‘If you don’t see us, we have no place to be,’ says the artist Christine Sun Kim, who is deaf, in one of the short videos we watched as part of the Inclusive Practices (IP) unit.[1] Kim expresses how she is driven not to ‘get trapped in the deaf community’ [1], which she says could be comfortable as opposed to feeling oppressed as part of the hearing community. However, she is committed to the wider visibility of Deaf culture, and actively fights its marginalisation. What stands out in the video is how she has chosen to align her artistic work closely with her lived experience, i.e. how her identities as an artist and as a deaf person intersect. In the video, Kim focuses on her abilities and on skills, which she has developed because she has to navigate the world as a deaf person. By doing so, her story isn’t told from the perspective of an impairment, but from a unique set of skills. 

Its positive message harks back to the video interview with the Paralympian Ade Adepitan. He says, it is the society that creates discrimination by restricting some people’s access to parts of it, and thus creates disability. But if a person is nurtured, accepted and let shine, rather than being defined by their dis-abilities, it is their set of abilities which matters.[2] Ade Adepitan refers to the marginalisation of people with disabilities as a structural issue, and highlights the ensuring of accessibility as the most important way to confront it. When talking about the importance of the inclusion of disabled people to the LGBTQ+ community, Chay Brown emphasises accessibility as being key to trans justice too. They say about their work with TransActual, ‘If we are not working for the disabled trans people, we are not working for the trans community, because we are missing people out.’[3]

The basketball player Ade Adepitan, artist Christine Sun Kim and co-founder of TransActual Chay Brown are all spokespersons from and for intersecting marginalised identities. There is noticeable strength and resolution in their respective messages, and even though each of them speaks to an extent about the discrimination they’ve been confronted with, they have come to a point of confidence, and have the resource to empower others. 

But what could I, an able bodied (or body-minded?) tutor, do to support the learning of someone with a disability, or rather to support the learning of all my students?

As an Associate Lecturer I follow the institutional guidance and measures that have been set up to support the students who identify as disabled. These measures include extra time given to students for submitting their final deliverables (ISAs), guidance on how to accommodate for certain disabilities in my teaching practice (written guidance, clarity in feedback etc.), and signposting students with disabilities to UAL services that are available to them. However, often these measures appear somewhat technocratic, and are not always helpful for building a strong student-tutor relationship, or for nurturing a learning community [4].

This brings me back to the more everyday experience of studio teaching, and the importance of valuing each and every students’ lived experiences. In order to avoid a merely transactional relationship between myself and the students, as well as between the students themselves, it is important to allow for space to create mutual understanding and aid in the studio – or as Annabel Crowley put it at today’s IP workshop, to build our collective capacity. In order to do that, I need to design teaching interventions that facilitate the sharing of everyone’s lived experiences, e.g. assignment briefs that allow for the creation of personal work and briefs that help students figure out their positionality. Not to be afraid of clumsiness, and potential discomfort will be key to opening up space for deeper understanding.

References:

[1] Art21 (2023). Christine Sun Kim in “Friends & Strangers” – Season 11. [Online video]. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2NpRaEDlLsI&t=779s (Accessed 11 Mayl 2024).   

[2] ParalympicGB (2020). Ade Adepitan gives amazing explanation of systemic racism. [Online Video]. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KAsxndpgagU&t=164s (Accessed: 11 May 2024).  

[3] Parapride (2023). Intersectionality in Focus: Empowering Voices during UK Disability History Month 2023. [Online video]. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_yID8_s5tjc&t=110s (Accessed 11 May 2024).   

[4] hooks, b. (1994). Teaching to Transgress. Educations as the Practice of Freedom. New York: Routledge.