Department of Art

The 1st International Conference on Disability Studies, Arts, and Education

September 28th and 29th, 2017: Exploring the intersections between disability, arts and pedagogy.

Aalto University School of Arts, Design and Architecture, Hämeentie 135 C, Helsinki, Finland

September 28th and 29th, 2017

The conference brings together researchers, students, artists, art educators and members of the disability and crip art communities who share an interest in, or whose work addresses, the intersections and interplay between critical disability studies, arts, and education. The scope of the conference comprises various art forms, such as visual arts, performing arts, dance, and film, as well as different contexts of education, such as primary education, higher education, professional artists’ education and public pedagogy. The members of the organizing committee are: Mira Kallio-Tavin, John Derby, and Mikko Koivisto.

The conference is open to everybody, and there is no admission fee. However, we kindly ask all participants—both presenters and audience members—to register through this online form by September 10th.

The conference has three keynote speakers: Curator and scholar Amanda Cachia (Australia, USA), art education and disability studies scholar Jennifer (Eisenhauer) Richardson (USA), and comics artist Kaisa Leka (Finland).

More information about our keynote speakers, full conference programme and the presentor listing and presentation abstracts can be found below.

Keynote Speakers

Amanda Cachia received her PhD in Art History, Theory & Criticism at the University of California, San Diego in Spring, 2017, and is an independent curator and critic from Sydney, Australia. She is also the first full-time Assistant Professor of Art History at Moreno Valley College in the Riverside Community College District in Southern California. Her research focuses on modern and contemporary art; curatorial studies; disability studies; performance, choreography and politics; activist art and museum access; feminist and queer theory; and phenomenology. Her dissertation, “Raw Sense: Choreography, Disability, Politics,” analyzes the work of eight contemporary artists who create radical interventions in public space by virtue of non-normative body actions, and traces a genealogy for this work through avant-garde art movements from the 1960s and 1970s to offer an expanded narrative on performance, minimalism and Fluxus from a disabled perspective. She was a 2016 Yale University Sarah Pettit Doctoral Fellow and was the recipient of the Irving K. Zola Award for Emerging Scholars in Disability Studies, issued by the Society for Disability Studies (SDS) in 2014.

Jennifer (Eisenhauer) Richardson is an Associate Professor in Arts Administraon, Educaon, and Policy at The Ohio State University and an affiliated faculty member with the Disability Studies program. Her research explores, through social and cultural theory and philosophy, the representaons of disability in visual culture and parcularly the cultural and visual construcon of understandings of mental disability within both historical and contemporary representaons. She has published in journals including Studies in Art Education, Disability Studies Quarterly, Visual Arts Research, Journal of Literary and Cultural Disability Studies, International Review of Qualitative Research, and Art Education . Dr. Richardson also writes creave nonficon and poetry and was nominated for a Puschart prize for an essay appearing in South Loop Review.

“You know, you could also look normal if you’d just wear pants!”

This is a question I’ve actually been asked. Several times. And always as a compliment. But I’m not normal, and it isn’t something I aspire to be. Normality is confining. It’s static. But most of all it’s boring. Why anyone in their right mind would want to be normal is beyond my comprehension.

I’m a comics artist and I publish autobiographical books about the nature of being together with my partner Christoffer Leka. When I’m not drawing I’m usually exploring the world on a bike, but the two aren’t mutually exclusive.

I have been awarded the Finnish Comics Society's prestigious Puupäähattu prize and several of our books have received design prizes such as Grafia’s Gold Award. I also regularly contribute comics to several different Finnish magazines, covering topics such as feminism, disability and animal rights.

“Kaisa Leka can be considered a member of the growing international disability arts and culture movement. Across the globe, disabled people are recognizing that their unique bodies are vital sources of creative generation and knowledge, not to be hidden away under lap blankets or put away in institutions. Leka’s autobiographical graphic novel, I Am Not These Feet, is a complicated entry in the growing collection of work by disabled artists whose stories of claiming disability reject and complicate the tired, simplistic tales of ‘overcoming,’ ‘inspiration,’ or ‘tragedy.’”

—Carrie Sandahl

Programme

Daily schedule with abstracts can be found below.

8.30–9.15	Registration and coffee, 8th floor
9:15–9:30	Welcoming words: Room 822
9:30–11:00	Keynote 1: Room 822 Jennifer (Eisenhauer) Richardson: Writing and Creating while on the Schizophrenic Spectrum: An Autotheoretical Encounter with a Pedagogical Dilemma
11:00–11:30 Coffee
11:30–13:00	Keynote 2: Room 822 Kaisa Leka: “You know, you could also look normal if you’d just wear pants!”
13:00–14:00 Lunch
14:00–15:15	Session 1a: Room 822 Panel session: Veronica Hicks, Lauren Stichter, Amanda Newman–Godfery: Voices in Art Education: A Movement Embracing Abilities and Identities of Disability
14:00–15:15	Session 1b, Poster sessions: Gallery Atski Riikka Papunen: Performing with the Other Sarah Swanson: Fostering Resiliency Through Art Education for Children with Severe Physical Disabilities Kate Gugliotta: Oh, The Places You’ll Go! Public Art and Accessibility for All Christina Lukac: Strategies and Adaptations in an Arts Program for Adults with Atypical Communication
15:15–16:00	Session 2 Coffee / Performance: Gallery Atski Andy Best-Dunkley, Sanna Kuusisto, Annika Sarvela, Petri Sämpi: Dance of the Cosmos: a multimedia dance performance by differently-abled young people
16:00–17:30	Keynote 3: Room 822 Amanda Cachia: Disability Aesthetics: A Pedagogy for Teaching A Revisionist Art History
17:45–19:00	Session 3, Movie night: Room 822 (with snacks) Olivia Dreisinger: Disabled!

8.30–9.15	Registration and coffee, 5th floor, NODE Gallery
9:15–9:30	Welcome and schedule update: Room 5022
9:30–11:00	Session 4a: Room 5022 Kelly Gross: Representation, Re-presentation, and Representing through Graphic Novels Lauren Stichter, Amanda Newman-Godfrey & Kate Gugliotta:Building a Mindset For Access(ability) and Art(ability): A Case Study in Art Teacher Education Soula Marinoudi: Precarious teachers, disabled students: The perception of inclusive education in the Greek context
Session 4b: Room 5006 Mira Kallio-Tavin: Artistic agency, cultural participation and disability Ligia Helena Ferreira Zamaro and Sidnei Martins: Sesc Sao Paulo: cultural citizenship exercises through accessibility Maija Koivisto: Changes in the Finnish Deaf Performance Arts Since the 1950s
Session 4c: Room 5009 Hanna Lee: The Implications of a STEAM-based Art Curriculum on Students with EBD Kathleen Boyle: How does technology in the classroom impact students with disabilities? Rosangella Leote & Oliveira Hosana Celeste: Assistive interfaces for arts: From diffusion to inclusion
11:00–11:30 Coffee
11:30–13:00	Session 5a: Room 5022 Karen Rosenburg: Accessing the Arts Through Animal Therapy: How Animal Therapy can Assist in Successful Inclusionary Practices Maria Sdrolia, Polyxeni Kaimara, Andreas Giannakoulopoulos and Ioannis Deliyannis: Digital Arts in Special Education: A potential bridge for Inclusion? Chi-Jen Lee: The effect of using the home book of life story in mental illnesses
Session 5b: Room 5006 Sari Salovaara: The curvy path of a disabled artist Päivi Lilja & Sami Helle: Lifelong learners or eternal students? – Different roles in the field of art, disability and education Joana Monbaron & Alexander Ivanov: Disability, ableism, and the art world: reflections on the project “Tracings Out of Thin Air”
Session 5c: Room 5054 Andy Best-Dunkley: Social Empowerment through Dance and Media Performance Rikke Gürgens Gjærum & Tine Skjold: A look at NUK ++. Research on circumpolar inclusive youth arts festival Liisa Jaakonaho: Dancing, thinking and writing with intellectual disability: entangled relations and ethical tensions