Deprivation Strategies: Increasing Public Understanding of Vision Impairment Using Performative Pedagogy

This paper theorises, articulates and demonstrates how performative pedagogies can be employed to engage participants (both sighted and non-sighted) with haptic, gustatory, olfactory and aural sensorial-immersive encounters as part of an ongoing mixed-method project You Don’t Need Eyes to See You Need Vision that aims to develop pedagogic practices, enhance learning experiences for students who are visually impaired and improve public awareness of the need for new practices. Using performative pedagogy and ‘deprivation strategies’, this project has opened up new ways of thinking about how we engage our bodies (for both sighted and non-sighted persons) to experience a multitude of senses beyond the visual, carving out revised ways of thinking about bodily affect in space and time. In recognition of this work, I was a recipient of the University of Lincoln Best Practice Award in Promoting Equality in 2017.