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This column (helpful tips and top-notch topics) is for and by teachers, caregivers, etc. who champion the arts for children with disabilities.
We solicit 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 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. (Spring '04)

Let's Just Dance!
by Kit Bardwell

The Webster Dictionary’s definition of dance is “to engage in or perform a dance, to move or seem to move up and down or about in quick or lively manner.” This definition disappointed me. As a ‘living room ballerina,’ I thought dance was the use of one’s body to express thoughts, ideas and feelings that cannot be expressed by words; a fluidity of movement, poetry in motion. When working with children, I like to label spontaneous, expressive movement as ‘Creative Movement’ and set formations and steps as ‘Dance.’ In truth, it is difficult to define what dance is when considering the huge array of “quick and lively manners” in which we can move to dance anything from the Macarena to the Viennese Waltz. Nonetheless, dance and creative movement is an important part of our physical experience as human beings.

What place does dance have in our education and our American culture? Since it is viewed as a physical activity it is most often relegated to be part of the physical education in our schools. Somehow, we have forgotten the social and aesthetic value of dance. Since our culture is one big melting pot of many traditions, the question may be whose dance shall we do? During his presidency, Eisenhower tried to answer this question by sending a choreographer around the country collecting dances that were to be molded into the “American Dance.” Hence Square Dancing was born. These partnered dances have a sequence of moving patterns that are called out to the dancers by a caller. The tradition of a caller comes from the British Contra Dancing. It allows people to join in a dance without needing to know the sequence of the steps.

When examining my own experience of creative movement and dance in an educational setting I have two memories. My first memory is of the mid ‘50s where I have a clear image of Miss Smith, my kindergarten teacher, playing the piano while my classmates and I moved in a circle depicting different animals with our arms and gait. To this day I remember galloping around and thinking, “It can’t get any better than this.” Unfortunately, this wonderful experience ended with Kindergarten. My second memory is of fourth grade where I was required to folk dance in PE. I remember loving everything about this kind of structured dance.

Without the opportunity to experience self-expression through movement, children miss out on an immediately accessible way to explore their own physical presence in the world around them. Creative movement and dance gives young children of all abilities the opportunity to explore and experience some of the basics of physics and human anatomy. They learn, for example, that balancing on one foot is hard to do, twirling around makes you dizzy, and that there are many different ways to move through space. They also learn how to share space with other children.

Granted, these concepts can be taught through a variety of sports but dance has both aesthetic and social elements. Children have to collaborate in order to create their own dances. They are called upon to make aesthetic judgements. What looks good, what doesn’t? Folk dancing provides a unique structure for socializing. These have always been our dances of courtship.

Dancing to music also heightens listening skills. Indeed, dance is a natural kinesthetic response to music. So much so that a number of languages have only one word for both music and dance.

Just like their non-disabled peers, children with disabilities need experiences in creative movement and dance. Adaptations can be made for children who use wheelchairs by transferring the movement from feet to hands. Children who have low vision or are blind can dance with a sighted partner. And children who are deaf or hard of hearing can dance to a beat that is felt through the floor. I experienced this while teaching at the North Carolina School for the Deaf where their Clogging Team has won championships against hearing groups.

How can we create more opportunities for children to experience creative movement and dance? The answer to this is both easy and complex. The easy answer is to simply engage students in singing games that include dance. The most traditional examples of this are “Ring-around the Rosie” and “London Bridges.” Two excellent resources for additional singing games are 120 Singing Games and Dances for Elementary Schools by Lois Choksy and David Brummit and Step it Down, Games, Plays, Songs and Stories from the Afro-American Heritage by Bessie Jones and Bess Lomax Hawes. The complex answer is to suggest that time, money and space be provided for a visiting teaching artist. Together students and teachers can learn how to explore various subjects from math to weather through creative movement and dance.

Whatever your definition of dance is, I encourage you to do it. Dance for yourself. Dance for our children to see you dance. Dance with your friends, your family. Dance because it is part of this experience called life. Dance because it feels good.

Kit Bardwell is Program Director for Accessible Arts, Inc. (Fall '03)

It is a common practice to show students an example of a visual art project and then instruct them on how to replicate it. With this approach there is often the assumption that the child is familiar with the medium, or materials to be used. Creativity is also limited to recreating the finished product modeled by the teacher. Educators and professionals who work with children of all abilities should consider providing a number of structured experiences that will allow the children to explore and discover the possibilities, as well as the limitations, of the material. Experiences such as these are referred to as “open-ended” art projects and can often produce spectacular and aesthetic results.

Finger Painting with Shaving Cream

You will need: shaving cream, tempera paint – primary colors (red, yellow and blue), and finger painting paper.

Shaving cream adds a very desirable tactile experience to finger painting. Place two or more small mounds of shaving cream on a piece of slick finger painting paper. Pour a small amount of primary color tempera paint on each mound. The students are then free to experiment with the tactile sensation of the shaving cream and paint.

As the students do this, there is the potential for them to create dramatic blends of secondary colors through the mixing of the

This exploration has worked well with students who have low vision or areblind and has also been highly successful with individuals who have developmental disabilities. When dry, the finished painting has three-dimensional depth created by the shaving cream.

Printing with Found Objects

You will need: a large piece of paper (white or colored) for each student, a tray containing a variety of objects (paperclips, keys, key rings, cups, leaves, etc.—objects do not necessarily have to be flat), a variety of colored tempera paints in shallow pans, pieces of scrap paper, paint brushes and water for cleaning the brushes, large bowl of water and paper towels.

Students place objects into the pans of paint to coat them and then lay them on the big piece of paper. Or they can coat the object with paint by placing the object on the piece of scrap paper and painting the object with a paintbrush. Encourage them to explore rolling or dragging the object as it places paint on the paper. After each printing the object can be wiped off with a paper towel or placed into a large bowl of water to be dried off by the next person to use it. Students can also paint their hands to include handprints in their design.

This exploration uses the fine motor skill of using the fingers to pick up and place objects. For children who have difficulty closing their hands on small objects, take a short dowel or pencil and create a comfortable handgrip by adding Model Magic™ around the grip area. Next, place a small piece of modeling clay or Silly Putty™ on the end of the pencil. The modeling clay will stick to the objects and permit them to be lifted in and out of the paint.

When I plan a visit to a classroom for an art lesson, I try to find out about the class. Our district mainstreams students with special needs as much as possible. I start my lesson by determining the objectives or outcomes for the lesson. Then I try to keep my art adaptive aids as simple and direct as possible. The tool I use the most is masking tape. I use it to secure newspapers to cover table surfaces, to secure art paper, to fasten art smocks or hold sleeves up out of the way. With a sticky ring of tape, I keep paint cups from moving, and even use it to pick up glitter and small pieces of paper. I also use Velcro. It makes a great strap to help hold materials in the hand and to a table top surface.

The next tool I use the most is Crayola brand Model Magic. It is lightweight and air-dries. I use it to make custom grips for brushes, crayons, markers, and pencils. Starting with large handled brushes, crayons, markers, and pencils will help students who have difficulty gripping. Another way to make a grip is to use foam or foam insulation for pipes. The foam insulation for pipes comes in different sizes and already has a circular hole for the writing or drawing tool. You can also use a large rubber band and a lark’s head knot on both ends to secure the band to the tool. Then slip the hand under the band. Be sure the band is large enough so that the hand is secure, yet doesn’t pinch.

For painting, I sometimes use a child’s tipsy cup. Since it has a weighted bottom, it is less likely to tip over.

For printmaking, I have used sponges mounted on large handles, spools, or even empty film canisters. There are commercially made mounted sponges also. You can use them directly on paper, on top of a stencil, or the positive cut from a stencil secured down with masking tape on the printing paper.

The tracing wheel (a seamstress tool) is used to outline raised shapes or objects for a student with a visual impairment. I also use a dried glue line, a hot glue line, or a waxed line commercial product called Wikki-Stix.

For cutting, there are many different kinds of adaptive scissors; hand over hand, spring loaded, loop scissors, or even mounted varieties. I use a pair every day with a cord attached to prevent them from dropping and quite often loan them to a student with a need.

There are many ways to create adaptive art aids. These are just a few that I have used that were successful. If you discover a difficulty, think about what you can do to make the process more successful for the student. Then it’s just a matter of trial and error. Good luck and have fun!

Sondra Horning was Accessible Arts’ 1999 Educator of the Year in Arts and Disabilities. She is currently an Elementary Art Instructor in the Hutchinson Public Schools. (Fall '02)