Art Exhibition

YAMSEN:SpeciallyMusic Art Exhibition 2024

Welcome to the 41st annual YAMSEN Celebration of Art!

Here are the wonderful entries to the 2024 exhibition below. These were also projected onto the screen at the YAMSEN Christmas Concert at Pudsey Civic Hall for all the performers and audience to enjoy. 

About the Exhibition

This art exhibition is for all YAMSEN members, of any age, who have special educational needs or a learning disability.

We welcome all artwork from YAMSEN members, but also include some themes to inspire our entrants. The 2024 themes were:
Making Music
Seasonal
Christmas Lights

Entrants can make their own work or make a piece of art with other people. Entries can be drawings, paintings, collages, 3D works, poems, cake decorations, or anything that you can put in a photo. Please be mindful to get permission if you would like to include photos of or information about yourself and other people, and let YAMSEN know you have this permission.

Entries to the art exhibition will be digital, and the way the art is shown will be digital too. The exhibition will be projected onto a screen at the Christmas Concert and online on the YAMSEN website.  

To submit artwork, please email a high resolution photo or scan of the piece to hannah.yamsen@gmail.com. If you can, please edit the file name to include:
– the artist’s name
– title of the artwork &/or the category
– the school/centre if there is one.
Example: ‘Joanna Queen collage YAM Friday morning.jpg’.
For safeguarding, it is okay to just use first name or initials for the artist’s name. If you are unsure how to retitle the photo, please send it as it is and type the title information in the email. 

If you have any questions, please contact Hannah on the email above.

Competitions from previous years

The YAMSEN art competition was created nearly 40 years ago to give people with learning disabilities a showcase for their artistic talents.  Prizes were awarded for best art in different age categories, plus a best in show and most original picture.  The art was displayed in Leeds Town Hall, to be viewed at the YAMSEN Christmas concert.  Some winners’ artwork was also made into charity Christmas cards for the next year.

In the last few years the art competition began to open up to other kinds of expressive art, including poetry.

In 2021 YAMSEN decided to make the art exhibition non-competitive.  Because submissions are now digital, it is even more open to all kinds of art, including collaborative art, 3D art and poetry.  Thank you to Annie Conway of Swarthmore Education Centre for creating the content ideas for YAMSEN’s first open art exhibition.

Above: Slideshows of school and adult entries from the 2022 YAMSEN Digital Art Exhibition.  Many YAM adult members created their artwork in a YAM craft morning with Judith Kennedy.

Below: Memories of 2020, Catherine from YAM