Disability and intersectionality are both areas of inclusivity I know shockingly little about, despite having a long-standing chronic illness myself. It seemed too complicated for me to ever truly engage with it. By reading those resources, it dawns on me that I am not alone and that it is indeed very much worth advocating for change.

As a first step, the UAL Disability Support webpages are a great resource to share with UAL staff and students directly who mention that they experience any form of disability, either during pastoral tutorials or other encounters. This is the first I ever looked at this resource, and at the Equality Act 2010. So far I did not require any extra support from UAL for my condition, but it is great to see that through UAL a lot of support is available.

Both the short film about Christine Sun Kim by The Selby (2010) and the interview with Vilissa Thompson (Blahovec 2016) are great examples to start thinking about disability, positionality and intersectionality. I was aware of Christine’s work before watching the film and particularly loved her visualisation of social interactions. I was, however, not aware of her earlier work and it makes sense to see and hear that her interest is in the physicality of sound – making sound visible and felt – as a person with a hearing impairment. This film is a great example for students to think of their own positionality and how this influences or might influence the work they make. Intersectional representation is not something I have previously though about a lot, but reading this interview about the #DisabilityTooWhite campaign already attunes me to be more conscious about how certain things are represented and why it matters to provide more diverse perspectives on the marginalisation of people, and to think about different layers of inclusivity. It opens me up to thinking about how diverse peoples’ lived experiences are in the world. I hope to pass some of this information and relevance of it on to the students through my teaching going forward. 

Kairani Barokka’s (2017) article starts with the sentence ‘Pain hides in plain sight.’ A statement, that draws me in and that I can relate to. I grew up with a condition which has caused me a lot of chronic pain at different stages during my childhood and adulthood – and so I cannot help it but to compare Khairani’s experience to my own. Contrary to Okka, I am a white woman and from a country with a very good healthcare system, which I can still access despite living and working in the UK. I have most healthcare and pain management I need available to me and almost always had. Nevertheless, the parts about the traumatic ways in which pain is invisible to others stir something up inside me. Rather than making my pain more visual I always attempted to hide my pain from others. A behaviour I learned as a child. I was ashamed of limping or ashamed to admit my fatigue – I preferred enduring others calling my slow or lazy, attributes that can also be ascribed to ‘normal’ people. All I ever wanted was to be like everybody else. This shame I felt, and my reactions to it, reinforces existing inequalities and these readings on disability are a great chance for me to reflect. Like Okka, I always felt like this is trauma I have to undergo to live my life to its fullest. A world accessible to all always seemed like a utopia – something unattainable and not even worth spending time dreaming about. But practices and articles like this one give me hope and act as a reminder to advocate for accessibility and visibility of disability, create rules and stick to them, both in my own life, practice and those of students. In the end it might just contribute to a positive change.

Following Barokka’s article I feel drawn to exploring more about how my chronic illness influences my way of being and possibly also my way of teaching. In the Shades of Noir reference journal on disability the article by Zuleika Lebow jumped at me – another practitioner who embraces her chronic illness as a ‘collaborator’ in her practice rather than trying to hide it – as I tend to do. Zuleika talks about the fear of being considered an attention seeker for talking about her illness. I get that – I have that fear myself. I want to challenge myself on this going forward, both by sharing more about my own experience, engaging more with others and their disabilities and encouraging students to consider their ability when thinking about their positionally. 

References

Barokka (Okka), K. (2017) Deaf-accessibility for spoonies: lessons from touring Eve and Mary are Having Coffee while chronically ill. Research in Drama Education: The Journal of Applied Theatre and Performance, vol. 22 no. 3, pp. 387-392. DOI:10.1080/13569783.2017.1324778

Blahovec, S. (2016) Confronting the Whitewashing Of Disability: Interview with #DisabilityTooWhite Creator Vilissa Thompson. Available at: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/confronting-the-whitewash_b_10574994?guccounter=1 (Accessed 5 May 2023)

The Selby (2010) Christine Sun Kim – 10min. Available at: https://vimeo.com/31083172 (Accessed 5 May 2023)