Disability Arts and Education in Brazilian and British Contexts - a Personal View

Disability arts and education in Brazilian and British contexts - a personal view

Paper presented at SCUTREA, 32nd Annual Conference, 2-4 July 2002, University of Stirling

Ida Mara Freire, University Federal of Santa Catarina, Brazil

Introduction

‘…I couldn’t find disabled artists who I felt were making very interesting work and …in quite an experimental way. …But gradually, over the last few years, I’ve come across a whole arena of artists who are either disabled themselves, or who are working with disabled people. There are lots of very good work going on with disabled people, … it was important work, it was valuable work, but artistically, I didn’t find it very challenging. But over the last few years I’ve begun to find some artists who are doing that and consequently we have started to work with those people’.

(Jane, 2002)

‘You train teachers, right. A very important thing to get across to teach, or teachers of people, a big - and it’s not just blind people but disabled people, in life and in theatre and in art – a big lag is a big exclusion. That is so often people – able-bodied people, sighted people – think they know answers so they make assumptions about what... how you do something if you’re blind, or how you experience, without asking’.

(Tim, 2002)

The two extracts above are from interviews quoted in my recent research about art and disability in a British cultural context. The first interviewee was Jane Greenfield, a British, able- bodied director of Dance 4, National Dance Agency in East Midlands, which features experimental dance. The second is Tim Gebbels, also British, and a non-sighted actor and dancer. These two quotations demonstrate the way that art and disability implicate on adult education. At a glance we can identify the challenges to people with disability to work in the field of Arts. Despite ‘in life …and in art there is a big exclusion’ as said Gebbels, besides, professionally they need to be good artists. Another point is the teachers' attitudes towards disability, which certainly affects the success of people with disability in an Arts career. Regardless of these problematic aspects, or maybe as a consequence of this, there has been increase in the demand of people with disability in Arts courses, now bringing around these issues to the field of lifelong education in general, and to teachers in particular.

It seems plausible and legitimate that those arts agencies are looking for good and interesting professionals. Indeed, it is quite reasonable that disabled people are looking for good professional qualifications. But at the same time, this can be a complex picture. In fact, we can start inquiring what kind of artistic work has been developed by or with disabled people. In order to investigate this question, I will be describing the features of the arts involving people with disability in Brazil and Great Britain. In this paper I intend to examine the phenomena 'art and disability' and 'disability arts', identifying some issues to adult education teachers.

Before this, I should clarify that the terms, which will be used here, are the ones proposed by the British National Disability Arts Forum. It defines and distinguishes arts and disability as the following:

Disability Arts is defined by training in, creating and presenting artwork that is rooted in the Social Model of Disability and reflects upon disability as social construct. In addition, Arts and Disability, refers to the process of introducing disabled people to the arts in general, either as practitioners or as consumers. On the other hand, Mainstream Arts, involving Artsorganisation's, practice or management which is not specifically targeted at disabled people, other than viewing disabled people as arts consumers alongside the rest of the community. Mainstream arts are a very broad term and apply at every level of arts practice and to every art form (Great Britain, 2001: 27).

Seeing as method

Looking through the web sites and media in general, reading magazines, watching performances groups, also, interviewing artists and directors of arts organisations I have examined a widespread variety of works involving arts and disabled people. Similarly to England, in Brazil it is possible to find an expressive number of disabled artists, and several groups of able bodied artists working with people with disability, even though in smaller proportion. As a Brazilian researcher and dance movement teacher of blind and visually impaired people, I have been learning to see the altered states of disability.

In a phenomenological approach seeing is presented as its method:

Of course it is not, just a ordinary seeing. Seeing requires an effort. We can see dimly, obscurely; we can and often do disagree as to what we see and need to look again, carefully, painstakingly, correcting earlier observations, supplementing them with further clarification. (Kokák, 1978:1 43)

The connection between art and disability drives forward the professional of education forward to an intentional understanding of the ways of seeing. Husserl's relevant discovery about intentionality of all acts of consciousness, Arendt (1978: 46) argues:

that appearance always demands spectators. And thus implies an at least potential recognition and acknowledgement has far-reaching consequences for what we, appearing beings in a world of appearances, understand by reality, our own as well as that of the world.

To put it differently, if we don’t know properly how disabled adult learners appear to us, it also could be difficult teaching anything that makes sense to them. In the words of Gebbels:

a lot of discrimination comes from, it’s able-bodied people thinking they know or just assuming that a blind person can do this or can’t do that without actually knowing.

Altered states of disability

In November 1991, in London at Willesden Green Library Centre, 30 disabled arts practitioners and political activists took part in Disability Arts and Culture Seminars. June 1998 at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, DC held the National Forum on Careers in the Arts for People with disabilities. In November 2000, in Brasilia, DF held V National Congress of Art Education in School for All and VI National Festival of Art without barriers. The similarity in these events lies beyond the discussion about culture, education and accessibility. Indeed, we can see the raising of the controversial distinction between 'art and disability' and 'disabilities arts.'

During the last two decades many relevant events have been happening around the issues of disability, art and education in Britain as well in Brazil. Firstly, people with disability become more aware about their rights. This can be clearly identified in the British context, for instance, by the voice of Sian Vasey (1992), saying:

Graeae, the theatre company of disabled people took a more radical tack early on. As disabled people within it moved the company away from limited vision of its able bodied founder towards a firm policy that the company would put on plays that in some way reflected the disability experience. This was actually quite radical back in 1984 or there about, and the company met with quite a lot of opposition to it both from disabled people and able bodied people.

Moreover, there are also the consequences of the inclusion movement and its impact in education. According to Leicester (2001: 251):

We cannot fully consider the education of disabled children in isolation from the need for a disability-aware education for everyone. In the context of the current movement to lifelong learning "everyone" includes post-school learners. There are personal and professional educational needs across the life span, and the case I shall make for providing a disability-aware education applies to adults as well as to children.

As an illustration, to assure the people with disability have access the to higher education, the Brazilian Education Ministry of Estate, on 2nd December 1999, passed the Act n. 1.679 on the basic conditions of accessibility, as well as mobility as a requisite to guide the process of authorisation and recognition of new graduate courses.

In spite of this awareness, guarantees and Acts, disabled people are still facing barriers to accessing a career in Arts. The study of Carol Gill (1998) investigates the obstacles to careers in the Arts for young persons with disabilities. She identifies in the first place some early developmental barriers. For instance, discouragement from family and professionals, as well low expectations, and the lack of support from vocational counsellors. The second major barrier is the absence of a stimulating environment that invites exploration and creative expression. Certainly, the school presents barriers like conflicting activities during the school day, or inability to engage in after-school activities, and the framing of the arts as therapy. Also,

for some young persons with disabilities, teachers are less willing to endorse inclusion in the arts during high school than elementary school, possibly because arts activities in the upper grades are viewed as more "serious" preparation for future work. (Gill, 1998: 16)

Finally, the author recommends: ‘Although, young persons with disabilities pursuing arts careers deserve formal training and "real" standards, they also need instructors who are sufficiently flexible to explore alternative methods an non-traditional approaches to the arts’ (ibid.: 18).

The struggle for high standard courses reveals that the present artistic work developed with disability is not enough to a former good artist. My supposition, lie behind the nature of the artist working is designed to population with disability. Instead the definition before refereed, the connection between 'art' and 'disability' still presented as controversial phenomenon.

Michael Gordon (1997) investigated this tension. In his essay disabled artists view 'art' primarily as a means of establishing an independent 'disability culture' which is of course a political statement. On the other hand, for the able bodied artist, it is simply to engage disabled people's interest and participation in the arts with no obvious motive in mind other than that they like doing it. He writes:

Disability Arts' carries with it considerable ideological baggage, importing wholesale the vocabulary of political activism - access to the arts is now a 'right', 'empowerment is a buzzword and so on, Britain is closer in this reality. (Gordon, 1997)

A good illustration of this is found in Taylor et al (2001);

‘however, as disabled people's political awareness grew, so did our desire and freedom to contribute to the artistic heritage of our country and, indeed, the world’.

On the other hand, the groups working in arts and disability, may be seen as a 'seeding operation,' to bring out and nourish the disabled talent that is there. Also, the danger of disability arts slipping into a sort of artistic social work is ever present, in my point of view. This situation is reflected in the Brazilian context. For instance, in interview with a able bodied dancer and choreographer of the dance company in Sao Paulo A. Passarelli told them after having met some deaf students in Congress of Dance and Physic Education, ‘It was there that I had awakened within me the immense will of working with these people with special needs and [the desire to] help them through the dance to perceive their potential and to live better.’(Perri and Band, 2001).

In addition, the appropriation by the political activists of disability arts into disability culture causes some hostility. This came from: first, not cultivated in the British character of the recognition of the importance of everyone participating in the arts and culture of one's own group, as part of human development. Second, many disabled people believe that encouraging the development of a separate culture can only consolidate 'disability' (Vasey, 1992; Morrison and Finkelstein, 1991).

As has been said arts brings out an altered state of disability. By holding conferences across different countries, by acts, by definition of terms, disabled students struggle to a formal training in art. Furthermore, looking at the tension distinction between disability and art may be we can find the questions of this phenomenon addressing to adult education teachers.

Adult education and disability: changing our way of seeing

Britain shows the emancipation of disabled artists by struggling to a definition of the roles in art. On the other hand Brazil show us a picture of an incipient mainstreaming art. In short, from my examination of the artist working applied to disabled people in both countries it is possible to list some issues for us to consider in the teaching and learning process of the adult with disability. For the reason that able-bodied people has misconception towards disability and disabled people, therefore two clear problems to disabled artist faced. First, a lot of artist employers don’t believe that disabled people can do the job. My supposition on this discredit is related with the quality aspect of artistic works. Notwithstanding, this work can be significant and valuable, if is not enough artistically interesting and the same time austere, consequently, the learner with disability and the able-bodied teacher are still in a misconceived apprenticeship. One may infer a 'social artistic work', perhaps is just a step to a disabled person access arts, isn't a substitute or an equivalent to a formal training in arts.

Equally important, there’s a stronger aesthetic attitude that disability is ugly, or disturbing, or just not very beautiful. This issue is clearly connected with our ways of seeing. Since, ‘nothing and nobody exists in this world whose very being does not presuppose a spectator’ (Arendt, 1978). In other words, seem natural disabled people being perceived by others, as such them perceiving others. Although, been perceived by other as disturbing, sound quite differently.

Looking at the origins of the term seeing on the tradition of thought, the word 'to know' is derived from the word 'to see', as well seeing is linked to the verb 'philosophise'. Of course, there is a connection with spectator. From the Greek word for spectators, theatai, the later philosophical term "theory" was derived, and the word "theoretical" until a few hundred years ago meant ‘contemplating, looking upon something from the outside, from a position implying a view that is hidden from those who take part in the spectacle and actualise it.’(Arendt, 1978: 93) However, there two spectator positions in this tradition I want to illustrate here. First is the mere spectator as praising by Lucretius as a beneficial or noble distance. Differently, there was the spectator attitude of Solon who is ‘famous for philosophising, reflecting upon what he sees.’ (ibid.: 164) The disabled artist challenges able-bodied spectator to see in other ways.

At this point I wish to bring around a contribution of some contemporary artists, whose have been proposed a new role to the spectator. As pointed out by Brown (2001) the issue is not simply around the artist's body either but the audience's bodies too. Interesting confrontations arise when art, typically seen as 'different' to real life, utilises direct experience and includes the observer in the action as its subject. For instance, says the director of the CandoCo:

In the early days, one of the frustrations for the company was that audiences found it difficult to see beyond their amazement at the abilities of those who they imagined to be physically restricted by reason of their disability. (Charman, 2000)

We should be open to learning other ways of seeing on art and disability. Maybe, we could reflect upon what we see. As an active observer of the project invisible dances... I was invited to change, again, my attitudes towards disabled performers, during an interview with the Frank Bock and Simon Vincenzi, able-bodied artists of the dance company, they spoke about the relationship between dancers and audience. In the words of Vincenzi,

One of the aims of the work has always been not to… just not to present everything that…To present a situation in a space in which those people watching have actually got to bring themselves to that experience. So we’ve … quite often, I think, we don’t say, well this is what we’re doing. We say, well this is just happening. You have to bring yourself and interpret this. We probably present more questions than answers.

To teach arts to disabled adult learners we must face in Britain as well in Brazil- the altered state of disability.

Conclusion

The connection between art and disability requires the teachers to have an intentional understanding on the ways of seeing disabled adult learners. From my perspective, 'disability arts" is clearly a consequence of political activism of British disabled people. The linking of disability with a disability culture has been political. On the other hand the Brazilian context presents an incipient mainstreaming arts with a stronger sense of "artistic social work." Indeed, to both countries arts bring out an altered state of disability, which could not be ignored by adult education. Disabled artists still face discrimination ‘in life’ or ‘in art’, primarily because able-bodied people misunderstand disability and disabled people. Finally, as spectators we are invited ‘to bring ourselves and interpret’ our view of the disability on stage.

References

Arendt H (1958/1998), The human condition, Chicago, University of Chicago Press.