About Victoria House
Victoria House is a purpose built centre providing accommodation and support for people with complex needs, and supporting independence and lifestyle choices for adults with physical disabilities. Victoria House supports people with a range of disabilities including cerebral palsy, Brain Injuries, muscular dystrophy, and disabilities resulting from accidents or a stroke. Artist Jon Keen is delivering virtual workshops with a group twice a week, to ensure they can still take part in creative activities whilst in lockdown.
The wheelchair that everyone made in 2019,
outside of Victoria House.
About the Artist
Jon Keen is a Hull-based painter and long-term member of Kingston Art Group, as well as an active member of the arts community in Hull. Jon’s work primarily focuses on the roles around choices and consequences, a theme which he often uses in his teaching and workshop delivery.
Jon leads a Zoom Workshop
Creative Connections and Covid-19
Angie , Vocational Recreational Activities Coordinator at Victoria house has shared some of her experiences working with Artlink and artist-facilitator, Jon:
“Throughout the Pandemic it has been a real challenge to keep morals up, including my own sometimes. It’s been a challenge to keep everyone entertained on a daily basis - more than ever as they are unable to go out or visit relatives, and all our events have had to be put on hold.
There are 23 service users all with different personalities and also different likes and hobbies that influence their daily activities. I help them to overcome any obstacles that they may face by assisting them to develop and create lots of different skills that they did not realise they had by introducing lots of projects that are going on in and around Hull at the moment.
We love having Jon work with us. He is so creative, and before Covid-19, he came here for weeks on end to help us build a 7ft wheelchair with poems on it. This brain child of Jon’s, turned out to be amazing and it is proudly sitting in our car park, where he came and spent a few good hours setting it up for us for all to see.
We cannot thank him and Jemma enough for working with us all of 2019, and for making a difference to our service users lives. Even now we thank him and Artlink for helping to keep them active and choosing to work with them again with the funds that were received to provide lots of materials, and running classes on Zoom.”
Service User, Lynda
Lynda says that she loves Artlink and that she thinks it fills up the time she has on her hands.
She also says that she enjoyed discovering the creative side that she did not think she had.