summer, more than 5,500 people visited differently various, our 10-day takeover of The Curve gallery at the Barbican and the largest exhibition co-produced by people living with brain injury. The ground-breaking exhibition was the culmination of our five years as the Barbican’s Community Collaborator. Showcasing the diverse artwork of over 70 artists from Submit to Love, the exhibition shared perspectives and experiences of brain injury. The space also became home to an ambitious programme of free events, allowing the public to engage with the work of Headway East London and our artists.
Submit To Love artist Billy Mann spoke to us about his experience of the partnership and how differently various came to be:
Front Page illustration by Billy Mann
In any conventional setting differently various would never have happened. But when we teamed up with the Barbican five years ago, doing what convention dictated was the last thing on everyone's mind.
The partnership started gently, with invitations to attend Barbican exhibitions and the chance to join the public conversation about art at the Barbican. Who picks what's shown in their galleries? What is art exactly? Who gets to be an artist?
Our role moved quickly into acting as unofficial advisors. We became a support act for events around exhibitions. Artists from our Submit to Love studio ran workshops in drawing, printing, stitching and clay-making. We held discussion groups on power-sharing and co-production. We argued with curators. It was all very polite, if a bit sweary at times.
The momentum of this kind of active engagement built to a single event in 2021, Connecting Conversations, in which all of the questions and conversations we’d collected along the way were laid out in an open public event in the Barbican's fabulous Conservatory. A panel discussion, which included the Barbican’s then artistic director Will Gompertz, climaxed when one of our members, Submit to Love Artist Chris Miller, brazenly put Gompertz on the spot and got a pledge from him to give us an exhibition.
That is how differently various was born. What started as a cheeky punt worked itself up to having so much latent energy and charm that it was impossible to resist. That’s how it is with Headway members. Despite the obvious challenges we face, we sniff out positives. At The Barbican we found a mission train and boarded it, with hope in our hearts.
Working with Pup Architects on the exhibition layout
The road was rocky right from the off, but slowly we pushed together and forward in search of the big idea that would tell the Headway story. We simmered ideas in day-long monthly workshops, cooking up concepts and prototypes. Wild ideas buzzed around like flies at a honeypot. All the time Headway members on the Steering Group insisted that the Barbican's inaccessible Curve gallery should be fitted with a ramp (it was).
As time went on more and more arts professionals joined the project curators, exhibition planners, designers. It was heartening to see what a kick they all got out of working with us, a bunch of chancers busking our way towards some kind of imagined destination. The team pulled together in big and small ways, and with plenty of laughs we arrived at a template for how a big institution and a small gang of differently various individuals can come together, hand in glove, and make something super special happen.
Walking into the Curve during those 10 days in August 2023 was to enter a space where everything just felt right. Even when you could sense in the 124 Submit to Love artworks on display the raw pain and trauma that brain injury can inflict, you knew you were in a place where something better was possible. The thousands of visitors who came and went, the radio and TV channels that came to see what the Art of the Possible really looked like, all left with a warm feeling and the sense that there but for the grace of good luck go I.
