---

RESOURCES

• CONFRONTING THE WHITEWASHING OF DISABILITY: Interview with #DisabilityTooWhite. (2016) BLAHOVEC, SARAH. Creator Vilissa Thompson
• DEAF-ACCESSIBILITY FOR SPOONIES: LESSONS FROM TOURING ‘EVE AND MARY ARE HAVING COFFEE’ WHILE CHRONICALLY ILL. (2017) KHAIRANI, OKKA. Research in Drama Education: The Journal of Applied Theatre and Performance. 22. 387-392. 10.1080/13569783.2017.1324778.
  
• FILM: NOWNESS: ‘CHRISTINE SUN KIM’ (2011) SELBY, TODD

---

Three windows into someone else’s life. Three thought-provoking pieces that bring home the importance of communication and dialogue and that remind us how much we have still to learn. 

I very much enjoyed watching Christine Sun Kim video, which totally validates art as a communication vehicle for our personal narrative, a way to facilitate expression. It engages in a dialogue with her reality and allows us to reflect upon it.  

“I wanted to use sound as a vehicle to connect with and reach a larger audience”. “Let’s listen with our eyes and not our ears”.

Christine Sun Kim

 As an artist, I find the use of different senses very appealing and the fact that Christine Sum Kim used it as a method to let us start to comprehend her reality is compelling. Last year I did the Teaching and Learning unit, and for my microteaching class, I created an exercise to learn through an object that took us away from ocularcentrism. I used the sense of smell, and I excluded vision to analyse the object. I believe that using the other senses can bring about self-awareness and self-observation. I thought that it might be more fruitful to not essentialise one of them, such as sight or hearing, but to recognise all senses as capable of grounding knowledge. I enjoyed this exercise of deducting learning, and I think that it had the potential to make us reflect on how someone with an impairment can experience their day-to-day. Photography is the primary methodology in my practice. Still, I have started now to work with installations taking into consideration other senses in a way that my art can become more inclusive.   

It was fascinating to read about K. Barokka. In her article, she accounts for her experience with pain and performance. How miscomprehension was a big part of her disability, and her response to it is to make it visible by creating a performance that tries to communicate her pain visually and audibly. 

Understanding a person’s impairment and its effect on their life is a big task, as Steven R. Smith tells us we should consider the difference in between impairment and disability to which he also adds identity exclusion:

•  Impairment – defined as a limiting medical condition
• Disability or handicap – defined as a socially imposed restriction upon the impairment.
• Identity exclusion – i.e. when the diversity of the responses to the experiences of ‘the disadvantaged’ are effectively ignored or marginalised in favour of more dominant constructions

Steven R Smith describes ‘human agency’ as something that might surprise us and go against our expectations. By doing so, it gives us a more profound understanding of matters around disability. He even considers how human agency challenges the notion of impairment. For example, suffering and pain could make someone respond to it in a way that will lead to the enrichment of their life, without, of course denying the experience of pain.  

Reflecting upon the three resources that inform this blog I can see in all of them a strong thread, that is the one of human agency, so this quote will fit quite appropriately: 

“The self is not so much known through the introspection of life but created through an active engagement through life.” 
“(…the productive tension created by human agency) (a) enables agents to imagine and identify with others who are creatively responsible-subjects, engaging with their experiences in highly unpredictable but often positive ways, but where (b) some subjects (in this case impaired people) might also reasonably expect a structural transformation of the social and political environment, so as to accommodate the negative consequences of having a particular medical condition.”  

Smith, Steven R. (2009)

K. Barokka talks about institutional accessibility and how this failed in her tour. Whilst UAL may be doing their best to consider these critical issues; adjustments are needed in our day-to-day not just on institutional and technical inclusion but also in an interpersonal level. 

We need to think about how this applies to our students. Universities as an institution should aim to prepare students to be autonomous individuals and to achieve a stage of belonging, in order to do this, ethical care should be fostered in within the institution. Ethical care should be part of our day-to-day.  

This links with what I wrote on my ethics of care blog: 

Keeling talks about how ‘institutions leave to the individual members of staff the responsibility for understanding, responsiveness or empathy in their relationships with the students’. An empathic relationship is essential to any functioning human community. This kind of relationships, observing the ethics of care, although they may be looked at as ‘soft skills’ are essential for the student wellbeing. They can promote student engagement with their learning and improve the students’ ability to succeed. As Keeling defines it:  

“(Wellbeing) At its core is human dignity, and its greatest requirement is for justice; dignity, justice, and wellbeing are essential to human flourishing and sustainability.”

Keeling R. (2014) 

It would be a fantastic idea if, included in the curriculum, students in the first year had the option to learn about their wellbeing which could consist of open discussions where students could reflect on their different narratives and how the institution could accommodate them.

The university should be a space in which students can develop as people and allow them to achieve their personal goals and those goals that are essential for their wellbeing without any participation restrictions. I would hope that, if we could create this inclusive space for students, these values could then give them confidence and a set of expectations as well as a degree of self- actualisation that they can then take into their future professional environment.

Reading Vilissa Thompson’s interview certainly made me reflect about the complexities of intersectionality, everybody needs to be recognised as an individual, and there are still so many exclusive attitudes that undermine and ignore people because of their disability. In this current society, where the principles of neoliberalism are until now guiding us is not that easy to find inclusion. Understanding people’s identity should be a focus in our education.

“The intersectionality of the self (ibid), not only points to the necessity of understanding the ways in which different subjectivities intersect but also, of exploring the ways in which these subjectivities are created and established.”  

Liasidou A. (2012. pp176)

In general, I find that the absence of representation of people with disabilities creates a model of awareness that, many times, is just based on medical symptoms. Learning about disability through personal narratives and different perspectives it’s a powerful way to make everyone aware of the general lack of knowledge (this includes me). These resources engage me in self-reflection, highlighting the pre-made assumptions which we all need to unlearn. There is always room for improvement.  I know I can do more to better support students. For example, I am revising and updating my handouts and resources. I am making sure that I keep dialogue open for students and I will also start updating sources for the examples I use in my classes. I am sure that I will keep encountering things that I can do towards inclusion on my day today. Personally, I would like to attend more talks and seminars regarding these issues. I trust that our openness, beliefs and attitudes will serve as the foundation to build inclusive practices. 

UAL does provide with a good set of services to help students and staff with their disability. Whenever I have worked with the team, it has been very positive; they are really professional and non-bias. I have worked with them referring students, and also I have experienced them first-hand as I was diagnosed with dyslexia last year. Still, the question as well is about the overall structure of the curriculum and making changes on what is categorised as ‘normal’ and as David J. Connor et al. propose, we should continue:

“Challenging many ontological and epistemological assumptions that undergird traditional special education practices; re-defining how the concept of disability can be taught within school and college curricula; emphasising disable people’s experiences, concerns, and ideas about their lives; and directly embracing disability as a ‘natural’ part of human diversity.” 

Connor D.J. et al. (2009)

REFERENCES

Connor, D. J. et al. (2009) International Journal of Inclusive Education: Disability studies in inclusive education- implications for a theory, research, and practice < DOI: 10.1080/13603110802377482>Published on line by Routledge 12 April 2013 [.[Accessed 4 February. 2020]

Keeling, R. (2014) An Ethic of Care in Higher Education: Well-Being and Learning, Journal of College and Character, 15:3, 141-148,<https://doi.org/10.1515/jcc-2014-0018>Published online: 13 Aug 2014.[Accessed 6 Jul. 2019]. 

Liasidou, A. ( 2012). Journal for Critical Education Policy Studies: Inclusive education and critical pedagogy at the intersections of disability, race, gender and class. Published by European University, Cyprus

Smith, Steven R. (2009) Arguing about Disability, Philosophical perspectives: Social justice and disability. ‘Competing interpretations of the medical and social models’. First published by Routledge. Oxon