This article is written by Kairani Baroka, an artist, educator and writer. She has dedicated the article to her pen her experience and lessons learned from touring a show on pain with limited access to resources . Whilst conducting those shows she was in sever pain . She writes of her experience as an Indonesian woman who toured UK, Australia and India for her artistic show, in particular performing in Deaf Accessible venues.
She tells her story of not being heard by health system on the host country even she had access to student insurance. She was not visible enough as being a woman of different ethnicity with international background.
She draws reader’s attention to issues such as intersection of accessibility, and framing of disabled performers from non-western backgrounds.
She draws our attention to issues facing art performance for :
1- Acknowledging further catering and service needed for disabled artists and audience alike for the venues provided.
2- Highlighting the mental health importance, specially of performing artists specially those with disabilities.
3- Understanding the lack of treatment and pain severity, particularly for brown women with non-western background. Partly also for their lack of knowledge of healthcare system (not been fully informed of existing services) .
How Could you Apply the Resources to your own teaching?
It makes me conscious of International students studying with us at LCF and in case they need to be guided to right channels to seek appropriate help with appropriate professional guidance in order to get support with their education or employment.
How could you integrate this research into your own practice? Cite and example:
The mental health issue was massively highlighted during pandemic with International body of our students and it was of utmost important to slow the teaching tone and be more empathetic towards our students, who happen to live miles away from their families and felt trapped either in a oreign country momentarily / went home but felt detached from their studies.
it is a comprehensive and engaging booklet with great information on different academic theories tackling and addressing dyabilities. It has come under the topic of evolution of disability modules which does include:
Models of Disability:
The religious model : a pre-modern model that considers disability an act of God and intertwined with Sin and guilt.
The Moral Model : refers to attitude that people are morally responsible for their disability. The Moral/ Religious models are the oldest models towards disability.
The Eugenics Model : the model is reflected on todays and modern understanding of disability. It assumes people or either fit or unfit.
The Medical Model : views disability occurs due to disease, trauma, or other health conditions, which therefore requires sustained medical care provided in the form of individual treatment.
The Charity Model : depicts disabled person as victims of circumstances who are deserving of pity. This along with medical model are the ones used more frequently by non-disabled people to define and explain disability.
The Economic Model : Disability is linked by person’s inability to participate in work. Mostly linked to Charity model.
The Social Model : Sees disability as a socially created problem and a matter of full integration of individual into society.
The Affirmation Model: Have a non-tragic view of disability and impairment, which encompasses positive social identities for disabled people.
The Diversity Model: views disability as human variation. Under this model the diversity of disability must be acknowledged as well as of the barriers of people with disability facing.
The empowering Model: Allows the person with disability to decide the course of their treatment and what service they wish to benefit from.
The relational Model : Emphasizing the support of inclusivity in the society and embedding social justice norms in wider society.
The New racial Model: The new frontier which builds out of the political identity of Social Model and argues that we should not distinguish between impairment and disability.
To look into the above theoretical evolution in disability and inclusivity in social norms is fascinating. Although the thermotical realm seem to demonstrate their progress and categorization of definition and comprehension of the term, this is not necessarily translate into societal action to deal with the issue. In particular when it comes to matter of race and gender equality/ identity.
The below statistics are demonstrating few more facts:
Around15% of global population, over a billion people , live with some form of disability, of whom, 2-4% experience significant difficulties in functioning
Women are more likely to experience disability then men and older people more than young;
Lower and middle income countries have higher level of disabilities than high income countries.
In recent years, the understanding of disability has moved away from physical or medical perspective to one that takes into consideration a persons physical, social and political context.
How could you Apply the resources to your own practice?
By understanding the issue perhaps it could help us lecturers to be more conscious of the following issues:
Attainment gap;
Making sure we look beyond date of attainment and we give more empathy and listen to student voice.
Student experience differential:
Making sure we record a just voice of students and be impartial and more sensitive towards hidden dyabilities along the visible ones.
White-washed curriculum:
Perhaps creating a forum for students to share their resources to for learning as we go along. To challenge them to think of an alternative source of information and knowledge in teaching materials.
Inclusive Pedagogy:
Actively engage and dedicate your teaching from further materials from communities of intersectional created resources.
Co-create with students who have vested interest in intersectional topics both in encouraging them to pick a research topic on the area/ include new and alternative resources.
Can you Cite an example of your own practice?
Through years I have encouraged my postgraduate and final year undergraduate students to incorporate more alternative resources in their research. As well some of the research topics for postgraduate students have included:
Disability and shopping experience in retail.
Fashion has inclusivity issues: The Representation of Black models in Fashion Industry.
The PGCERT and the Unit has made me even more conscious of most important social issues we are facing with intersectional issues in disability and for sure I would like explore any of these topics in my own personal research that can include:
Representation of disabled women minority in fashion industry;
Disabled women as influencers.
I would like to finalise my thoughts by sharing the following inspirational video of Aaron Philips.
The UAL Disability Service Webpage is an informative page which give ample information on the services and funding’s needed for different types of learning and physical disability. The information provided has good definition of disabilities, ways to communicate with disability team in order to get assessment. Fund application for people in need of the extra support and as well a great webpage encouraging students to leave feedback for further assessment of service being provided.
How could you apply the resources to your own teaching practice?
Very important. Prior to start my PGCET I would have relied on academic support team to engage students with the services being provided, but now I more conscious to include and talk through the website upon my initial opening Unit Leader lecture. It is important for students feel supported and protected if they have learning or access disabilities and I am glad I have familiarized myself with the content being provided.
Can you cite examples?
Most of the time since I am more engaged with Year 3/ postgraduate level students they are fully aware of dyslexia and other physical disability that might impact them. However most important of all is to give positive and supportive support during their studies. My personal experience and my high attention more so dedicated to dealing with anxiety. During years of teaching, I have noticed high level of students suffering from anxiety and I am very much conscious of dealing with individual cases and giving them their own personal space and supporting them and guide them to right channels to seek extra support. For both postgraduate and final year students graduating with good marks has turned into a very big challenge and pressure, and I vividly see this when I am supervising in on one-to-one bases. Based on my experience ,It is important to acknowledge the pressure and give confidence to them by being a better listener, helping them to think in broader context and always acknowledge what they are achieving in a bigger picture. One way also to deal with anxiety I assume is acknowledging it and addressing it both professionally and empathetically. Us as educator have a big responsibility to support our students and make sure the guidance being provided by university will not be materilised unless us as part of the system also give a voice and empathetic face to this.
An American Sound artist based in Berlin. According to Christine’s Wikipedia page she is keen to predominantly work with drawing, performance and video. Kim’s practice is inspired by the fact how sounds operate in society? Born deaf in Orange Country, California, to a family of hearing parents and deaf sister, she closely observed sound by its impact on hearing people. Her art which spans performance, video and drawings in simple manner, distill sound the way occurs to her interpretation through moods, emotions, social relevance. According to an article written on her latest exhibition by Guardian on 24th March 2022, through her work she is creating the language of her own.
Through breaking the rules she has managed to come up with new ways of communicating and expressing herself. She herself acknowledges that once she started to play with the sounds , she felt ashamed to share it with her fellow deaf friends. Accordingly her work is deeply conceptual , often entails social and cultural role sound plays in our lives. Essentially her work deems to elevate society’s view of dear/ hearing people. It also draws the attention of her contribution to demonstrate her innate ability as a communicator and artist who cements her own visual and conceptual art and paves the way for other artists, in an novel path.
Christine Sun Kim: ‘I’ve spent 45 minutes explaining deaf culture to curators and museum directors, leaving the last 15 minutes to talk about my work.’ Photograph: Tate Tullier
How could you apply the Resources to your Own teaching Practice?
How I see this is to what extent she has created her own art and managed to communicate with mass audience as a successful artist. To me this is fundamental in demonstrating human characteristic as grit, a trait helping us to achieve our objective with perseverance and passion combined. Us as humans, are fundamentally inclined to give up from time to time, but demonstrating such amazing examples of overcoming the challenges we face and tell our story in such an inspiring way is a true inspiration. I can at least use this resource to demonstrate students to consider their challenges (the perceived ones) as an advantage and think of ways to make a positive change towards themselves and the society on a rightful manner.
How could you integrate the research/work your students do on this subject into your teaching/professional practice?
Apart from being an inspirational artist, she could be used as a great example of entrepreneur and activist. A person with disability overcoming the norm challenges and setting new ways of artistic conceptualization. This is a great example not only to observe perseverance, grit and self belif but an accomplished artist who has created her very own niche of art . People who can related to her. She is a great brand ambassador to her own art and her own personal story tells a compelling story in artist and their personal stories in branding them.
Can you cite examples?
Unfortunately I had never experience of bringing a disabled key note speaker to my class, but this has made me realise the amazing and massive inspirational power of using such powerful and interesting and inspiring people as example of best practice in Business studies. This will for sure inspire me to seek for keynote speakers who have overcome their challenges to the benefit of themselves and the communities they relate to.
This article has fascinated me . Before starting the Unit and focusing on disability it never crossed my mind the Disability issue is linked with white supremacy and the privileges the white people enjoy in western part of the world. once I finished the article I also checked few videos recorded by Annie Elainy who raises the important issues on the topic. The fact that most disabled people are mainly represented by white people for sure would make any person of color or ethnic minority to feel left out alienated.
This made me more curios and I tried to search for further sources on the topic. One of the most personal and inspiring stories I came across was on the athlantic ” You have to Scream up” by Shalene Gupta. Her personal story and stuggle to grow up in the US as a person of Color with disability and against all odds to acquired a law degree to fight her rights in a society who has been ignorant to her needs..
It is shocking to read in the article that , according to American Community Survey Data, 14 percent of black Americans have disability compared to 12.6 of the total population. 36% of black Americans live in poverty in comparison to 26% of disabled Americans. Disabled black people are less likely to get the right diagnosis on the right time. And this further along stretches the possible higher number disabled people in the community. This could be specially true for “invisible disability” such as autism which educators are more likely to dismiss as behavioral issues in black than in white ones.
This has led to the importance to consider the intersection between the Racisms and Ableism
. How Could you apply the resources to your own practice?
Yet again a very critical question. By looking into further stats @ officeforstudents.org the note of significant rise of disabled student in education in higher education. To be precise 13.5 of students body attending an English University / college reported at least one type of disability. Disabled students belong to more diverse student body and bring different view points to classrooms.
However according to the website challenges and barriers remain. Students who reported disability have lower degree result and overall lower employment after graduation than non disabled students.
The stats above yet becomes even more critical when thinking Black women or other racial minority and the extra challenges they face.
How could I personally incorporate this into practice?
in several ways :
1- Each year I am involved in screening and accepting new prospects for out MA in Strategic fashion Marketing. Apart from personally being involved in initial screening I do final stage interview and this teaches me to be more reflective and sensitive over accommodating and positively open towards candidates with disabilities who come from minority background be it home or international.
2- By incorporating lecture recording facility (these days easily accessible through BBcolab) and make sure the reciting words are captioned to be consumed at students own time.
3-By incorporating different and wider learning materials in my lectures including video with subtitles, PowerPoint presentation with larger fonts.
4- Encouraging research topics for postgraduate students to pick and study on topics that has challenged them and matters to them. i.e. disability challenges in shopping and experiential retail…
How could you incorporate these learning into your work?Cite an example:
I practice all the above points on teaching specially after Covid, the literacy and interaction with technology on teaching materials have taught us to be conscious of students who need further support.
I also will be more conscious of student recruitment and more than ever mindful of the situation we are facing.
