Heart of Glass - establishing St Helens as a centre for social and collaborative arts practice

A group of disabled residents has used art to explore issues around accessibility in St Helens town centre, sharing its findings with local venues and businesses. This case study forms part of the Value of culture - partnership working section of our online Culture Hub.


Heart of Glass is a national agency for collaborative and social arts practice based in St Helens, Merseyside, founded through investment from Arts Council England’s Creative People and Places programme. Its work explores collaborative and social practice – how artists and communities (of place and interest) can work together to create new meaning. Heart of Glass is working with St Helens Council to establish the town as a centre for social and collaborative arts practice.

‘Open the Door’ was a 2016 arts project in collaboration with the Citi-Dis-Arts group and professional artists, supported by Heart of Glass, the Citadel Arts Centre and St Helens Council. It involved a group of local people with disabilities meeting once a week for nine weeks to play games, listen to music, talk and create artwork about how their experience of access in St Helens town centre made them feel. This led to many interesting conversations about physical, intellectual and emotional access to different places in the town centre.

Some of the participants were ‘assessors’, who would go out each week and document accessibility in the town centre; the others would create artwork in response to these findings. The group then made a number of ‘art drops’ around the town, taking large copies of the artworks and personalised letters for businesses and venues. The artworks depicted the positive and negative access qualities of the venue or place. The letters gave friendly suggestions or praise, along with an invitation to an end-of-project showcase event.

Impact of the project

This was a new way of working for both Heart of Glass and St Helens Council. It explored a personalised model of engaging with disabled people and led to useful insights to help improve provision and access, across a number of service areas at the council itself and in external organisations. This personalised approach to arts participation focused on creating an accessible environment, activities suited to the skillset of each participant and a range of activities.

Disability rights were at the heart of the project from the start. The artists, mentors and staff involved included people who identified as disabled and as non-disabled. Care was taken in forming the project team to ensure that everyone involved, including the artists, had the right skills for this work.

Lead artist Michelle Wren said: “We started the project with the idea of making a game about access in St Helens – but to even start making that game, we had to make the sessions accessible to everyone. We all have different ways of working and we needed to find the best way to work with everyone.”

Looking to the future

With 22.7 per cent of the local population having a physical or sensory impairment, Heart of Glass recognises that disabled people are a vital demographic to engage in its work. It intends to continue working with the Open the Door participants and St Helens Council and continue to reflect on the accessibility of its projects and how it serves disabled people. The aim is to raise ambition, confidence, the profile and recognition of disability arts practice in St Helens, and nationally.

Key learning points

  • The planning stage of projects for disabled people can require more time, particularly where a personalised approach is taken. This includes time to get to know people, work out the best ways to communicate and adapt working methods to suit everyone.
  • Care was taken to reflect on the power balances between disabled and non-disabled people in the project, and on decision making regarding the planned activities.

For further information contact Laura Swithenbank, Programme and Operations Assistant, Heart of Glass: [email protected].


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This case study has been developed in conjunction with Arts Council England