3rd March 2021
On this World Hearing Day, we are delighted to congratulate local Portrush based maker Louise McLean of Atlantic Crafts NI on receiving an Individual Disabled/Deaf Artists Award!
Louise is the first basketmaker to receive an IDA Award and says “As you can imagine, I’m absolutely delighted with the announcement of the 2020/21 award, it will be used to allow me some much needed studio time, where I can work on the development and exploration of existing skills within my artistic practice and combine them with natural dyeing processes, creating a new body of work with a uniquely different design concept, that will form part of an exhibition on completion.”
Many disabilities can easily go unnoticed to others but Louise further comments on how her hearing impacts her work “Hearing loss has absolutely zero effect on me making baskets, but it does however impact on the day to day things most people take for granted, for me particularly when teaching basketry. I use hearing aids and without these I wouldn’t be able to teach - typically basketmaking workshops require lots of space but for me this means more difficulty lip reading and noise travels in a large room creating disturbing background noise. It can prove very difficult, given that you could have eight people in the room and us basket-makers are a fairly sociable lot, so there’s always lots of interaction and background noise level amongst the class. So at my classes to help myself, I always make the participants aware, I will joke and say “if you ask a question and don’t get an answer, I’m really not ignoring you, I just haven’t heard you speak.””
“A few of the worst words to say to a deaf person are “it doesn’t matter” or “oh never mind” … because we DO mind, we DO matter and we DO want to be part of that conversation! Be patient, be aware, deafness effects ALL age groups, it can be very isolating and often there is an intolerance amongst people of having to repeat themselves more than once...
So hopefully this has been a little exercise in raising deaf awareness and of course an excuse to shout very loudly that I got an IDA Award of which I’m so grateful. “
(Supported by an iDA award, managed by the University of Atypical on behalf of the Arts Council of Northern Ireland)
#worldhearingday2021 #deafawareness #artsanddisability
