'Babeworld School of Art' was created due to a gap for an alternative art school, in both filling the need to provide a radical approach/curriculum, and in terms of who is catered for. With barriers to (potential) pupils including cost, lack of safe spaces and a lack of representation in fellow pupils/facilitators. 

Babeworld uses their own personal experiences within the art institutions and alternative art education to create curriculum and organise faculty that is contemporary and relevant. By using their own margainlizations and experiences navigating the art world (as working class, trans, queer, lesbian, northern, disabled, mixed race individuals - the list is endless), they aim to make space for growth, community building and professional development in a way catered to suit those most marginalised and oppressed by systemic injustice. 

BSOA has run an open day commissioned by East Street Arts, and is currently developing a permanent programme alongside East Street Arts, with support from Unlimited. We foresee BSOA being a space where artists disenfranchised by the current education system within institutions can develop their practices through a year of programmes, exhibitions, workshops, lectures, crits and residencies. 

During their time in art education and institutions when performing/showing work, Babeworld felt underrepresented, so wanted to rework the curriculum and faculty to provide diverse and accessible art education. Universities are indisputably middle class, with higher education being a privilege that not so many disabled people seem to have access to. The inherent classism that institutions hold only further perpetuates why people represented by Babeworld and their disabled/working class audiences and participants are against-all-odds. 

This is where ‘Don’t Worry I'm Sick and Poor’ comes in.

‘Don’t Worry I’m Sick and Poor’ (DWISAP) is a lecture series created by artists and facilitators Ellie Harman-Taylor (Whinegums) and Ashleigh Williams (Babeworld) as an essential alternative within art education. Babeworld invites artists to give lectures based on their experiences of the art world – whether that’s in the form of a love letter to your nan, the complexities of pricing up meal deals at Tesco during your degree, or your aversion to eggs. Participants attend these lectures to discover how to finesse the system – from one marginalised person to another. 

'Don't Worry I'm Sick and Poor' initially hosted at Royal College of Art (2019-2020), has hosted 10 lectures at RCA, 3 lectures commissioned by Institute of Contmporary Art 2021, alongside single events commissioned for East Street Arts and Motion Sickness in 2021.