Abstract
This paper theorises, articulates and demonstrates how performative pedagogies can be employed to engage participants (both sighted and non-sighted) with haptic, gustatory, olfactory and aural sensorial-immersive encounters as part of an ongoing mixed-method project You Don’t Need Eyes to See You Need Vision that aims to develop pedagogic practices, enhance learning experiences for students who are visually impaired and improve public awareness of the need for new practices. Using performative pedagogy and ‘deprivation strategies’, this project has opened up new ways of thinking about how we engage our bodies (for both sighted and non-sighted persons) to experience a multitude of senses beyond the visual, carving out revised ways of thinking about bodily affect in space and time. In recognition of this work, I was a recipient of the University of Lincoln Best Practice Award in Promoting Equality in 2017.
Highlights
Important RealisationsWhat does it mean to experience the world when you are visually impaired? My current research highlights and challenges a dominant approach in teaching and learning in the arts, the default reliance on the assumed primacy of the visual
Written and oral testimonials given during focus groups by those who participated in the residency evidence how this research makes positive usage of performative pedagogies to improve the breadth and depth of knowledge about human culture in relation to increasing understanding of visual impairment by engaging people who are and who are not visually impaired as co‐producers in a series of practical exercises that promote experiential learning by engaging the body in affective sensorial encounters
Performative pedagogy that prioritises this kind of engagement
Summary
Important RealisationsWhat does it mean to experience the world when you are visually impaired? My current research highlights and challenges a dominant approach in teaching and learning in the arts, the default reliance on the assumed primacy of the visual. By using performative pedagogies to generate haptic, gustatory, olfactory and aural sensorialimmersive encounters in the classroom, students do not need to ‘see’ in order to have a meaningful learning experience Such a pedagogic approach connects with ‘the ‘affective turn’ in the arts (Seigworth and Gregg, 2010), as explored in Eve Sedgwick’s. It links to current attempts in theatre to challenge theatre from an ocularcentric perspective by exploring how theatre practitioners seek to engage audiences in sensorial encounters (Alston and Welton, 2017) These attempts formed the basis for panel discussions during Theatre in the Dark held at the University of Surrey in 2015 and more recently, Theatre Sense – a one day symposium that took place at Battersea Arts Centre (BAC), London in 2018 with contributions by Adam Alston, Lynne Kendrick, David Shearing, Martin Welton, Melanie Wilson and others
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