Disability design framework
Wednesday 17th May
We had two guest speakers today MJ Hunter Brueggemann on ‘Challenging Academic Expression’ and Phoenix Perry on ‘Technology | Relationships | Networks | Care who presented their PhD research work. Phoenix writes blog posts about Chat GPT and how it is used in the classroom. She has a disability, although I never find out what (it’s none of my business) She is also a tutor at Ual but seems very worn out by that experience.
Phoenix differentiates Crip & disability theory – questions asked about diversity including ‘normal sucks’ by Jonathan Mooney as academic research. I have never heard the term Crip used and I asked what it stands for: Crip – an offensive North American term for a disabled person. She talks about the experience of doing a PhD, in the beginning she didn’t know what she was doing, so she started by making things and putting them .in a gallery. She spent time observing people playing with these objects, examining what they were doing – pro social behaviour like studying children playing music together.
We are shown a wheel depicting the synthesis of academic research, practice-based research and research based practice. This is fascinating and the visual representation is useful to me. Phoenix recommends using informed practice – your lived experience as subject based knowledge. As a disabled person – informing your design through your lived experience. Consider human centered and user centered design methodologies. What about my own process is unique? She is an expert on accessibility as a lived experience, bring your expert knowledge into your creative work. There is a lack of resources for those with autism, the knowledge connects the relationship between the object and commonality becomes the ideation. different design needs to discover. Find a problem and solve it. adapting interfaces to the environment such as sightless combat. Interface becomes a tool for change, a provocation, comment on systems – subjective assessment.
This is a different side approach from the human centered, double diamond – no sense of care which isn’t a design system in itself, both colonial and ablest. Design processes are pretty colonial, they don’t account for care, but also socio-cultural issues related to the context of the design intervention. Louisehickman.com – an activist and scholar of communication, who uses ethnographic, archival, and theoretical approaches to consider how access is produced for disabled people Accessibility should be built in by the design course leader or program director. Designers as Craftsman – making meaning. Design in our local community and in our lives. corporation, value doesn’t get passed down to the individual. Ask students to investigate the immediate, understand your positionality. She asks students in her class to share a picture of something that gives them joy. Alice Wong – disability/visibility podcast. Read Truck & Yang on the IP reading list.
Inclusive pedagogy is in the PhD journey. Hunter speaks of doing a PhD about doing a PhD. He developed a sensitivity for social justice in the classroom and at art school. Considered the opportunities and difficulties at UAL Inclusive pedagogies – find your own journey to inclusion. There is no blueprint for this, it is important for each of us to develop our own way, depending on our learning journey and where we start from. He thought he would end up in an anthropology or sociology department not an arts school. He still finds this surprising. Hunter asks us to question ‘Who has the power? Who is affected by the power?’ Be aware, ‘Who gets excluded from the HE journeys? Who gets to feel welcome? What methodologies are used? This resonates with what I learnt watching Coded Bias – there seem a lot of similarities in the questions we should be asking in relation to technology, education and the future of AI.
Lickable Cities: Lick Everything in Sight and on Site. Is his research project that responds to the recent and overwhelming abundance of non-calls for gustatory exploration of urban spaces. The topic uses the same methodologies an architect would use but rather than sight he explores and investigates using the sense of taste. He considered ‘what would be the political implications of that? Would the paper be rejected? Do some forms of practice get preferential treatment to others?’ To his great surprise the paper was accepted.
Lindsay recommends the French philosopher Michel Serres ‘Reasons of mingled bodies.’ He examines the pleasures of running, swimming, dancing and the trampoline, amongst other things. ‘The body is mingling, a complexity, a multifaceted mixture of sensations.’ Also, a great book by Roman Krznaric called Empathy that is particularly inspiring around design/creativity for disability. Catherine Smith PhD programs formulate systematic approaches to literature review. with replicability being core, which feels anti theoretical to the notions of originality. Foucault called ‘transactional reality’ something created by public policy, professional power and everything in between.
Someone posts the question, and we debate ‘How do we transfer inclusivity into an online platform as in-person conferences are exclusionary to the disabled?’
References
Dr Hickman, L. Available at https://digitresearch.org/researcher/louise-hickman/
Krznaric, R. (November 2015) Empathy: Why It Matters, and How to Get It. Tarcherperigee; Reprint edition.
https://phoenixperry.substack.com
Brueggemann, J. M. Thomas, V. Wang, D. (April 2018) Lickable Cities: Lick Everything in Sight and on Site. Available at:
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3170427.3188399
Yang, K. W. Tuck, E. Decolonization is not a metaphor. Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society Vol1, No 1 2012 p1-4.
One reply on “Cross programme event”
These notes and thoughts are great Sarah, really provoking further discussion around the concepts you mention, of power and who gets to engage/own/direct.
I am particularly interested the juxtaposition of the sensorial and tactile elements of practice with learning via digital spaces. Whilst the idea of an unorthodox PhD, centred on the sense of taste is exciting and intriguing, the notion of sensorial experiences in a physical place that can be shared and accessed by all, feels like a progressive community experience in a creative practice – something we as tutors are striving to make space for and for it to be inclusive. However, the question at the end is important – as we are still hybrid in many teaching formats, how can we not only translate or create the feeling of inclusivity but also that same dynamic experience of sensorial stimulation and community.
Not an easy one at all and there is no direct parity yet perhaps there can be equity via creative and empathetic pedagogy – something I may explore in my ARP.