UAL Disability Service Webpages
This website offers a valuable overview of the wide range of services and support available at UAL for students with disabilities, such as dyslexia, physical impairment, mental health, and other conditions.
In my teaching practice, I always point students to the services available to them at UAL, so that they can receive the support needed, and be granted accommodated assessment deadlines for their coursework. In the past, I have had students with dyslexia who are highly creative, and may shy away from requesting support. When students have disclosed their disability with me, I have embraced the UAL values of respect, inclusivity, empowerment, and professionalism, by treating the information with confidentiality, adjusting my teaching practice to meet diverse needs, facilitating access to services, and creating a safe learning environment. For instance, when I set up student project briefs for the Collaborative Challenge at LCF, I generally hire venues in the East London community where my research is situated. One year, I had a student on a wheelchair joining the project, so I set up the session in hybrid format to allow her to join remotely, until I changed the venue to one on the ground floor and with step-free access to remove any barriers for her.
This is in line with the social mobility model used at UAL to support students by removing disabling barriers to study.
Film by Christine Sun Kim
This video showcases Christine Sun Kim’s art practice, questioning the ownership of sound, discussing the struggles she experienced when growing up as a deaf person being “boxed” or “othered” and her intention to reclaim her own language through the physicality of sound and performance.
Although I haven’t taught to any deaf students so far, this video is resonant to me as it relates to my teaching and research practice (on fashion and design for social change) with international people who face a language barrier, especially when communicating complex sustainability issues and elements of their cultural identity and diversity. In such cases, I tend to use the power of craft as a form of language and encourage my students and collaborators to value non-verbal language as a way to empathise with each other. By making things together, with my students we are able to craft textile and fashion artefacts that become our means of self-expression and communication of our own identity and culture.
Although this video was focused on sound, it made me think also about other intangible forms of art, e.g. light design (cfr. the exhibitions “Lux” and “Thin Air” in London, respectively in 2021-22 and 2023) which use the power of design to make the intangible tangible. With this in mind, I would like to integrate more such multisensory experiences in my teaching and professional practice.
Confronting the Whitewashing of Disability
This article discusses a hashtag campaign started by disability activist and blogger Vilissa Thompson regarding the representation – or lack of – of disable people of colour. Even if this article is focused on the media, it is very relevant to my teaching practice in fashion and design for social change, and it made me reflect on ways in which I can participate in such discourses and actions aimed at tackling systemic issues, and elevating the voices of disabled people of colour.
In my practice, I use fashion as a form of self-expression, and this is particularly relevant to my most recent research and teaching work with refugees where we use textile crafts to represent shifting identities in the rebuilding of lives in a new place. My ambition is to encourage my students to become change-makers, challenging the current fashion system and diversifying it, and in so doing, shifting from compassion (Bloom, 2016) to empathy (Gamman & Thorpe, 2015) and inclusion (Cipolla & Bartholo, 2014). It is important that all of us – both educators and students – acknowledge our positionality and privilege, and constantly shift power dynamics, so that disabled people of colour are not ‘othered’ and that actions are not taken just for a charitable purpose.
Even if I haven’t specifically focused on disable black people in my research and teaching practice so far, this article made me reflect on the importance of intersectionality and the need to find suitable ways to navigate these difficult territories, with sensibility, respect, and inclusivity. This is crucial work, that needs to be done not only by those who are victim of the marginalisation. In fact, everyone has the responsibility to empower people, and create an inclusive and supportive environment. Moreover, whilst so far I tend not to use technology much in my teaching practice, as I believe it can also exclude people, this article reminded me of the power of digital technologies to enable and sustain communication campaigns and social movements.
Such considerations expand also outside of the teaching environment, and going forward I intend to embed such values (including the UAL Climate, Racial and Social Justice principles) in my professional practice, engage also in advocacy work (e.g. collaborating with Carole Morrison on embedding Social Purpose in the curriculum), to activate change both within and outside the educational system, and build a legacy in my student community and institution.
*** I commented on Liz’s post on Disability ***