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Innovative art to bolster summer fayre as New Visuality charity collaborates with Bluberry Academy on June 8 event

Artwork by Alex Utley for Blueberry Academy Summer Fayre

YORK charity New Visuality is bringing newly designed innovative artworks to the Blueberry Academy Summer Fayre the Melbourne Centre, Escrick Street, York, on June 8.

“This annual event is increasingly popular with its learners, learners’ families, and its staff,” says charity co-founder Greg McGee. “Traditionally it has consolidated the work of Blueberry Academy’s commercial arm, Blueberry Academy Pop Up Shop, now at 108 Walmgate,York. Now organisers are keen to widen the net to attract the wider community.”

Curriculum manager Laura Kent says: “The promise of lovely items available for purchase, plenty of tea and coffee and as much cake as you can eat has served us well in the past and is a good reflection of the positive energy created at our events.

“However, we’d like to see members of the public attend, so if people could please spread the word, that would be great. Our collaboration with New Visuality has meant that we have been able to work on the exhibitions we have here on display, as well as items for sale that have been designed using AI software.”

Alex Utley: Artist and activist

Formed in 2007 by Andy Bucklee and Andrew Cambridge, Blueberry Academy provides specialist support for young people and adults with learning differences, autism, social, emotional and mental health needs and/or other disabilities, with employability and independence as educational priorities.

New Visuality, directed by artist husband-and-wife team Greg and Ails McGee, has collaborated on visual arts projects since the beginning. “We received funding from Arts Council England’s National Lottery project grants to work with York’s wheelchair-using community,” says Greg.

“The project, Better Wheels, has gathered a groundswell after working with wheelchair-using residents in Acomb, Westfield, Rawcliffe and Clifton Without. Our plan is to integrate York’s wheelchair-using community with artists in sessions and exhibitions, interfusing traditional skills with innovation, celebrating access to cultural sites.

“It’s been a great success with art displays at Sanderson House, Take5 and Dalton Terrace’s Art Camp. When it comes to Blueberry Academy’s Summer Fayre, we thought, ‘this is an opportunity to build on the work we’ve been doing and to bring in some humour, AI technology and a game-changing exhibition’.”

Be Your Best Planet, by Alex Utley

New Visuality invited digital artist Alex Utley to participate. “Alex is an activist and artist, whose vision on accessibility provides the perfect portal for what Better Wheels has become,” says Ails. “The paintings I created were inspired by him, and the title, Shot In The Dark, a tribute to the Ozzy Osbourne song, was his idea.

“Basically, it’s a series of paintings shot through with positivity. That’s what we got from Alex, and the curatorial decisions were in the main part taken by him, with help from other Blueberry learners.”

Shot In The Dark will be on view for visitors to the summer fayre, alongside stalls selling prints, candles, jewellery, cards and much more, including coasters designed by Alex using innovative AI software, Canva.

He is pleased with the results. “Accessibility is such a massive issue in York, and though I and thousands like me have frustrations, there has been a lot of good work over the past few years,” he says.

 Blueberry Academy learner Joe P curating the summer fayre exhibition 

“I thought it would be better to focus on the humorous side of what it is to be a resident like me in a heritage city in 2023. The coasters incorporate my ideas visually, I’m really proud of them and I’m looking forward to the next limited-edition series.”

Greg is confident the project will continue to engage. “We have kiosks around Acomb where members of the public can leave ideas in a light-hearted way on what access means to them. We have plans to exhibit art based on access with the Bar Convent Living Heritage Centre in Blossom Street.

“We’re set to sit down with policy makers from City of York Council on how we can continue to make progress on York’s accessibility. In the meantime, the summer belongs to Blueberry Academy. We hope to see you there.”

Blueberry Academy Summer Fayre, Melbourne Centre, Escrick Street, York, June 8, 1pm to 3pm. Please note: no parking is available.

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‘Style is what comes from you,’ says artist Alex Utley as he runs Our Style project

York artist Alex Utley: Finding inspiration in Marvel

YORK artist Alex Utley reckons “fashion is about someone else deciding what looks good on you but style is what comes from you”.

His comment comes as New Visuality’s Our Style project is kickstarted in York after receiving a National Lottery award from the National Lottery Community Fund.

In the lead-up to Christmas, the project is working with 20 young people who have experienced learning difficulties or physical disabilities.

Sessions have been running in York city centre, led by Alex as chief curator. The Our Style At Christmas event at Guildhall’s ArtSpace saw more than 50 people drop in to buy jewellery, candles and T-shirts, and the project has had a presence at the Blueberry Christmas Fayre at York’s Melbourne Centre too. 

Charlie Pickering photographing models

When asked who he thought had blazed the trail to help to hammer home how style, not fashion, had provided lifelines to so many struggling people, Alex does not hesitate: “I like people who march to the beat of their own drum,” he says.

“You get Harry Styles and Yungblud from this generation, and from days gone by you had people like David Bowie or Elton John – he wore some right stuff!”

Alex is bringing his own energy inspired by these trailblazers to the project, although it is less their stylistic choices that have galvanised him, more that they have burst through closing doors.

“My stylistic choices are my choices,” he says. “I don’t look at Bowie and say, ‘That’s a good look, I’m going to wear that’. It’s more, ‘They did this at this moment in time to help people like me choose more freely’.

Lou Hicken and Lauren Farrow at the Blueberry Pop-Up

“So, someone who is comfortable enough in their own masculinity to wear a dress doesn’t change who I am. It helps strengthen my own outlook on life.”

Alex is speaking from his home in Acomb, but he is a regular learner at Blueberry Academy and has led on many previous New Visuality projects. He sees Our Style as a chance to “bring to the light many issues previously touched on”. 

“Clothes rightly or wrongly come accompanied with such powerful associations, but they should never be more powerful than the wearer,” he stresses. “My style doesn’t change who I am. My jumper or dress doesn’t have a gender; it is fabric.  I might like it, and if I like it, I’m going to wear it. My heroes have helped me to stop thinking about others’ opinions and to just do it.”

Over the years, Alex’s philosophy has consolidated. “I’ve hopefully made a small difference up to now. During certain youth groups and football sessions, I feel I may have changed people’s perceptions.

Lauren Farrow taking part New Visuality’s Our Style project

“A mate’s younger sister couldn’t wrap her head around seeing a different version of me. She had my old self stuck in their mind, and she used my dead name because she just couldn’t see that I was now Alex. 

“So I used an analogy: when Transformers change, they change because they weren’t happy as, say, a car; they couldn’t be themselves, they transformed into robots, more powerful. She seemed to get it! This project, Our Style, will hopefully build on that.”

Alex is not only relishing the opportunity to curate the participants’ artwork, he also sees the celebration of style as a chance to balance out past negative experiences.

“Everyone sees disability first,” he asserts. “There’s so much ableism, even in areas you wouldn’t expect. Disabled people could wear the same thing as able-bodied people and the mainstream media might refuse to publish or show it.

Jordan O’Brien in one of the T-shirts from New Visuality’s Our Style project

“It’s not just the mainstream media; it happens in areas where you would otherwise expect more acceptance. The main reason why I do my hair in different colours is because I want people to see me before the wheelchair, before the splints, before the tubes.

“Back in the day, the amount of people that would look at my legs, my arm, the tubes, before seeing me as even half a person, was depressing. The second I dye my hair, they see the colour and the person before they begin staring without shame at parts of my life I have to live with.”

This month’s continuing art sessions and next year’s events and happenings in locations around York will have Alex’s stamp all over them.  “It’s a great project. It’s an opportunity for young people to have fun in areas that have previously been marginalised and their ideas unexplored,” he says.

“We’re grateful to the National Lottery Community Fund and indeed everyone who continues to buy National Lottery tickets. It’s good to be able to show that all that money goes a long way in helping the most vulnerable people in our communities take their fair share of celebrating their communities.”

For art and items of clothing created in Our Style projects, check out According To McGee’s gallery, opposite Clifford’s Tower, and the Blueberry Pop-Up Shop in Micklegate, York.