I Am At Home Festival

On 24 March 2020, over 300 students and staff from London SEND schools were due to be joining at Tate Modern for the fourth I Am At Tate Exchange Festival – our yearly celebration empowering D/deaf, disabled and neurodiverse young people to explore their creativity.

Over the past four years, the festival has provided a platform for young people to showcase their talents, leadership, ideas and opinions. However, this year, due to COVID-19, the Tate Modern closed its doors, and, sadly, the festival was postponed.

Taking the theme of ‘Power’ as inspiration, schools, artists and the Festival Assistants had been exploring the power of choice, music, love and so much more in preparation for the festival. So, continuing in this vein, we harnessed the power to adapt, and were happy to open the virtual doors to the first ever I Am At Home Festival!

Throughout the week we shared content from the teachers, artists and young people who were due to be joining us at the Tate, including blogs written by artists and SEN teachers, virtual events with disabled-led cultural organisations, along with videos, resources and more.

In 2019, we welcomed over 300 D/deaf, disabled and neurodiverse young people and 3,000 visitors to I Am At Tate Exchange Festival. For many of the young people, the festival was the first time they'd ever visited Tate Modern. This is not unusual – young people with additional needs still face many barriers when accessing cultural spaces in London. Through I Am At Tate Exchange Festival, we hope to provide a model for cultural organisations to address issues around accessibility, representation and inclusion.

Watch highlights from the 2019 festival

While sadly the festival could not go ahead as planned this year, we were pleased to still be able to share much of the fantastic work our SEND Network, partner organisations and artist practitioners had created for this year's festival. We hope that by providing an online platform for conversation and sharing, we can help demonstrate how easy it is to create work which is accessible and inclusive, and caters to young people of all abilities.

Working with A New Direction is a truly transformative experience in so many ways for us. We have changed our working practices at Tate Exchange and throughout the building as a direct result of our collaboration with them, and we are on a valued continual learning journey. The work we see them do here at Tate Exchange is transformative in its own right – this is tangible as soon as you step into the room - and their programme with us is an annual highlight. Each year builds upon the previous one and we look forward to many years to come.

Cara Courage, Head of Tate Exchange

Spending time at A New Direction's I Am Festival impressed on me what a truly wonderful initiative it is. Over the past three years its team have built something which is equal parts inspirational, educational, impactful and joyful, while still remaining inclusive and accessible for all. Seeing so many young people - many of whom who had not been to Tate before - having the time of their lives has been such an amazing and humbling experience. In a time where increasing numbers of students with SEND are being forgotten, projects like the I Am Festival are only becoming more vital, and we at Tate are immensely proud to play our part in it.

Frances Morris, Tate Modern Director