newsletter Fall 2002

T I P S & T O P S

This column (helpful tips and top-notch topics) is for and by teachers, caregivers, etc. who champion the arts for children with disabilities.
We invite your contributions for future inclusion.

A Visual Reference
by Kit Bardwell

Before coming to Accessible Arts, I had limited experience working with children who were blind or visually impaired. Since I have an adventurous spirit, I found the prospect of teaching visual arts to the students at the Kansas State School for the Blind an exciting challenge. Now, one and a half school years later, I realize I may be learning more about being sighted than I am about being blind.

Allow me to share with you two of my erroneous assumptions. My first assumption was that students who are visually impaired or blind would be very dexterous and have superior use of their hands and fingers. What I found was a culture that used heightened audio/verbal connections. When given a choice, the students prefer to sit with their hands in their laps and talk than to engage in tactile projects. I also found that using their hands to make things and operate tools such as hole-punchers could not be something I took for granted.

My second assumption was that all I needed to do in order to make an art process accessible was to make it tactile. An example of this would be to make 2D pictures using yarn and grains or 3D objects such as animals and cars molded out of clay. You would think this was a safe assumption until you consider the challenge of making an image without a visual reference. This would be similar to asking a sighted person to make a clay model of an alien using only verbal descriptions that refer solely to tactile experiences. My first awakening to this came when a young student was making a bird out of Model Magic and when I instructed her to put a beak on the bird, she asked, “What is a beak?” I had a visual reference to the bird and its beak. She only had her tactile experiences that probably did not include touching a bird’s beak.

On July 28th, 2003, The New Yorker Magazine published an article by Oliver Sacks titled, A Neurologist’s Notebook, The Mind’s Eye: What the blind see. In this article Sacks reflects on the experiences of a number of individuals who lost their sight at different times in their lives. Each individual experienced their adaptation to the loss of sight in varying and unique ways. With the exception of one person, they all continued to use visual memory to construct visually rich mental images. One of the more impressive examples given was an Australian psychologist named Zoltan Torey.

Torey is the author of The Crucible of Consciousness, Oxford Press, 1999. At the age of twenty-one, he lost his sight in an accident at a chemical factory. With the onset of blindness he was advised to develop an auditory mode of adjustment. Instead, he worked to develop what he calls his “inner eye” where he has the remarkable ability to generate and manipulate images in his mind. His sense of orientation is so strong that he is capable of doing things never imagined possible for a man who is blind. For example he writes, “I replaced the entire roof guttering of my multi-gabled home single-handed, and solely on the strength of the accurate and well-focused manipulation of my now totally pliable and responsive mental space.” He later explains that his roof repair caused much alarm among his neighbors when they saw a blind man up on his roof in the dark of night.

This New Yorker article with its numerous tales of adaptation to sight loss made me very aware of the differences between children who are born without sight and those who have limited sight or who were once sighted. Now I approach each art project with the two questions, what visual references am I assuming the student will use and how can I make adaptations to avoid using them?

It is an ongoing experiment but recently I had success in engaging a young student, who has been blind since birth, to make a clay model of a car for me. Cars are his favorite subject to talk about and he can mimic all the sounds from the motor to the seatbelt alarm. Previously he has made model cars by digging holes out of a log of clay and talking about the various features of the make and model of his car. It occurred to me that he would have greater success if he used functional references as a guide.

We began with a canoe shape of clay that Blue ceramic police car was to be the body of the car. I asked him to put seats in the car and from that point he was off and running. There soon was a steering wheel and a dashboard. Next came the hood and the trunk. He asked for assistance with the roof because he was afraid of crushing his creation. Once the roof was on he fitted it with four tires, a grill and headlights. And since this was to be a police car, two big lights were added to the roof. The end result was very pleasing to him because it contained all the functional aspects of a police car. And, to the sighted on looker, it even looked like a police car.

I believe the act of creating art is an attempt to interpret our sense of reality. Our perceptions and the means of perceiving define our sense of reality. Having sight makes me aware of how my sense of reality is infused with visual images and visual references. We may connect with each other through art but not necessarily by the same means.

Kit Bardwell is Program Director for Accessible Arts, Inc.

Valuable Resource Materials
Viewers are encouraged to let us know of other exceptional materials we might consider adding to our collection

At one of the Art of Learning Workshops, the following books were offered as great resources by Liz Kennedy, Program Director, Arts Partners of Wichita.

I See the Rhythm, Toyomi Igus, Children’s Book Press, ISBN 0-89239-151-0 (children’s book about music from plantation songs to hiphop)
The Tree of Life, by Peter Sis, ISBN 0-374-45628-3 (storybook about Darwin – illustrated as if Darwin were the artist)
One Stormy Night… by Yuichi Kimura, Kodansha International, ISBN 4-7700-2970-5 (see description below)
One Sunny Day, Yuichi Kimura, Kodansha International, ISBN 4-7700-2971-3 (best-selling books based on Japanese folktales about how to move beyond stereotypes and have tolerance and respect for others)
More Than Meets the Eye, Bob Raczka, The Millbrook Press, ISBN 0-7613-2797-5 (Seeing art with all five senses)
The Dot, Peter H. Reynolds, Candlewick Press, ISBN 0-7636-1961-2 (how a teacher can move a child from insecurity to creativity to being able to pass it on to another)
The Shape Game, Anthony Browne, Farrar Straus Giroux, ISBN 0-374-36764-7 (picture book demonstrating how a visit to an art museum can impact a child’s life)
Weaving Through Words, International Reading Association, ISBN 0-87207-456-0

Accessible Arts Wish List

Arts & Disabilities Awards
Presented to Toombs & Molloy
by Beverly Johnson

Accessible Arts, Inc. (AAI) and the Kansas State Board of Education (KSBE) collaborate each year to recognize the valuable work of people who include Kansas children with disabilities in art experiences. To honor these individuals, AAI and KSBE established two awards in 1983, one for Distinguished Service in Arts and Disabilities and one for the Kansas Educator of the Year in Arts and Disabilities. On March 10th, in a ceremony at the Kansas State School for the Blind, the following individuals were honored for demonstrating excellence (in the arts) in service to children with and without disabilities.

The 2003 Distinguished Service Award was presented to Mike Toombs. Toombs has demonstrated dedication, leadership, and commitment to the highest quality arts programming for children of all abilities, races and socioeconomic levels and, through his innovative work, has given children the joy of creative expression. An accomplished painter and art activist, he is founder and CEO of Storytellers Inc. an artist collective.

Believing that “Art is a change agent for society’s difficulties,” Toombs has enveloped artists under the umbrella of Storytellers, Inc., to further their careers, explore together how best to effectively challenge the young people they work with, and offer themselves as role models for artists of the future. Storytellers, Inc. has served more than 14,000 young people in arts programming and has received numerous awards for its “interactive community-based art.”

For the last seven years, Toombs has been providing arts education workshops including KIDZONE, TREC Alternative School (KS USD 500), Work Projects with Juvenile Correction facilities, Jobs Programs with the Kansas City, Kansas Housing Authority, and Summer Science Academy with University of Kansas Medical Center. He has been a long-time friend and collaborator with Accessible Arts and other statewide organizations.

Most recently he has been AAI’s partner in presenting The Art of Learning Professional Development Workshops for Kansas educators and artists. He developed and implemented a component for working with at-risk youth that have emotional and behavioral disabilities. He has also developed curriculum for youth on Arts Education and Arts Entrepreneurship for Wichita State University.

Della Molloy was selected as the 2003 Educator of the Year. Molloy has demonstrated dedication and commitment to the highest quality arts programming for children at the Kansas State School for the Blind, allowing them to express their imaginations, gain confidence and experience success. In challenging her students to express their musical abilities to the fullest, Molloy has shown enthusiastic joy in the process and appreciation for the gifts of each student.

She received her BME and MME in Music Therapy at the University of Kansas, and is currently working with the KU Music Therapy Department to better understand the relationship between musical tempo and gait, and methods to adjust gait and speed for multiply disabled blind children. During her eight years of working as music therapist at the Kansas State School for the Blind, Molloy has used music as a therapeutic tool to address and support nonmusical and IEP-related goals for her students.

Superintendent Bill Daugherty said “[We are] highly focused on promoting learning through structured experiences—learning that is often incidental to non-disabled peers who easily observe the world around them and gain the concepts needed to function independently in that world.

Molloy with ceramic award by Meija and Harris

Daniel Meija & Justin Harris present Della Molloy with the award they created for her.

Ms. Molloy uses music to teach these concepts and involve students at the core of the creative process.” Her work spans preschool, elementary and secondary music classes, private voice and instrumental instruction, and classes for students with vision loss and additional disabilities. She organizes a yearly music program and her “process before product” approach allows everyone, regardless of skill or talent, a valued place on the stage.

Molloy’s greatest motivation is the fact that making music is and should be a fun and rewarding experience for all students, in which each can feel like a star in the group. Principal Madeleine Burkendine says, “She draws amazing performances out of her students in such creative and unusual ways—she leaves staff and parents in tearful awe. …She inspires us all!”

Creative Movement Lesson Plan:
Exploring Spaces & Creating Shapes
by Kit Bardwell

We are happy to continue sending our newsletter to all persons who wish to receive it. If you would like to remain in our database as a consultant, artist, etc. but no longer wish to receive the newsletter, please let us know. Our new database will allow us to make this distinction. However, if you no longer want to remain in our data base, please help us by letting us know. We will immediately remove your name from our list. If you have any changes or updates for our mailing list, please notify us. You can e-mail us at accarts@accessiblearts.org or drop us a note at Accessible Arts, Inc., 1100 State Ave., Kansas City, KS, 66102-4411 or feel free to call us at (913) 281-1133. We also welcome feedback about our programming, the content of our newsletter, and our web site. Thank you for your help in this matter.

As a non-profit organization, we are always looking for donations which help us meet our large commitment to champion the arts for children with disabilities. Our “Wish List” is one way to engage the community. Are you a business or individual who has items you no longer use? Perhaps you know someone who does. Below are suggestions that may give you some ideas of how you can help. Of course, financial donations are also welcome.
Arts Supplies & Other Items		Volunteers Needed To Help With:
Model magic clay (by Crayola) Clay tools Poster board Sticky Wick Glue Sponge brushes (assorted sizes Left-handed children’s scissors Colored tissue paper Leather & leather scraps	Construction paper Unusual beads and buttons Feathers - various sizes and colors Percussion Instruments (all types & sizes) Children’s costumes, hats, masks Hat Rack/Clothes Tree	Bulk mailings General filing Data Management Copying / folding brochures Photo album maintenance Arts Programming