Let’s not impose artistic limitations on people with physical and/or mental disabilities, too. From this incentive, I started my research and pursued three goals: artistic fulfilment, involvement and ownership. To these I linked a role for the participant, respectively a performing, participating and creating role; and roles for the supervisor from Ludwine Janssens’ artistic pedagogical guidance method The Magic Teacher. After research, I also found a useful social guidance method, the Affectieve Bewuste Benadering ‘Affective Aware Approach).

To get a better picture of the context, I chose to conduct preliminary research at four care centres with a variety of in-house drama activities. This preliminary research consisted of interviews and observations of artistic supervisors and participants. I then worked with three people with disabilities from one care centre, vzw Blijdorp, for a pilot study, consisting of exploratory drama activities, and a field study. The latter consisted of a creation process and a demonstration moment in which I investigated whether one or more of the three goals were achievable per participant and whether they experienced them.

From the results, I could conclude that artistic fulfilment and engagement was possible within care home vzw Blijdorp and with these participants. Artistic ownership was more difficult to achieve. Based on what I observed, tested and learned, I wrote as output Wegen uit de artistieke beperking that answer the ‘how’ of my research question.