Meet the artists: Freestylers

Roland Carline shares the origins of Freestylers, and how the group approaches their work and performances – as well as what to expect when they perform at our upcoming LIVE.

Freestylers is a collective of live artists. There’s a broad range of neurodivergence within the group, including autism, ADHD, learning disabilities, and dyspraxia. The group started about 6 years ago, and we meet every week to make work together – for each other and the public.

Building trust is at the root of our group, creating a safe space, so that we are able to reflect on our emotional condition and share how we feel on that day. One of the things that is really important for us is to find joy in ourselves together. We’re starting to realise within our weekly meet-ups, that accessing joy often means acknowledging the difficulty, anxiety and exhaustion. Reflecting on the things we’re doing well, the things we’re doing less well, what we’re struggling with, the things we’re complicit in and the things that are out of our control. and we start to process these feelings as we dance together. Of course, everybody processes in different ways: some people might need to jump up and down and get really sweaty, other people might need to make calm, gentle movements that involve slow breathing. We’re accessing our fear and anger so that we can bring integrity to our performances. And as we dance, and locate these difficult feelings in the body. With the help of loud dance/pop music, we can then find those feelings of lightness, feelings of joyfulness.

Freestylers began with me and an artist called Francis Majekodunmi who I’ve worked with for a long time. Francis has Downs Syndrome.  For the last six months of my post graduate programme at the Royal Academy of Art I invited Francis to finish the course alongside me. We performed a show about getting to know one another and our open and honest conversations about our different experiences of the world. There was a lot of wrestling in it,  we performed the show twice a day, every day, for a month. Off the back of that show, Francis said that he wanted to carrying on working together, and I agreed, but wanted to open it out to other people as well. So, we carried on meeting every Tuesday, in Deptford X at the time, and became known as The Deptford Freestylers. From there, we also started to work at Goldsmiths CCA, and we had a space that was open to people to come and explore freestyle movement.

Personally, my inspiration is drawn from the inclusive arts scene. Since I was about 17. I started working with a group called The Parasol Project, in Oxford where I grew up. It was a very experimental place for children and young people who were neuodivergent, ranging from cerebral palsy all the way through to ADHD, on a very broad spectrum. It was my job as a facilitator and support worker to come up with frames for that space and ways in which people with different needs and abilities could access playing and making. And since then, I’ve been part of this community and it’s cultural life.  There’s so much exciting  work happening in these spaces.  Applied art for me means breaking down barriers, challenging institutional hierarchy.  Saying ‘don’t come to us, we’ll come to you’ it’s about putting  art in all its forms into people’s daily lives who need it the most. 

This August, we’ll be joining Modern Art Oxford for a workshop. So, if you’re coming along, come dressed in your dancing clothes.  But whatever we throw at you, is a choice. You can decide to be involved as much or as little as you want. You can even come just to watch. There will be four or five of us in the space, and we encourage you to take part as much as you feel able, because you will get more out of it if you join us and take risks. It will be a very relaxed space, and if you get there and feel overwhelmed by the music or the noise levels, there will be a breakout space, so you can come and go and take breaks whenever you need. We’ll be working organically, sharing some of our work – we’ve got a boy band for you, some mad costumes, some artwork – loads! It’s called Freestylers, so we always freestyle what happens, allowing us to respond intuitively to everyone in the space. But whatever happens, there’ll be a spectacular performance, because a lot of our members are very passionate about that. Many of the people in our group are relentlessly excluded from public activity, so for many of our co-directors and members, being seen by you is very important – they’ll show you what they’re dealing with, and tell you about their lives. We’d love you to join in and share your own, or just sit back and enjoy the show. 

by Roland Carline

You can also see the Freestylers on screen in their new filmed work, or catch them in their long term residency at Siobhan Davies Studios.