Participatory Arts Projects: A Th ird Space for Companionship

This paper reports on the findings of a study that sought to examine firstly, the themes expressed in the art of disabled people in Greece and Cyprus and in interviews with these artists, and secondly, the ways that such art can serve the school curriculum. To this end, an electronic archive of the life stories and art of interest was analysed. The findings suggest that both the art and the interviews cover issues that are directly related to disability, and issues of general interest. A detailed analysis of two cases seeks to provide an in-depth understanding of the relevance of disabled artists and their work within the curriculum. The discussion focuses on issues emerging from the analysis, such as the potential of this art to enrich the school curriculum and promote inclusive education, and identifies the study's contribution to the international literature about disability, the arts and the curriculum.

Learning Disability Quarterly, 2011

In this essay I consider the arts-created and performed by artists v^/ith disabilities-as a site of productive knowledge for educators willing to interrogate the limits of scientific ways of understanding disability. A sample of artists who deploy the arts for self-understanding and self-expression informed by their experience living with disability in contemporary society is included here. The artists represent all disability categories in an effort to encourage LDQ readers to probe the multiple possibilities that exist for researching learning disabilities by reflecting on the cultural meanings ascribed to disability experience, and, in particular, those meanings authored by individuals with disabilities. The cultural flashpoints described here reflect a shift in understanding the disability experience in the present moment and, as such, hold great promise for translation and application by researchers and educators.

International Journal of Education Through Art, 2020

Disability studies has become an important site of knowledge in the field of art education, among many other fields. As a part of the social justice approach in art education, disability studies enlighten people’s experiences and allow room for previously unheard and silenced voices. Many of these voices have not been included in educational discourses before. Until recently, students’ non-normative experiences have been called ‘special’, as if they did not concern everybody, but only people who were labelled as non-abled and who did not fully own agency in their own lives, or did not fully belong to society with the same rights as the rest of the population. This condition of a normative society, called ableism, is similar to other forms of oppression, such as sexism, classism and racism. Ableism is the production of a normative thinking that assumes bodies to be able-bodied and that marginalizes people based on their disabilities. Ableist production sustains and recreates cultural barriers based on difference and inequality and ‘others’ people who are not in line with normative physical, mental or behavioural ideals. Although disabil- ity was historically excluded from social justice theory for a long time (Derby 2011), disability studies can be seen as an area of social justice, similar to other social justice areas that have been of great interest to art educators.

European Journal of Special Needs Education, 2018

This paper reports on the findings of a study that sought to examine firstly, the themes expressed in the art of disabled people in Greece and Cyprus and in interviews with these artists, and secondly, the ways that such art can serve the school curriculum. To this end, an electronic archive of the life stories and art of interest was analysed. The findings suggest that both the art and the interviews cover issues that are directly related to disability, and issues of general interest. A detailed analysis of two cases seeks to provide an in-depth understanding of the relevance of disabled artists and their work within the curriculum. The discussion focuses on issues emerging from the analysis, such as the potential of this art to enrich the school curriculum and promote inclusive education, and identifies the study's contribution to the international literature about disability, the arts and the curriculum.

Arts and disability. In Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Education. Oxford University Press. doi: https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190264093.013.37, 2021

Summary Art is a significant source of expression for people with a disability and it also represents them in important ways. The work of artists with a disability can augment viewer’s feelings about them, or, to put this another way, the work of artists with a disability can create social change. Not all of the artwork made by artists with a disability is “about” disability, and this separation between being an artist with a disability who makes art, and making artwork examining disability, is often a crucial distinction to make for those involved in the development of disability arts as a social movement. In light of this distinction, art of all kinds can provide us with powerful knowledge about disability, while also facilitating an important professional career trajectory. When art is made by an artist with a disability, and is about disability-related issues, the work created is usually called disability arts. When the work is made by someone with a disability but is not about disability, it may not necessarily be considered disability arts. This collection of work that is less concerned with identity politics is important, and is also worthy of independent consideration.

This article promotes the field of disability studies as a valuable resource for expanding art education’s concept of disability and as a promising venue for interdisciplinary dialogue. While art education has persistently supported special education since its inception, disability advocacy has advanced in the past two decades toward self-awareness, self-reliance, and self-expression. The article demonstrates how disability studies, as the academic manifestation of this trend, can critically elaborate disability discourses in art education, such as those which espouse special education and the uncritical use of pejorative disability metaphors. The article concludes by exploring possibilities for art education researchers to contribute to disability studies and to collaborate on research as an interdisciplinary project to advance both fields.

Text and Performance Quarterly, 2015

International Research Journal Persons with Special Needs and Rehabilitation Management, 2018

The perceptions about disabilities have encountered several shifts over the decades due to the various disability rights movements and the introduction of different models of disability over time. The disability rights movements, particularly those of the 1990s in the US, raised many slogans and used the existing ones to convey the perspectives of the disabled community. One notable among them was "Nothing about us without us". In this paper, I have attempted to explore the interaction between art and disability using the slogan as the basis for the paper structure where I have discussed, through examples, the three aspects of it - art for the disabled, art about the disabled and art by the disabled. In the first section of the paper, I have examined the subculture of Braille graffiti and how it can be seen as an initiative which seeks to entertain the visually impaired and acts as a new medium of social and public display of inclusive and accessible art along with analysing the underlying politics of the field. The paper examines some examples of Braille graffiti art in Nantes, Budapest and Venice and later, a similar initiative by a Russian NGO called Belaya Trost. In the second part of the paper, I have discussed the implications of the dissemination of art by the disabled and about the disabled and used the example of nineteenth-century Expressionist painter Edvard Munch's artwork The Scream. Edvard Munch's agoraphobia and some psychiatric disorders had influenced much of his painting style and themes. The Scream is often seen as a depiction of a disability (as some scholars have pointed out, and have been discussed in the paper) by a mentally disabled artist who suffered from a form of schizophrenia with complications. Additionally, the paper has discussed how certain artworks sometimes tend to edge towards inspiration porn and, at times, the disability of the artist becomes a marker of inspiration for the content or for its shock value. The paper has endeavoured to paint a coherent picture of how art intersects with the theme of disability and its dependence on the lived experiences of the disabled along with the often (mis)conceived images that the society indulges in. ISSN: 2321-9254

This project explores the significant impact of the 'Disability Arts' movement on disabled artists/people by looking at its different areas of influence. Although small-scale, the research used mixed methodology, with the aim of finding out about: the emergence and development of Disability Arts in the UK; the views of disabled artists about their own work; and consequently the formation of a ‘reclaimed’ cultural identity in ‘Disability Culture’. The project explores a range of evidence on Disability Arts activities, including secondary sources, books and various other relevant literature/documents as well as qualitative face-to-face unstructured interviews, focus groups and a period of participatory observation in two Disability Arts organizations. The study adopts an approach committed to the social model of disability (with disablement perceived as resulting from social exclusion due to external barriers rather than individual physical flaws). A crucial aim was to try to provide some in-depth material on a previously not so researched area, the type of information which might then be used in an effective way to help further development of this movement. The project was also experimental, allowing exploration of potential methods for further research.