Blog 1 Disability

Reflect on and analyse how disability interacts with other aspects of the individuals’ identities, such as race, gender, socioeconomic status, and more. 

Fig 1. Disability History Month campaign 2024 | Campaign design direction: Creative, UAL

When I read the question above, I felt a bit overwhelmed. It’s so huge that I asked myself, “Where do I begin?” And I realised that, as an able-bodied (mostly) rational human, I had just identified a very leading question that I imagine most people who have a disability ask themselves all the time. Where do I begin? How do I do this/get there/work this out … It must be endless. The idea that disability is only a visible and/or physical thing is a bias. Disability doesn’t exist as an isolated concept, and everything impacts other things, often unintentionally. 

Fig 3; Snapshot of data taken from the UAL Active Dashboards, utterly bewildering categories that offer no clarity. 

In the reference pieces we were asked to watch an interview of Ade Adepitan by Nick Webborn. Adepitan considered whether there are opportunities for people, regardless of race and disability. Adepitan, a black, disabled paralympic athlete and TV presenter, was reflective but clear and responded with a challenging question; 

“… as a society, do we want to tackle inequality?” 

He considered that although inequality has been discussed for many years by successive governments, he has experienced it through an intersectional focus (Crenshaw). He could see (over the last 20 years) that there were multiple schemes discussed and touted, but none of these had come to fruition in meaningful change. He felt that while overt discrimination doesn’t happen, systemic discrimination still exists and is evident as barriers to employment and opportunities. 

Fig 2, Installation view of Christine Sun Kim’s “Time Owes Me Rest Again.” (Photo: Hai Zhang. Courtesy the Queens Museum.)

In Christine Sun Kim’s “Friends and Strangers”, she addresses how her disability intersects with her experiences in the hearing world. Expressing her life as ‘one big echo’ and noting that sign language (which she uses to communicate instead of lip reading) is full of echoes, repetition, and patterns, which reflects her experience of growing up deaf. Kim uses diagrammatic art pieces to explore the impact of being deaf in a hearing world. Her path to becoming an artist was not easy, was regularly excluded and told ‘no’ due to her deafness. More recently, having relocated to Berlin and as a mother to a young child, she has experienced a level of support (less cost, free childcare) enabling her to work at a greater scale (spatially), bringing ‘visibility’ to the awareness of how deaf people exist in the hearing world through her art. 

In the film, she addresses a presentation with the quote from writer Sara Nović’ 

“I can one hundred per cent promise that you learning sign language is easier than a deaf person learning to hear”. 

Having taught a profoundly deaf student (Male, Asian) on the UAL foundation academic year 22/23) made me reflect on my practice when I saw Novic’s quote, which Kim had presented, and this ties in with the practice of “engaged pedagogy” that I always strive for in my practice. In her book, Teaching to Transgress, Bell Hooks proposes an engaged pedagogy that challenges traditional teaching methods. She believes that education should be a dynamic, interactive process, allowing both teachers and students to be involved in learning and knowledge exchange. She proposes that teachers (tutors, lecturers) must demonstrate some vulnerability to empower students to take risks. With this in mind, I wondered how my student – let’s call them F – could have had an enhanced learning journey. When we (specialist ASD team) knew we would have a deaf student, we met with him to discuss how we could ensure that they would be able to work and integrate in the studio environment. I decided that choreographing how I delivered information to the class was key to ensuring that F – and the other students – would receive instructions and guidance for work. Working in a complex space (columns, room divider furniture) was not ideal. Each session involved logistics: a projector and a secondary screen, both working for digital information, and a whiteboard used for analogue signposting. I would gather students in a centralised seating area so that they could see me and ensure that F had visibility of my face (F does not use BSL, he has a cochlear implant and uses lip-reading), whilst also ensuring I did not have my back to the other students. It was a challenge, and I checked in with F regularly to ensure they understood. F completed the foundation and is currently studying architecture at CSM and reported that their experience was good and enriched by small changes. 

With this experience, I regularly question how much further I, and my colleagues, can go to ensure inclusivity in our teaching spaces whilst promoting an improved, enhanced learning experience for those with and without disabilities. This is an area I want to explore further in ARP. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY

• Crenshaw, Kimberle’ Williams (1989) “Demarginalising the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics.” University of Chicago Legal Forum 1989:139–67, p. 149
• Hooks, B. (1994) Teaching to Transgress; Education as the Practice of Freedom – Chapter 1, Engaged Pedagogy: p.13-22.
• Adepitan, A. (2020). ‘Ade Adepitan gives amazing explanation of systemic racism’. Interview with Ade Adepitan. Interviewed by Nick Webborn for Paralympics GB, 16 October. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KAsxndpgagU ( Accessed April 2025)

• Kim, C. S. (2023) ‘Christine Sun Kim in “Friends & Strangers” – Season 11 | Art21’. Interview with Christine Sun Kim. Interviewed for Art21, 1 November. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2NpRaEDlLsI&t=1s ( Accessed April 2025) 

• Yang, L and Sear, E. (2025 Empowering our disabled community through UAL’s first Disability History Month campaign design, https://www.arts.ac.uk/brand/brand-in-action/shaping-the-design-of-uals-first-disability-history-month-campaign

• UAL Active Dashboards 2024/25 Available at : https://dashboards.arts.ac.uk/dashboard/ActiveDashboards/DashboardPage.aspx?dashboardid=5c6bb274-7645-4500-bb75-7e334f68ff24&dashcontextid=638681486282992055 ( Accessed May 2025)