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 **Special Event** art beyond sight, awareness
month, worldwide
Information
on Art Beyond Sight Awareness Month
“This October marks the sixth year of
celebrating Art Beyond Sight Awareness Month (originally Awareness Week). For
the next 30 days, some 180 organizations around the world are working
together to bring public attention to the need for and benefits of making
art and visual culture accessible to children and adults with vision loss.
Hopefully, all of us will get press coverage of our programs and
services with and for people with disabilities.
If you haven’t contacted your local press about Art Beyond Sight Awareness
Month, DO SO TODAY. Here’s some information you might include in your
letter and/or press release:
·
The benefits of art education for people who are
blind or visually impaired are largely the same as those for sighted
people. Sighted and blind people alike benefit from the critical thinking
skills, language skills, cooperative learning, and general life enrichment
provided by studying art history. Art making can serve to foster sensory
awareness, manual dexterity, self-confidence, and self-awareness. Children
of all ages benefit from academic curricula enhanced by the teaching of
aesthetics, art making, art history, and art criticism.
·
Among the benefits unique to blind individuals are
braille reading skills, mobility and map-reading
skills, and tactile exploration skills, all of which contribute
significantly to a blind person’s success in a sighted world. Being versed
in and contributing to visual culture helps blind people to break through
social barriers and increases confidence.
·
Pictorial literacy is a concept not everyone
recognizes, but which plays a crucial role in everyday life. Consider how
much more difficult it is for blind people to learn biology without having
a diagram of the heart, or to memorize the location of each state of the
United States when provided only with an educator’s verbal description of
the map. Sighted people have access to a wealth of pictorial information:
they form image banks containing images and symbols, from road signs to
the Egyptian pyramids. We need to introduce pictorial literacy to people
who are blind by teaching them to use and create tactile images. Blind
people are able to understand visual information through touch and sound,
and these learning tools need to be made available to them.
Feel free to contact Art Education
for the Blind for direct quotes from its staff to include in your press
release – or to give Art Education for the Blind’s phone number to
reporters. It is (212) 334-8720.”
Art
Beyond Sight
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Eco Sound Logo
To contact us:
E-mail:
editor@blindnessandarts.com
We are based in:
Leicester,
UK
Eco
Ancient Greek, Verb, pronounced Ekh-o. The
Transliterated word is Echo. New Testament Greek Lexicon
“[To] have (hold) in the hand, in the sense of wearing, to
have (hold) possession of the mind (refers to alarm, agitating emotions,
etc.), to hold fast keep, to have or comprise or involve, to regard or
consider or hold as.”
Source: http://www.crosswalk.com
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 Touching Art Touching You, Truro, UK
Information
on Touching Art Touching You
“Royal Cornwall
Museum... [Thereafter 26th July –
4th October] River Street, Truro, TR1 3SJ
Ruth Spaak’s Tactile Textures is a mixed media,
three-dimensional relief piece, for hanging on a wall. As the title says,
it is made to be touched.
A very wide
diversity of non-art materials has gone in to making it: curtain hooks,
metal washers, hair bands and curlers, cable ties and security tags, to
name but a few. These have been stitched into four conjoined silicon sink
mats: the effect is rather like a wild and wonderful variation of the
old-fashioned rag rug, though if you tried to walk on this you would
probably trip up. The materials are made of different plastics, which have
been dyed to create sumptuous, rich colours. The piece is made up of
layers of differing depth, so that it can be explored in different ways:
whether quickly, as people pass by, or thoroughly and at length. Either
way, the little bells add a dimension of sound to the experience.
Spaak’s work explores the visual dynamics of constructed
surfaces and multi-layered structures; she explores the creative
possibilities of transposing recycled and found objects using industrial
products to link and combine materials. She uses everyday objects and puts
them out of context to tease our senses and to surprise us, her works
focus mainly on sense of touch – touch is vital to their appreciation.”
Blind
Art
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Francis Bacon – Programme for
visually impaired visitors, Tate Britain,
London, UK
Information on Tate Britain’s
Programme
“Tate Britain’s
programme for visually impaired visitors
Francis Bacon exhibition audio-described tours
11 September - 4 January 2009
Francis Bacon was once described as the 'greatest painter since JMW
Turner', and his powerful works are on show in a retrospective at Tate Britain.
Audio-described tours can be booked for individuals or groups (exhibition
ticket required).
For details of Large print and
Braille maps with gallery information, large print exhibition guides, and
What’s On guide contact Tate Britain, Millbank,
London SW1P 4RG
Phone: 020 7887 8888
www.tate.org.uk/access”
Tate
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Shared Visions, California, US
Information on Shared Visions
“Shared Visions 2008-2009 - Save the Date
International Art
Exhibition Opening Reception Artwork by artists who are blind or visually
impaired.
Tuesday, September 23,
2008… 7:00 - 8:30 pm [until mid August 2009]
Eye
Care Center, Southern California College of
Optometry, 2575 Yorba Linda Blvd., Fullerton,
CA 92831,
[US] ”
South California College of Optometry
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