Woven Together
Construction on the new building for the Dot Experience progresses every day, but the education team isn’t waiting on the grand opening to “change perspectives about blindness or low vision and encourage people to act in their own ways to make the world more welcoming for everyone.” The team is taking education programs out into the community to achieve the museum’s mission and whet people’s appetite for The Dot Experience. This year, the education team and volunteers took APH’s message of accessibility and inclusion to 15 Louisville Free Public Libraries, students at public and private schools, civic groups, and community festivals. Education programs focus on various themes, but they are all designed to reflect the content of the upcoming exhibits and the real-life experiences of cast members included in The Dot Experience. One of the most popular programs is Woven Together, a community art project based on the creativity and process of Sugandha Gupta.
Born with oculocutaneous albinism type 1 (OCA1), Sugandha Gupta overcame the lack of disability accommodations in her native India to earn advanced degrees and is currently Assistant Professor of Fashion Design and Social Justice at Parsons School of Design in New York. The Dot Experience will include a weaving activity inspired by Sugandha’s sensory art. According to Sugandha, “We constantly talk about society as a fabric that’s woven…or how community is interwoven…and we use yarn and thread metaphors in our language so often.” Passionate about every aspect of her creation, taking a version of that activity to communities was a natural response to Sugandha’s enthusiasm for her craft.
Heeding Sugandha’s wisdom that, “there are many multiple ways of engaging a broad audience” the education team developed Woven Together, a simple yet versatile activity that offers an engaging way to teach community, accessibility, and diversity to groups of any size. Each group works together to weave different textiles around a frame to create a beautiful design. Frames for the woven piece are based on the size of the community that will add the textiles to them.
Sugandha’s focus on the sensory nature of textiles and the necessity of sustainability brings The Dot Experience team through APH’s factory production on a regular basis, scouring garbage cans for an amazing wealth of textiles to repurpose. The team finds ropes, wire frames, and plastics of different sizes and textures around APH and pilfers “leftovers” from seamstresses and friends that collect fabrics. Our team members encourage participants to use a multi-sensory approach when choosing textiles. An engaging experience that children truly enjoy, they choose textiles first by touch, then by sight. This fall, we will be increasing the sensory focus by adding fall spices and scents like cinnamon, cloves, and dried sage. In the spring, participants will be able to choose fresh lavender twigs and other herbs to intertwine into their designs.
This year, Woven Together has engaged individual groups that produce a single, collaborative work. The team is also developing a program for a civic group that will allow six separate camp groups to participate in a summer-long, single weaving project focused on their community. Woven Together is an activity that can expand as needed and has the potential to meet the needs of many types of different communities.
Whether Woven Together takes one group a single day or several groups six weeks, each program will reflect Sugandha’s passion for community, disability, and sustainability. Each completed frame is a testament to understanding that welcoming disability enriches the diversity of every community.
You can learn more about Sugandha’s life, art, and role in The Dot Experience by reading our blog The Dot Experience Cast: Sugandha Gupta.