I have responded to the following resources in more depth in their own individual blogposts, and will try my best here to summarise my reflection from each below!
UAL Disability Services Webpages – (Click here for full blogpost)
From my personal experience with students, there is often incredibly long wait times to get screenings – particularly when they have already started their studies. This can often have a great impact on their first few months of study when they join university. That time of adjustment and recalibration, where they would most benefit from the support of a Disability Advisor but don’t have access to one. In many cases this support doesn’t come into fruition until later into their first project, where it’s unrealistic for that student to catch up, they fail and need to resubmit. This then impacts their ability to engage in the next project and they fall into a cycle of being several steps behind – and through no fault of their own.
It would be interesting to know how the university communicates this disability information to prospective students applying to UAL, and once they are enrolled but before starting their courses. Is it advertised to them, or do they have to go hunting through UAL’s website to find it?
Christine Sun Kim – (Click here for full blogpost)
Christine speaks of translating sound into a visual, and not thinking about sound as it is usually perceived to as others hear it. Listening with your eyes and not just your ears.
How can this be translated into my own practice? As an academic who has worked in industry and now teaches I can get very stuck sometimes in the right and the wrong. The right way to approach this, the right way to finish a particular seam or hem. Often the most exciting outcomes are produced when you attempt something without knowing ‘the right way’, and this is something I can communicate more to my students.
An interesting approach to fashion using Kim’s thoughts could be to create through touch and not through the eyes. Those with visual impairments would choose clothing with tactility in mind rather than visuals – how would you design clothing that way? Is this a scenario I could bring to my classes?
Deaf Accessibility for Spoonies: Lessons from touring Eve and Mary having coffee by Khairani Barokka – (Click here for full blogpost)
A passage from this article really struck a chord with me, when Kharani refers to the lack of understanding and recognition to her condition and how it affects her daily life.
This idea of being let down so many times in the past due to institutional ‘isms’, be it ableism, racism, misogyny or a combination of them all and many others, can make someone feel that there is no help for them and they are not seen. In my experience sometimes students don’t come forward for help, and as tutors we really have to step out and say ‘hey, if you are struggling please speak up because we are here to help and we want to help you.’ I think there is onus on us as tutors to think and acknowledge, past experiences students may have experienced elsewhere might mean they aren’t forthcoming, and effort needs to be made to make them feel seen.
See comments on other posts on this topic here, here and here.
Hello James,
I have read your blog post and here are some thoughts:
UAL Disability Services Webpages:
I have also noticed that there is a really long wait for students to receive support and / or a diagnosis, leading to students having to catch up, but also loosing confidence in their work / abilities.
There is definitely space for further communication of this information. I also wonder how some of the teaching can integrate the disability services in order to make them apparent to students.
One of the year leaders that I am working with organised a few sessions with academic support, integrating this with a project. I wonder would something similar be applicable to disability support as well?
In addition, I have been thinking about how I do not know any of the staff supporting students in student / disability support office, and how it might be helpful to create a better rapport?
Christine Sun Kim
It seems like you have found ways to translate ideas of how Christine Sun Kim works to your own practice. It also makes me think that her way of approaching work is embodied–there is a sense of making from inside the body. I wonder if that is something that can also translate into fashion–designing for something to feel a certain way when it is being made / when worn etc. In addition, maybe there is a way of presenting or encouraging both the ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ through series of tasks that almost juxtapose each other, celebrating the multiplicity of possibilities towards the same problem.
Deaf Accessibility for Spoonies: Lessons from touring Eve and Mary having coffee by Khairani Barokka
I read your full blogpost and found your points about the admission of otherness really insightful. Art education has particularly high numbers of neurodiverse students–is that something to share or remind students?
Or is there a way of approaching disability in empowering ways?
Thank you for sharing
Hi James,
I love your idea of creating through touch rather than sight, or more generally the idea of engaging all senses to explore design development.
Going through the resources around disability also made me consider ways in which I could bring in conversations about adaptive wear to the classroom. I’ve been reading into Parson’s Open Style Lab project and how they have been working with students to develop adaptive clothing. My initial thoughts were to develop a workshop on this, and later I thought about ways to explore this within Year 1 sample room sessions – for example, when we introduce students to openings, we could ask them to consider adaptive design when creating their own openings.. But reading your thoughts on this makes me think if there’s a way we can combine these things – the idea of engaging all the senses to explore clothing, and then design in response to that?
Hi James,
Like Eleni, I have found the screening info difficult to find, and was actually recently unable to get a screening because I’m half way through this course – even though the PG newsletter notifying me of screenings was only just sent out! Very frustrating. I can honestly say when I started my first degree back in 2013 I had no idea you could get a screening, none of this information seemed to be readily available. I also recall tutors telling me not to ask for EC’s as there are I quote “no extensions in life” – perhaps there should be?
I love your idea of exploring fabrics/materials through touch. Afterall is comfort and material not an important factor in fashion ?- which makes me think about how important visual aesthetics are considered to be over the tactile qualities of garments, after all we have to wear these things don’t we?! And who is wearing them? comfort for one person will be entirely different to another, how are body types considered in relation to comfort and fashion trends?
Best,
Joe
Another insightful blog post! Like Eleni and Joe, I have struggled with the delay in getting a screening and also find this happens a lot for students as I’m a year leader. You make a really interesting point about ‘isms’, (Deaf Accessibility for Spoonies: Lessons from touring Eve and Mary having coffee by Khairani Barokka) and the issues around the use of ‘isms’. I agree that there does seem to be a vulnerability that some students avoid when disclosing an ‘ism’, however we also seem to be bound by the policies and processes available to provide care according to diagnosis and ‘isms’. The inflexibilities around support and diagnosis, as well as the waiting times, create a dichotomy of experiences of time when studying: the fluid fast pace of learning versus the glacier-like pace of diagnosis systems. There is an interesting document on compassionate pedagogy on canvas that I found really useful in navigating this, and creating smaller, individual spaces for students to allow disclosures of different levels (both levels of severoty and levels of imparting information) to emerge, but there’s definitely a long way to go.