Northampton artist hosts inclusive art workshop for people with developmental disabilities and caregivers
The workshop deliberately centers people with intellectual and developmental disabilities and their caregivers as equal, primary participants.
An art workshop coming to Northampton will teach participants to create agamographs—optical artworks that show different images depending on where a viewer stands—while deliberately designing the space for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities and their caregivers to participate together.
Gayla Berry, a self-taught artist and former teacher, will host the workshop at 33 Hawley on Saturday, Aug. 15, from 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. The class responds to a gap Berry identified through her own experience: while she and her 19-year-old daughter Talia, who has complex medical needs and IDD, have attended other art workshops, few are built to welcome people with disabilities and their caregivers as equally valued participants rather than as an afterthought.
Berry said that most inclusive art spaces she has encountered treat caregivers and people with IDD as exceptions to the typical participant. Her workshop inverts that model. "Here, individuals and their caregivers are not the exception—they are the intended participants," Berry said in a statement to the Gazette. The class will be limited to eight people with IDD and their caregivers to maintain a calm, supportive environment.
Berry holds a master's degree in education and has taught children and adults in the United States, Venezuela, and Bolivia, often working with English language learners. Her daughter Talia's favorite art practices are painting and hot gluing. When asked why she likes to make art, Talia replied, "Well, I'm an artist, and artists like to do art."
Berry emphasizes process over product in her teaching. Participants in the agamograph workshop will each create unique designs rather than follow specific instructions, a choice Berry believes communicates that "their ideas, choices and approaches have value, and that creativity is not about producing a perfect final product—it's about exploration, expression and the experience of creating."
Admission costs $35 per individual with IDD, while parents and caregivers attend free. Materials are included. To register, email gaylasueberry@gmail.com. Registration closes on Tuesday, Aug. 11.