Art Residency · 2025
Creative exchange, experimentation and collaboration between disabled artists from the UK and China.
01 · Source pages 01–11
Developed by British Council China and Unlimited, the 2x2 Residency fosters international collaboration and creative exchange between disabled artists from the UK and China.
The programme responds to disparities in visibility, resources and international collaboration by creating space for disabled artists to connect, experiment and collaborate.
This pilot residency was hosted by organisations with a strong commitment to inclusive practice and artistic exploration: Unlimited allies The Work Room and Magnetic North in Scotland, and BY ART MATTERS in Hangzhou, China. Each setting offered a distinct environment for experimentation, reflection and creative development.
Through in-person residencies and digital exchange, the programme brought the selected artists together in Scotland and Hangzhou, with two weeks spent together in each location. Artists brought their own cultural perspectives to the host communities, engaging with local artists and audiences through public events, open studios and other activities.
Over eight months, online exchanges formed a virtual residency that sustained sharing and dialogue across cultural and geographical boundaries. The process challenged and expanded the artists’ understanding of creative collaboration.
Residency artist
Clare is a Deaf dancer who has performed with Haley Earlam in BRRR and Love Songs by Company Philip Connaughton. She is interested in sensory performance and playful, experimental ways of working, finding potential in unique spaces. Clare has worked closely with Clifftop Projects as an arts facilitator, is part of the Edinburgh International Festival Access Committee, and regularly attends workshops on access and inclusion with artists including Marc Brew.
Residency artist
Lesley is an Autistic dancer and facilitator. They are a company dancer with Second Hand Dance and have performed in We Touch, We Play, We Dance, The Sticky Dance, and Strings by Barrowland Ballet. Lesley is interested in durational, experimental sensory work, has international experience delivering accessibility workshops, and has worked as a Youth Arts Coordinator at Clifftop Projects. They are also a board member for Imaginate and Birds of Paradise.
Residency artist
Huang Te is an improvisational dancer and physical theatre creator with cerebral palsy. He is dedicated to expressing vitality through original physical theatre, allowing audiences to witness the lived experiences of disabled people. His works Island of Symbiosis and The Silent Power Erupts Now have appeared at festivals including the Ideal Archipelago Art Festival. His physical storytelling transforms limited mobility into boundless artistic possibility.
Residency artist
Zhai Jin is a wheelchair user born with osteogenesis imperfecta. Introduced to contact improvisation and collaborative dance through a Symbiotic Dance workshop, he became a core member of the Mistakable Symbiotic Dance Troupe, a pioneering inclusive contemporary dance group in China. Gene contributes as both choreographer and solo dancer. He is also a professional illustrator and comic artist, bringing that visual sensibility into dance and theatre.
“We are most excited for time to play and space to create.”
Clare Adam and Lesley Howard
02 · Source pages 12–26
Artists took turns leading the sessions, moving from physical exercises to improvisational dance, from game-based experiments to theatrical training, forming an open and diverse creative structure.
How does one communicate with Deaf artists? How can wheelchair users and walking dancers cooperate smoothly? How can attentiveness to one another be maintained in improvisation?
These questions became central to the creative process. Each participant was both an initiator and a listener. Through repeated probing, adjustment and response, the artists gradually built trust and unspoken understanding.
“We were playing games as common ground, because we were four strangers in a room and needed to find that common ground.”
Clare Adam
Traditional Scottish games opened the first conversations: Snakes and Ladders, Hopscotch and Cat’s Cradle. Cat’s Cradle was already familiar across both cultures. The string game became the stimulus for a piece about thread, connection and representation.
Through Clare and Lesley’s guidance, Huang Te felt how beginning with something simple and small could open a vast space for creation. Ropes, marbles and origami became tools for exploring movement. Gene described joyful collaboration as a continuous, flowing relationship rather than only an outcome.
One person folded paper, another imitated and followed. The body then recreated the movement of the paper. Although folding remained the constant, each person’s bodily response was entirely different: hands, legs, head and torso took on changes of direction, range and speed. From the simplest movement, the diversity of the body became visible.
Huang Te also led an exercise in which everyone drew a keyword at random and used it as the tone and starting point for a dance.
Gene led interactive improvisations with props. In the Tissue Paper Dance, the softness and unpredictability of paper became a metaphor for inclusivity and responsiveness. He invited the artists to create dances with personal belongings, presenting individual life stories in a fluid manner, then initiated a wordless group improvisation in which the body became the sole language.
The artists co-created a large canvas that resembled a collective visual dance. Each person left traces, colours and paths; the image was continuously extended, layered and reborn.
Day after day, the canvas silently bore witness to the four artists’ encounter. Gene called it “a shared brain that records the time and thoughts we experience together.” The group planned to continue the thread in Hangzhou.
The emerging concept was brought to life through handmade props. The artists imagined a giant cubic structure where each performer would possess a unique, colourful world made from different materials. Thin ropes and silk wrapped the structure and intertwined to form a labyrinth.
“Dance naturally is its own language. You watch someone’s body language and intuitively connect with that moment.”
Clare Adam
Improvisational dance became a shared language. Eye contact, feeling and subtle connection let the artists decide whether to move individually or together without translation. Lesley described English as difficult and welcomed the chance to let dance carry the exchange.
In Glasgow and Edinburgh, the artists also explored accessibility systems, visited theatres and attended diverse live performances at the Edinburgh Festival. Streets, sky, trees and the daily route between studio and accommodation became sensory materials for their work.
03 · Source pages 27–43
The Hangzhou phase shifted toward a more intuitive and improvisational creative context, deepening collaboration through local materials and the cultural influence of the Jiangnan region.
The residency began in Scotland, where the artists experienced a mature accessibility support system and the vibrant ecosystem of the Edinburgh Festivals. Nearly eight months of online exchange maintained their connection.
Placing the artists within two different systems and grammars of inspiration prompted continuous reflection.
What constitutes genuine support? Where does creative energy originate? Between systematic planning and improvisational sparks, what is fundamental?
The canvas formed a trajectory parallel to the moving bodies. Continuing the habits established in Scotland, the artists sketched, captured gestures, noted keywords and outlined the structure of their work. Gradually covered in colour and symbols, the canvas became a visible extension of thought and a shared memory bank that required no translation.
Improvisational movement became a visual text that could be viewed repeatedly. Improvisation and structure, the physical and the visual, formed a rich polyphony.
Born from the Scotland residency, the core concept A Common Thread visualised human connection while bringing together the textile cultures of Scotland and Hangzhou. Moving from concept to material form became a metaphorical act of weaving.
In Hangzhou, the artists selected and connected recycled fabrics and cords from the JNBY Re; Re; Re; Lab. Different textures and colours symbolised individual lifelines; knotting them became a small ritual for building a temporary community.
The site co-constructed by the four artists became a field where the invisible was made visible: different bodies negotiated space, silence carried dialogue, and difference was woven into a web. Lesley described “connections across cultures and distances, where distance itself also means togetherness.”
Performance became a new ritual, inviting the audience to witness a sense of togetherness based on difference.
The significance of 2x2 extended beyond the studio. Through the Inclusive Arts Festival hosted by BY ART MATTERS, the experiment reached public space and formed direct connections with communities.
Knowledge generated during the residency — about body, difference and connection — became experiential and participatory public resources.
“This is a place where you don’t have to come with the answers; you can just be curious and ask questions, and we find the answers together.”
Huang Te, quoted by Bron Davies
In The Body Speaks, Huang Te used movement to narrate the process of accepting one’s true self. Participants explored acceptance, trust, support and response through games such as Guarding the King and Origami Dance Duet.
In Dance with X, Gene invited participants to use elastic ropes as a medium for infinite creativity within limitations. He also shared his Romain Rolland Project, derived from the residency and rooted in the intention to “still love life after facing its reality.”
The Open Studio felt like a gathering of old friends. Clare and Lesley shared how they integrate accessibility into creation and touring, demonstrated a toolkit designed for multi-sensory needs, and presented excerpts of their work.
Listening, dialogue and flexible adjustment, they emphasised, are at the core of Inclusive Arts.
Hangzhou’s cultural and historical heritage became an invisible text. The artists explored calligraphy, the China National Archives of Publications and Culture, the pulse of West Lake from a yaolu boat, and the nature and craftsmanship of Qingshan Village.
These experiences provided material while prompting the artists to reconsider their own practices within a different cultural rhythm.
Hangzhou’s architecture, history, materials and daily rhythms continually permeated the work. Lesley was drawn to materials and craftsmanship: the possibilities of fabrics at the JNBY sustainable fabric warehouse and the structural logic of bamboo weaving recalled Scottish weaving traditions.
Observed weaving techniques moved directly into physical exercises and installation concepts.
04 · Source pages 43–46
A performative art installation following the intertwined journeys of four artists from across two continents.
Through dance, the artists weave traditional native fabrics to share their lived experiences of disability, movement and being.
As their threads cross borders and histories, audiences are invited to witness and join the journey — connecting through shared textures of story, sound and gesture. Viewers may walk alongside the performers or pause and wonder at what might become when worlds are woven together.
“It’s like a web that wraps around us: we are connected, yet we still maintain our differences.”
Huang Te
The central image, born during the residency in Scotland, gradually materialised through constant collisions in Hangzhou. The work narrates how the artists stepped out of their individual spaces to meet one another.
Holding coloured ropes, they constructed an improvised yet tacit dialogue through tugging, entangling and releasing. The thread is not a homogenised whole, but an assemblage of different life experiences and cultural backgrounds.
The artists chose words including adventure, journey and play to define the experience of meeting and seeing one another. Walks between studio and accommodation in Glasgow, dancing at Jupiter Artland, conversations on West Lake, contact improvisation in Liangzhu, and play at Qingshan Village’s sports field all mattered.
These apparently unproductive moments were the foundation for deep trust and cultural understanding. They became the most valuable nourishment for co-creation.
05 · Source pages 47–52
I’ll take away the artistic idea of combining textures and the ability to do that — something we are interested in and want to learn more about. I also gained facilitation techniques for helping everyone feel included and ensuring accessibility. It is always present in the conversation.
This was my first time collaborating with others on a piece. I learned creative methods distinct from my usual solo process and gained experience for future collaborations. Cultural differences opened new ways of thinking about how my body can dance and express joy.
I leave with more confidence in international collaboration. Before the residency I was hesitant, but now I know that collaboration cannot happen without a common language — and that common language can be found together.
Four completely different people — different bodies, languages, genders and places — collaborating and understanding one another’s cultures was an incredible experience. I will draw on it in future collaborations in China and internationally.
The artists came together while acknowledging the different histories and present contexts of disability arts in the UK and China. They brought those perspectives into the room through a genuine cultural exchange in which no one perspective monopolised the model.
The multiple lines grown from 2x2 have become clear. The tangible line is the prototype of A Common Thread, awaiting further development. The intangible lines are a disabled-led model for international exchange, a growing network of creators and supporters across China and the UK, and a set of case studies and methods for inclusive arts and accessibility support.
Together they point toward cultural cooperation grounded in specific accessibility needs, fuelled by cultural and individual difference, and aimed at long-term, equal and symbiotic relationships. Every participant becomes a collaborator, seeing others and respecting each person’s subjectivity and physical intelligence.
The British Council is the UK’s international organisation for cultural relations and educational opportunities. It supports peace and prosperity by building connections, understanding and trust between people in the UK and countries worldwide through arts and culture, education and the English language.
Unlimited is an arts commissioning body that supports, funds and promotes work by disabled artists for UK and international audiences. Its mission is to commission extraordinary work that changes and challenges the world.
An artist-led organisation supporting a sustainable environment for independent dance artists in Scotland. Its mission is to empower artists to lead their practice and make thoughtful, pioneering work for diverse contexts.
An award-winning theatre company based in Edinburgh, combining live theatre production with innovative, multi-artform artist development and paid opportunities for artists across disciplines.
A contemporary art space in Hangzhou designed to world-class museum standards by Renzo Piano Building Workshop. It organises exhibitions, supports publications and artists, and offers a third space for public creativity.
Artists: Clare Adam, Lesley Howard, Huang Te, Zhai Jin.
Photography: Wu Dan, Tang Yunyan, Zhang Keqing, Jianfen, Luo Hongyu, QiYue Studio.
Book design and image processing: Luo Hongyu.