Victorian Blindness at the National Archive

On Thursday 3rd December, 2015, Dr Heather Tilley is giving a public lecture on 'Victorian Blindness: A History of Advocacy':

Blindness in the Victorian era was an issue of popular - and often fraught – debate. Using the history of finger reading, this talk will trace how blind and visually-impaired people became increasingly vocal in seeking control and ownership over social and political issues that directly affected them, introducing some of the era's most prominent and influential blind campaigners.
More details here

Jacques Lusseyran and Jérôme Garcin

One of the highlights of the Blind Creations conference was Zina Weygand's keynote speech about the blind French resistance hero Jacques Lusseyran. (The recording of Weygand's talk is available on this page in French; the English translation is here). Now another of the conference's invited speakers, French novelist Romain Villet (who took part in the Creative Writers' Round Table, available here), has written a response to Jérôme Garcin's recent fictionalised biography of Lusseyran, Le Voyant. In his article (available in French here), Villet argues that even though Garcin's book offers a thoughtful discussion of Lusseyran's blindness, most readers of both Garcin and Lusseyran, fail to critically interrogate the often stereotypical, often flawed representations of blindness with which they are presented.

Art Beyond Sight Awareness Month Crash Course

On Wednesday 21st October 2015, from 6-9 pm GMT, 8 participants from Blind Creations will be sharing their thoughts on the relationship between blindness and creativity. Callers from outside the US and Canada can find details of how to listen here.
 - At 6pm, Selina Mills, Sebastien Durand and Anne-Lise Mithout will be talking about music (click here to listen or participate).
 - At 7pm, David Johnson and Aaron McPeake will be talking about their art (click here to listen or participate).
 - And at 8pm, three of the writers from the Creative Writers' Roundtable, Romain Villet, Naomi Foyle and Rod Michalko will be discussing their work (Click here to listen and participate).

All three sessions are free and open to all. All you need is a telephone and you can listen or participate. The events are taking place as part of Art Beyond Sight's 2015 Awareness Month Telephone Crash Course and they are a great chance to reconnect with fellow Blind Creations participants and share the conference's legacy. All three sessions will be moderated by Hannah Thompson and she would love to hear from you.

If you cannot listen and / or participate live on Wednesday, the sessions will be recorded and posted online after the event. Details will be available here.

Announcement of Lecture

On Tuesday 13th October, at 6pm, one of our speakers, Dr Simon Hayhoe (FBCS, FRSA), will give a Fulbright Lecture entitled 'Why do we think that Blind People cannot understand Visual Art?' in the Michael Berry Lecture Theatre, Canterbury Christ Church University, Canterbury, UK.

The lecture looks at the philosophy of blindness and its relationship to visual art and education since the late Renaissance and the earliest years of the Enlightenment. In particular, it looks at the fascination with blindness and its relationship to perception of the visual world by da Vinci, Descartes, Boyle, Locke, Berkeley, Hume and Diderot. This literature is then compared to case studies of blind people’s experience of creating and learning about the visual arts in universities and museums.

Exciting News about the Next Conference!

We are delighted to announce that plans are underway for the Paul K Longmore Institute on Disability at San Francisco State University and Lighthouse for the Blind and Visually Impaired to host the third 'blindness' conference in San Francisco, most likely in summer 2017. More details coming soon...

Blog Post from Maria Oshodi

Many thanks to Maria Oshodi from Extant who has written a blog post about the conference and the wonderful Flatlands demo. Read the blog post here.

UK Press Coverage

We are delighted that Hannah's article about the conference was published this week in The Guardian. Read the article here. A French summary of the article is here.