go gently into the garden of [im]possible dreams
Back to Creative PlacesUNLIMITED UK Partner Award
In 2024, our Festival Connect & Create team partnered with disabled arts commissioning body UNLIMITED for one of their UK Partner Awards. This award offers a disabled artist working / residing in East Anglia the funding to develop a socially-engaged project in their area, with the support of the Connect & Create team.
The chosen project will be developed from July 2025 – June 2026. As part of the award, a sharing of the project will be presented as part of Norfolk & Norwich Festival 2026.
‘Norfolk & Norwich Festival is delighted to support a disabled artist from East Anglia through the Unlimited 2024 UK Partner Awards. Working in partnership with Unlimited is important to us because it offers an artist an extraordinary opportunity to develop new work and helps build our skills and confidence in working with disabled artists.
Our Festival and year-round engagement work offers artists unique opportunities both on an international stage and in our communities. We’re excited to be working with an artist supported by the Unlimited 2024 UK Partner Awards who can share with us fresh perspectives and artistic practises.’ Daniel Brine, Artistic Director & Chief Executive of Norfolk & Norwich Festival
We’re excited to announce that the artist awarded our 2024/25 UNLIMITED UK Partner Award is Joanna Holland, in collaboration with Caroline Cardus, Ellery Child and Genevieve Rudd as members of the East of England disabled artists collective *conditions apply, for their project go gently into the garden of [im]possible dreams.
go gently into the garden of [im]possible dreams
go gently into the garden of [im]possible dreams is a Disabled-led project exploring intersections between chronic illness, nature and possibility. The project centres creativity and social engagement, celebrating ‘slowliness’ and ‘different ways of being’ in society for people living with chronic illness. Through a series of inclusive participatory experiences, *conditions apply will work with a group of adults from Great Yarmouth living with chronic-illness, to spotlight shared conversations around art/nature/lived experience, documenting the process with participants’ creations/ideas.
The ideas/artworks from these experiences will be co-selected to feature in a ‘work-in-process’. This will take the form of a co-curated, large-scale, 3-D immersive collage, go gently into the garden of [im]possible dreams. It will cover floor to ceiling and be exhibited for the duration of Norfolk & Norwich Festival 2026 alongside a private view and public gathering.
The artists will be regularly updating us about their project through Festival blog posts.
*conditions apply are an East of England disabled artists collective:
Joanna Holland
Joanna Holland is a socially engaged research-artist/curator. Her investigative practice explores notions of ‘presence and absence’, ‘stress and solace’ and ‘precarity and possibility’ – including her lived experience of chronic illness. Self-taught with multidisciplinary/participatory practice which builds on her background in feminist art histories, cultural inclusion and biodiversity conservation
Caroline Cardus
Caroline Cardus lives/works in Yarmouth. A graduate of Fine Art from De Montfort University, her practice has focused on creative activism since 2021. Caroline’s text based, subversive style brings forth frank, darkly humorous, powerful messages about inequality/discrimination. She also produces projects for disabled artists, and mentors young people through Arts Emergency.
Ellery Child
Ellery Child is an artist living and working in Great Yarmouth. He’s a graduate of the Sculpture and Environmental Art programme at Glasgow School of Art. Much of his work considers how people can share knowledge in inclusive and non-hierarchical ways, leading to more resilient communities. This has taken the form of building bread ovens in parks, potato puppet shows in Tramways ‘Hidden Gardens’, queer gardening clubs and ‘bacterial exchange’ supper clubs. He has extensive experience developing and delivering participatory work.
Genevieve Rudd
Genevieve Rudd is based in the borough of Yarmouth. She’s worked regionally as a community artist with an eco-social practice since 2011. A Wild Beach Leader, she founded ‘Under Open Sky’ in 2021. ‘Yarmouth Springs Eternal’ explored nature with marginalised communities (2022) – supported by NNF, ACE, EU Horizon. She’s peer reviewed St Giles Trust projects (2023) and been shortlisted for Norfolk Arts Awards ‘Lifetime achievement’ and Highly Commended – BBC Make A Difference ‘Green’ Award. She’s looking forward to returning to a participatory space with her new neurological/ABI experience.
Location
Great Yarmouth
Participants
8-12 adults living with chronic illness
Partner
originalprojects;
Funders
UNLIMITED, Norfolk & Norwich Festival, Arts Council England
Masthead image: we care for us and the woods care for us by Joanna Holland
Partners:
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