From Belfast to Blackpool: Building Inclusive Arts Award Pathways

28 Sept

We’re delighted to be welcoming Jemma Robinson from Open Arts in Belfast to TramShed as part of an exciting six-month journey of skills-sharing, learning and collaboration around inclusive Arts Award delivery.

Jemma will be spending time with the TramShed team to develop her knowledge and skills as an Arts Award Adviser, with a particular focus on creating SEND-informed progression routes and exploring how young people with different communication styles, abilities and interests can be supported to progress through Arts Award.

It’s a collaboration that brings together two organisations with a shared belief in the importance of removing barriers to creativity and ensuring everyone has opportunities to participate, develop and thrive through the arts.

Meet Jemma

After studying BSc Music Technology at Queen’s University Belfast, Jemma has built more than 15 years of experience within the arts sector, managing community arts and inclusive creative projects with global majority communities, young people, and disabled and non-disabled participants.

Jemma has been part of the Open Arts team since 2015 and is currently their Programme & Operations Manager, overseeing the delivery of the organisation’s core programme.

Her role includes coordinating a team of freelance community artists who deliver weekly multi-artform classes for more than 80 disabled adults across six different artforms, alongside standalone creative projects working with older people and children.

Jemma is also a member of the award-winning Open Arts Community Choir.

Throughout her career, she has developed specialist skills that strengthen her ability to manage accessible community arts programmes. These include mental health first aid, audio description, sighted guiding and introductory sign language.

Her role covers all aspects of project delivery, from development and planning through to scheduling, budgeting, risk management and evaluation, with a focus on ensuring activities remain high-quality, inclusive and participant-centred.

Putting Access at the Heart of Creativity

In 2025, Jemma was Project Manager for City Sensations, the first accessible and inclusive programme at the Belfast Maritime Festival. Guided by the principle “Nothing About Us, Without Us,” access was embedded within the programme from the outset, helping to remove barriers and ensure that the experience was welcoming and inclusive for everyone. Jemma also completed Clore Leadership’s disabled-led Inclusive Cultures programme in 2024, further developing her understanding of systemic change within the cultural sector.

This learning now informs her contribution to Open Arts’ Chatting for Change disability equality training, which brings together lived experience and disability expertise to challenge assumptions, shift attitudes and support organisations to build more inclusive cultures. Across all of her work, Jemma is passionate about creating welcoming and inclusive environments where people of all abilities have opportunities to participate, express themselves and thrive through the arts.

About Open Arts

Based in Belfast, Open Arts is Northern Ireland’s leading participatory arts and disability organisation and has been supporting and celebrating disabled people within the arts since 1992. Its mission is to inspire and support the creative and artistic development of disabled people. Open Arts works to remove barriers to accessing the arts by creating welcoming, inclusive spaces where everyone can feel that they belong, placing professional expertise, creative ambition and lived experience at the heart of its work. These values closely align with our own approach at TramShed and provide an exciting foundation for the learning and skills-sharing that will take place over the coming months.

Jemma’s Arts Award Journey

In 2024, Jemma led the development of Open Arts as an Arts Award Centre, helping the organisation to expand its work with disabled young people. Since qualifying as an Arts Award Adviser, Jemma has delivered Explore, Bronze and Silver Arts Awards with a SEND focus. Central to her approach is recognising that there isn’t one single way for a young person to demonstrate their creativity or achievements. She supports young people to evidence their Arts Award journeys using formats that reflect their individual communication styles, abilities and interests. However, developing opportunities for young people to progress further has highlighted a significant gap. Jemma is currently the only Adviser in Northern Ireland delivering Arts Award up to Silver level, and there are currently no local SEND-inclusive pathways into the higher levels of Arts Award. There is also a lack of specialist training, peer-learning opportunities and advanced models of inclusive Arts Award delivery locally for her to draw upon. This not only creates challenges for individual SEND learners wishing to continue their Arts Award journey, but also restricts opportunities to develop a wider inclusive youth arts infrastructure across Northern Ireland.

Building the Next Stage with TramShed

To begin addressing this skills gap, Jemma was awarded the Anne O’Donoghue Award from the Arts Council of Northern Ireland. The award will enable her to develop her skills as an Arts Award Adviser while increasing her confidence and capacity to design the SEND-informed progression routes that are currently missing locally. Over the next six months, Jemma will be engaging with the team here at TramShed, learning from our experience of delivering SEND-inclusive Arts Award opportunities and exploring approaches that can support progression at higher levels. The collaboration will provide opportunities for skills-sharing and learning between Jemma, Open Arts and TramShed, drawing upon the experience of teams who share a commitment to making arts opportunities genuinely accessible. For Jemma, it is an opportunity to develop her own practice and take that learning back to Northern Ireland, supporting the development of future opportunities for young people living with various backgrounds. For TramShed, it is also a fantastic opportunity to share the inclusive practice we have developed through our work and connect with another organisation that places accessibility, participation and the voices of members at the centre of its approach.

Jemma is excited to get started, meet everyone at TramShed and begin the skills-sharing and collaborative learning ahead. And we’re equally excited to welcome her! Over the coming months, we’ll be sharing more from Jemma’s journey with TramShed as the collaboration develops — exploring what we can learn from one another and how inclusive practice can help create stronger Arts Award pathways for young people.

Welcome to TramShed, Jemma!

#ArtsCouncilNI

Zac Hackett

Artistic Director