My friend and I were at a craft fair today, Sandford Craft Fair took part in Credfest, a few miles from Exeter. The fair occupied the town square with live music on stage most of the day. One of the first performances were a vibrant group of musicians and singers, I could here but not see them from across the square, Later on I caught a couple of them dancing with their dragon and found out a little about them.
The Turning Tides project is a community interest company who believe that everyone has the right to equal access to music, the arts and life in. They work to make this a reality for people with ‘learning disabilities’ or ‘autism’ labels. The project’s core values are,
Encouragement to star-gaze
Freedom to follow dreams
Support to make dreams a reality
Opportunities to shine
Isn’t this wonderful? to learn more, maybe even volunteer if you’re local, visit TheTurningTidesProjectCIC on Facebook or the turning tides project
Lucid Gypsy 
Sounds most altruistic, Gilly!
Opportunities to shine sounds good to me, and I love their dragon. 🙂 🙂 A day well spent, Gilly. Did you sell much, or weren’t you selling?
Creating opportunities like that is inspiring – well done to the people running the project. Art and music can bring so much to bridging divides. Love that dragon and the dancing 🙂 and embrace their four tenets – especially ‘encouragement to stargaze’.
The core value of the project is visionary. This creative dragon dancing shines!
They don’t belong with the bureaucratic language of core values! They’re intention in poetry. Lovely indeed, in a week when the talk here has been non-inclusion.
PS Cruising along the highway yesterday, I heard a program about Arts Project Australia, an arts organisation for people with an intellectual disability. The Gallery’s mission is to have these artists recognized as artists in their own right: some of them have been coming to the centre for 15 years. They’ve just curated an exhibition of their own work, after studying Australian art, and two of them were interviewed about their artwork and the business of curating.
http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/booksandarts/disabled-artists/8651170
Thanks for focusing my attention on this program with your post, gentle one.