For this blog I chose to reflect on 3 resources from our recommended reading:
- Disability and dyslexia. (2023) Available at: https://www.arts.ac.uk/students/student-services/disability-and-dyslexia (Accessed: 13 May 2023).
- Confronting the Whitewashing Of Disability: Interview with #DisabilityTooWhite Creator Vilissa Thompson. (2016) Available at: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/confronting-the-whitewash_b_10574994 (Accessed: 13 May 2023).
- Ubuntu, R. ‘An Inquiry into Disability + Intersectional Identities’, Shades Of Noir, . Available at: https://shadesofnoir.org.uk/content/an-inquiry-into-disability-intersectional-identities/ (Accessed: 13 May 2023).
Checking the UAL disability pages was a great exercise to inform myself on what is available to our staff and students in terms of the university support. I found some information on our websites that I didn’t know or forgot about. I am in a process of creating a short skill share session for our library staff regarding what I have just learnt. I want to improve (or remind our staff of) what we know, so we can support our users better. Students know that there always is someone they can talk to and/or ask questions in the UAL libraries (with our information desks staff 9am-10pm during the term time) and it will be good to have up to date information available to them.
The second and third resource are both interviews.
First one is with Vilissa Thompson #DisabilityTooWhite hashtag creator and the second is with Rebekah Ubuntu, a multidisciplinary sound artist and university lecturer. I found them both very inspiring and interesting, especially as they both talked a lot about intersectionality of their lived experience.
Vilissa taught me a lot about what it means to be an ally. It was a reminder of how important it is that my voice of a white and able-bodied person does not power over the group of people I want to be an ally for.
Rebekah’s text gripped my attention from the first few words. I love how creative they were in interviewing themselves. I found Rebekah’s statement summing up their positionality, when they say that we are all of our coexisting identities all of the time, especially important. I think it is crucial to all of us to keep this statement in mind when we interact with our students (or colleagues) to enable a meaningful dialogue between ourselves.
Both interviews made me think about my positionality and biases that I may have. They strengthen my desire to learn more about different people and their experiences. This will be very helpful in my professional live where I meet and support staff and students that come from very diverse backgrounds. This inspired me to start looking at how I can enrich our library resources, so they can represent or teach more about disabled people of colour.
Reflections on other resources on disability that I engaged with:
- Film by Christine Sun Kim
For me this film is about art and our experience of it through senses. Christine’s art is all encompassing. I was transfixed by her performance and creativity. Being deaf person working with sound she made me question some assumptions I might have made about people with hearing impairment. It definitely was an unexpected element of the film that Christine works with sound. Her art made me pause and look at my experience of the world from a different perspective.
It made me think of a role of surprise and unexpected in learning and teaching. How less conventional material can help starting discussion and prompt changes in our thinking. In terms of my practice, I think that working with zines and artists’ books gives me an opportunity to incorporate a subject of disability into teaching. I will research what is being published on or by disabled artists at the moment and enrich our collections, so it be used in object based learning sessions.
2. Barokka (Okka), K. (2017) ‘Deaf-accessibility for spoonies: lessons from touring Eve and Mary Are Having Coffee while chronically ill’, Research in Drama Education: The Journal of Applied Theatre and Performance, 22(3), pp. 387-392. doi: 10.1080/13569783.2017.1324778.
“Pain hides in plain sight. This assumption, that what another feels they perceive confirms absolutely: you are not in pain, is not unfamiliar to anyone who lives with chronic pain, lives the exact opposite truth. Yet the shock of distance, of misunderstandings from human beings so close to our bodies, to the truth as we inhabit it in our bodies, can be something else entirely.” (p. 387)
“As I imagine is the case for most, the sheer impossibility of human communication is why we attempt to bridge it anyway, by writing, speaking, creating, by existing ingroups, by sustaining ourselves for the attempt to bridge gaps.” (p. 388)
These two quotes resonated with me the most. Having lived with a medical condition that flares up for a few days each month and causes pain for at least a week each time, I could relate to the author of the article very well. I am a very energetic, generally fit person and it is very easy for others to dismiss my pain when I am ill. On many occasions I heard comments how I do not look ill and was met with disbelieve when needed to leave work or class, because I was in too much pain.
How both this reading and my personal experience can be used/incorporated in my practice? It definitely made me more aware of hidden disabilities and inclined to listen carefully when students or colleagues talk about not feeling their best.
When designing or delivering the sessions I make sure to make space for questions and breaks, so whoever needs a breather does not need to ask for it. I design tasks and activities in the sessions with different levels of engagement. I always communicate that I do not expect everyone to do all the tasks and leave the students a freedom to make a choice.
a great blog post commenting on the resources and focusing on themes, such as intersectionality and positionality and looking at how what was learned can be applied to teaching practices at ual. nice image too! 🙂
You make some thought provoking comments here and have inspired me to think further about these three sources. In particular, when you mention what it means to be an ally (Vilissa Thompson interview) and when you express what it can mean to pause and look at our experiences from a different world perspective (Christine Kim video). Sharing that you can relate to the last text by Okka also is a reminder that for us all, both staff and students, that having empathy when we cannot visibally ‘see’ when a person is unwell or in pain is important.
I can also relate to your comments as I am also support staff so when designing and delivering sessions I too am conscious of the need to create a safe space for students to feel comfortable and not under pressure to complete everything.
Many thanks Jackie and Joanne for your comments. I am reading your blogs at the moment and I can see what Joanne means saying that my blog made her think further about the resources. I feel the same reading yours. It is very enriching to see how we all focused on slightly different aspects of each reading or video and how we can relate it to our teaching practice in different roles within the university.