Hetty Blades

Tuesday (17 January 2017) was an exciting day for the project team as we gathered physically and virtually for our first Advisory Group (AG) meeting. Lars, Helena, and I were joined by AG member, Sarah Whatley, while Gerda, Mahesh, Adam, and AG members Darshan Ambalavanar, and Kanchana Nilmini Liyanapathiranage joined via Skype from Sri Lanka and Devon. There was merry chaos as we juggled four Skype connections across three computers from a small and very warm room in Coventry.

During the meeting, the team introduced the aims of the project and discussed VisAbility’s previous work, before turning our attention to methods, dissemination, and sustainability. The question of how to capture, record, and analyse the experiences of the participants is central to this project. We are planning to work with a range of people, including workshop participants and their family members, friends and relatives as well as people working in local NGOs and government. We will use a mixed-method approach, including interviews, discussion, questionnaires, and movement tasks in order to examine and analyse the impact of VisAbility’s work on the participants’ self-esteem, empowerment, and physical and mental wellbeing.

The AG raised some important questions about the project. For example, when talking about methods an important point was made about the cultural inscription of the body. The way we move and the signification of gesture and body language differs across cultural contexts. Equally, the methods for analysing these things are culturally specific, calling for an innovative cross-cultural approach. The considerations of inter-cultural research came up in multiple ways throughout the meeting with discussions about the necessity and complexities of translation, and questions about how the language used to describe disability might differ between the UK and Sri Lanka.

Some of the participants have become disabled as a result of the war or illness, whereas others have disabilities that they were born with. Therefore, another important question raised by the AG was about how the project will cater for people with a wide range of disabilities. Furthermore, we were probed about how we will make sure that the project will benefit participants in both the short and long term. It is very important to the team that this research supports the people and communities we are working with, and this meeting was really useful for helping us to clarify how we will go about ensuring this.

Despite some inevitable connection problems it was wonderful to meet some of the AG, and to have an opportunity to probe some of our thinking about the project. Thank you to everyone who was involved! I am looking forward to the next meeting!