The speaker, Andrea Pregel, did the master's degree in Special and Inclusive Education at Roehampton and then went on, with fellow students, to found a voluntary organisation Global Observatory for Inclusion (GLOBI) to build on their shared interests in disability and childhood. While their background is in disability, they're also interested in inclusion broadly including e.g. migration. Their vision of embraced diversity values includes active and global citizenship and the biggest project to date, DrawDisability. This was the topic of Andrea's paper - and as I listened, I was struck with the potential for making connections with our own project.
Working with the UN, the team are seeking to raise the awareness of children worldwide about disability via a global art project. Here children draw disability after a discussion of what constitutes disability and submit their picture - a selection of this work has already been put together in a book available in print form (I have a copy which Andrea was kind enough to sign beside me as I write) and online.
Andrea explained that they went for art because of its potential as a global language - and this got me thinking of the potential for art in our work - e.g. in collecting oral traditions and communication them and in Sonya and Steve's animations, and also in relation to how artefacts, for example in museums, can get children personally engaged with the classical or other pasts and presents. One thing that struck me was how far children around the world appear to have been saying comparable things - and I asked afterwards whether any regional variations came up. The response was that they don't know for sure yet - but they have all the data thanks to the artwork and this could now potentially be analysed.
I came away from the session mulling on the potential for art as a powerful narrative tool for social transformation, which can empower children - as global citizens - to observe their own societies differently - and to discover that their voices count. And then, as I was browsing through the book after the session I discovered that one of the published pictures, by Spoorthi Cherivirala, Aged 13, from the USA, depicts - tenderly - an owl, held inside a pair of hands with a brain visible behind the hand. This picture, called 'Trapped Wisdom' includes the word 'Autism' in the bottom left-hand corner - if you open the link to the book given above and turn to p. 19 you'll be able to see the picture.
I've long been thinking about the potential for using Athena in the materials I put together on autism and classical mythology - and now I see that I'm not alone here. And to illustrate this poster I just searched for 'autism owl' and was blown away to find a range of uses of the owl as a symbol for autism awareness, including this one, which I've now inserted at the head of this posting. This is all going to need investigating - and I'm wondering whether to start the materials with the owl, perhaps as a counterpoint for the gorgon, which I'm certain planning to use, as mentioned in my previous posting.
More soon!
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