Professor Melanie Nind and I delivered a fun workshop entitled ‘Community-Building without Words’ at this inclusive conference in July. Delegates were invited to explore and play with a range of interesting ‘big materials’ without using any speech. This gave them first-hand experience of how we had conducted our research project, using arts-based activities as a means to promote a sense of belonging for people with profound intellectual disabilities within the social activities of People First Dorset.

• You can read more about the research project in the following article:

Goodwin, J., Nind, M., Dunne, L., Howe, Z., Martin, K., Mellor, C. and Ward, A. (2023) ‘Exploring belonging through arts-based practice’ PMLD Link 35(2) Issue 105 (pp.5-7)

• If you think ‘Using big materials to connect without words’ might be a valuable workshop for your organisation, click here.