MY JOURNEY TO writing this book began in 2010 in the unlikely surroundings of the offices of Mencap, a British charity that supports intellectually-disabled people. I had been working with Mencap as part of my job at a small community theatre in London, and during that time I met Barbara, a woman with intellectual disabilities who was also a keen visual artist. After meeting one day by chance Barbara asked if she could show me some of her artwork to which I happily agreed.

Barbara carefully unwrapped her artworks and leant them against the office's lavender painted walls. She pointed towards an azure blue mono-print of a bird and explained; “I had one just like this shown at the Outsider Art Fair.” “Wow” I replied, “That's an amazing achievement.” The Outsider Art Fair is considered the premier event for self-taught artists, taking place in plush venues across Paris and New York annually; it's a big deal. She did not, however, seem as pleased. I learnt that Barbara, along with many intellectually-disabled artists I have since encountered, had not been included in the decision to exhibit her work or had a say in how her work was presented, interpreted, and mediated to the public. She had not been supported to attend the exhibition where her work was displayed or had even seen pictures. How could this happen? I was unnerved and perplexed.

For me, this experience marks a pivotal point in my practice. It ignited an interest in devising ways to support intellectually-disabled artists to have autonomy in how their work was made and exhibited. Soon after in 2011 I enrolled on a postgraduate degree at the University of Brighton. Here I began to research curating with intellectually-dis-abled people resulting in the pop-up arts festival The Dugout (2013) in London's Hoxton Arches. Later in 2014, I was awarded a Collaborative Doctoral Award from the Arts and Humanities Research Council to undertake PhD research at the University of Leeds with self-advocacy group Halton Speak Out and Bluecoat's inclusive arts project Blue Room resulting in the exhibition Auto Agents: further developing this research.