Blog Post 1

Disability

The experiences shared by disabled individuals highlight the barriers that inhibit their participation in ‘typical’ settings. Their accounts reveal a pervasive social expectation to personally address systemic obstacles that create disabilities for specific people.

Deaf artist Christine Sun Kim confronts the prioritization given to spoken language–which she experiences as an obstacle–through her characteristically humorous work, by, for example, wryly combining cues from the vocabulary of sign language with info-graphics in large-scale charcoal drawings. Conversely, for neurodiverse Trans man Chay Brown the prevalent use of coded, unspoken language within the LGBTQ+ community creates barriers. Both highlight distinct communication challenges faced within different contexts of identity and experience.

A failure to ask disabled people what they need is a recurring issue. As established through the social model (Oliver, 1990), and reinforced by descriptions from disabled people, if the experience of disabled participants is centered there is a much better chance of planning and implementing improved access for all – everyone benefits^[1]. 

A lack of inclusive thinking at a structural level can be compounded by a culture of individualism, identified by Mei Hu (2024) in her research on the experience of Chinese international students in UK Higher Education^[2], where she notes that an expectation to conform to hegemonic (white, patriarchal, Western, ableist) values is placed on the individual, often with the effect of shaming them. 

In my own teaching experience I am aware that intersectional (Crenshaw, 1994) factors, including disabilities^[3], impact students differently. There is no underplaying the complexity of meeting the extremely varied needs that co-exist within the studio^[4].

From a subject-specific position, Art Direction is an inherently collaborative discipline, involving practitioners from numerous specialities. Over recent years we have integrated more community building activities into the curriculum, and scaffolded collaborative working with additional training in collaboration and shared leadership using Nonviolent Communication (NVC) methods (Rosenberg, 2015).

Approaches include: 

• Checking in
• Celebrating Difference
• Developing shared Agreements and Aspirations
• Active listening
• Making observations, noting feelings and needs, and making requests

From observing student groups working collaboratively using methods from NVC to support their communication, myself and colleagues have seen positive results. 

We have also noticed that some dynamics of exclusion are reinforced. NVC foregrounds open discussions relating to emotions, which some students are uncomfortable with. Whilst one NVC Agreement proposes that “If you speak easily in groups, speak less. If you don’t usually speak in groups, jump in more”, the suggestion alone will likely be inappropriate for some groups of students who report reticence or shame speaking out^[5].

In order to build on the positive results of embedding NVC techniques into our curriculum, there is a need to refresh our approaches^[6] to explore ways to disrupt the dominance of certain groups to the detriment of others. I am inclined to follow bell hooks’ suggestion that the way to do this is as a community^[7], finding ways for lived experience to arrive and be brought to bear not only in the studio but fed into a wider  community (activism) beyond it.

References

Crenshaw, K. (1991) Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color. Stanford Law Review, Jul., 1991, Vol. 43, No. 6 (Jul., 1991), pp. 1241-1299. https://doi.org/10.2307/1229039

hooks, b. (1994) Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom.  Routledge, London

Hu, M. (2024) International students’ feeling of shame in the higher education: An intersectional analysis of their racialised, gendered and classed experiences in the UK universities. Sociology Study, 14(1), p. 71. https://doi.org/10.17265/2159-5526/2024.01.006

meenadchi (2021) Decolonizing Non-Violent Communication. 3^rd ed. Los Angeles: Feminist Center for Creative Work

Oliver, M. (1990) The Politics of Disablement. Basingstoke: Macmillan.

ParaPride (2023) Being Disabled and Transgender – Chay Brown Interview. Video. Available at: https://youtu.be/_yID8_s5tjc?si=0ZFwinR2DwrVJyyL

Rosenberg, M. B. (2015) Nonviolent communication: A language of life (3rd ed.). PuddleDancer Press.

Shape Arts, (2021) Disability and Gender: A Conversation – Christine Sun Kim and others. Video. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2NpRaEDlLsI&t=2s

University of the Arts London (2023) Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Annual Summary Report 2021/22. Available at: https://www.arts.ac.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0030/472836/UAL-EDI-data-report-2024-PDFA.pdf

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^[1]  In a 2023 interview Chay Brown from TransActual describes the wide range of measures for access put in place at a trade union event he attended through consultation with disabled stakeholders. He says: “they’d already got people’s access requirements, they had a disco in the evening but they’d also got a room for board games… they’d really thought about it, and the reason they’d put so much thought about it was, number one, because they’re person centred, but also because the people on the organising committee understood about disability and a lot of that was coming from lived experience”.

^[2] Citing Burke (2017), Hu asserts that: “In contemporary Western societies, a prevailing discourse of individualism permeates various aspects of life, attributing successes and failures to an individual’s inherent capabilities, motivation, and resilience”.

^[3] UAL’s Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Annual Summary Report 2021/22 shows the percentage of students from different fee paying categories self-identifying as disabled. The report states that in 2024 18% of students had a declared disability. Disability support anecdotally estimates that in reality it is more likely to be around 50%. Whether students declare a disability at all may be affected by intersecting factors such as cultural norms, economic background, educational experience, access to health and disability services and so on, so these figures provide a partial picture at best. 

^[4] In Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom, bell hooks says: “When I first entered the multicultural, multiethnic classroom setting I was unprepared. I did not know how to cope effectively with so much ‘difference’”. p. 41

^[5] Hu reports some students: “grapple with concerns regarding the perceived ‘value’ of their contributions, engendering a reluctance to participate and a sense of shame of their ways of thinking and acting” (Hu, 2024). Additionally, some student ISAs may express their desire not to be called on to speak in group sessions.

^[6] The more recently published workbook, Decolonizing Non-Violent Communication, may be a useful resource to explore alongside more varied interventions drawn from other methodologies.

^[7] In Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom (1994), hooks states: “I enter the classroom with the assumption that we must build “community” in order to create a climate of openness and intellectual rigor”