'Voice and Choice' - Picture Timetables and Computer Skills

This week I have been exploring further the development of Savy and Sokun at Epic Arts, as they uncover what they feel they need to learn in order to lead the Epic Encounters team effectively. 

This week, communication of events was high on the agenda after last weeks discussions on how best to communicate between Savy, Sokun and myself. In our last meeting we explored how we could all keep a check on our meetings and record roles and responsibilities. Both dancers expressed a desire for a personal notebook that was theirs to use in meetings. A simple request, but something that seemed to give value and importance to their new roles. A notebook that enabled independence; they could record things for themselves (in whatever way they wanted to) seemed to give them pride, ownership and a sense of responsibility in their roles.

Savy and Sokun with their note books

Due to many of the dancers, staff and students not be able to read and write, picture based timetables are a key element of communication at Epic Arts. Previously these have been made FOR the Epic Encounters team by someone else and, not BY them. As the dancers themselves do not select the images, it sometimes means they are left confused with what images meant. So Savy, Sokun and myself decided it would be much more effective for someone who uses the picture timetables themselves to make them for the rest of the team with some support.

Before we could begin to hand over the role of creating picture timetables for the team, we first had to tackle the fact that Savy has never used a computer before. Sokun has good skills in this area, so we decided that a bit of peer learning/teaching would work well here. So they set about working out together how they could make a picture timetable.

A picture timetable at Epic Arts

This exploration led to further discussions around the development of skills for the Epic Encounters team. Many only learnt to sign from the age of 15, so were unable to access education and as a result have limited reading and writing skills. Savy suggested that all the dancers could learn what he was doing on a computer....so this week Sokun has gone off to explore the small town of Kampot where we are based to see if he can find a teacher who is willing to teach a group of 8 dancers who are deaf how to use word, excel, send an email etc. These are all skills we take for granted, but for many people with disabilities in Cambodia, they are often not able to attend school and therefore do not have access to the development of these skills. 

The added difficulty here will be to find a teacher who believes that the dancers can in fact learn to use a computer, such is the attitude and perspectives surrounding people with disabilities here.

'Voice and Choice' - Enabling people with disabilities to become arts leaders

At Epic Arts we spend most of our time enabling and empowering people with and without disabilities to have a voice and make their own choices in a variety of contexts. This is our day to day work that 'just happens', its a reflection of our collective inclusive attitude and belief that every person is a creative genius and that every person counts! After attending the 'Living Arts in Post-Conflict Forum' in Phnom Penh last week, I was reminded about the power of enabling people who have been oppressed to become leaders and that it makes a huge impact on the development of both individuals and society as a whole and I felt inspired to record, in someway, how we do this!

Over the last three years I have developed methods of providing voice and choice to artist, leaders, managers and students in Cambodia with disabilities and those without, with the simple attitude that there is always a way and with a little time, space and adaptability those who previously have been told or made to feel like they 'can't' or 'won't' by society, the community, their family and their government, can in fact be enabled to discover for themselves that they 'can' and 'will'.

Over the next few months I am going to try and document the methods used to develop the leadership skills of one of our performers, Savy,  as he embarks on training to become a leader of the Epic Encounters performance team in Cambodia. Savy is deaf and does not read or write, he communicates in sign, (although Cambodian Sign has limited vocabulary), pictures and videos. At the moment he is a whizz at using a smart phone but has no computer based skills. He has been a performer for the past 5 years and recently he expressed a desire to learn about the administration of the performance team; learning our bookings, monitoring and touring systems to enable him to take on new roles in the future.

Savy

So we listened and responded.... With the help of Sokun (another performer in the team) who has strong admin and language skills, we will work together with Savy to explore how we can develop his skills, communicate with him effectively and enable him to have a voice and make his own choices whilst also acting as the voice for the other dancers in the company. 

Sokun

In the context of Cambodia this will have its additional challenges that I think will become clear throughout the process. But I hope that by in some way documenting this process others will be able to see how it is possible to give a voice and provide choice to a person to enable them to grow into an effective arts leader and prove to those who say 'You can't' and 'You won't' that they are very, very wrong!

The video below documents our first discussion with Savy about how he thinks we can begin to approach this development with him. I worked with Savy, Sokun and a sign translator and we used paper, sticky notes, drawings, English and Khmer (and a little bit of miming) to workout the best ways we can communicate, pass information, make a plan for learning and development, discover skills that need to be developed and use the skills of others to help us in this process;

Here are the final 'notes' from our conversation;