Visions of Creativity: Fight For Sight and the Power of Accessible Art

Event participants, supported by Fight For Sight volunteers, creating textured art pieces

DO NOT TOUCH is a command every visitor to an art gallery will be familiar with. For too long, we’ve been told art is something to be appreciated with the eyes alone, and any attempt to get closer usually sets off an alarm or summons a curator to remind you to take a few steps back, please. 

An attendee explores the textures of a painting

But as sensible as this rule is, it’s also a limiting one. By definition, it excludes blind and visually impaired people, impeding them from appreciating and experiencing creative works, and the joy which they bring. Art brings us together, and can be a powerful support tool. More than 75% of people who are blind or vision impaired feel lonely or socially isolated, according to a recent report by the charity Fight For Sight, which seeks to prevent and treat blindness and eye disease. Many of them reported feeling disconnected, as though they were the ‘last human alive’.

For too long, we’ve been told art is something to be appreciated with the eyes alone.

When LONDNR stumbled across this topic, we were fascinated by the challenges and rewards of perceiving art without sight. If art is more accessible, will it enhance our understanding of beauty and inventiveness? What limits have we placed on art with the tyranny of gaze? 

We teamed up with Fight For Sight and abstract artist and educator Furrah Syed FRSA to help put together what we hope will be an ongoing effort to bring art to the blind and visually impaired. The resulting collaboration, Creative Connections: Art and Vision, was hosted on November 28th at the private residence of Lady Frances Segelman. An acclaimed artist and patron of the charity, Frances made a name for herself as a speed sculptor, moulding sitters like Queen Elizabeth II and Dame Joan Collins in front of an audience. 

Event participants take part in a colour energy frequency exercise

Furrah, who led the activities, has been running her art appreciation workshops since 2009. Despite starting out in a corporate career, she was inspired to paint during a three-year stay in India and established herself as a full-time artist after returning to London. ‘My passion and my mission has always been to make art accessible to all,’ Furrah says. ‘It’s so important for people who are relying on a different sense to experience art in other formats.’

The first activity for the workshop’s participants was to be offered eight of Furrah’s canvases, as well as tactile artworks by the Braille artist Clarke Reynolds, and sculptures by Frances Segelman and Ahuva Zeloof, which they explored through touch. ‘It immediately makes the participants feel welcomed to explore art using the sense of touch,’ Furrah says. ‘It also relaxes them to know how valuable their reactions are to us all.’

‘It’s so important for people who are relying on a different sense to experience art in other formats.’

They then practised sensing colour via energy frequencies, an exercise inspired by Furrah’s training in Advanced Pranic healing. The final part of the workshop involved participants making their own art – often the first time. Paint, glue, and grains were the tools, and the blind and visually impaired participants, with the help of sighted volunteers, assembled these different substances on canvases to create a textured art piece. 

Furrah Syed FRSA

Over the years, Furrah has gathered a wealth of information about how colour can be experienced by those who have never seen it. She says that anyone can sense the energy vibrations different colours emit, with reds or oranges emanating warm vibrations while whites or blues radiate cool ones. ‘Every time I see the joy in a blind participant whose discovered they can physically feel colour, it fills me with gratitude,’ she says. ‘It is a privilege to be able to share these moments.’ 

One incredible example involves a lady who attended a workshop in Sydney, and could sense the difference between warm vibrations from orange paint and cool vibrations from pale green through a single hand, simply by hovering it over the blended hues on a canvas. 

It’s not just visually impaired people who benefit from such artistic initiatives.

‘This was the first time I saw someone feel two contrasting colours on the same hand,’ Furrah says. The participant was so inspired she then became a colour energy therapist. ‘Most of the attendees had never engaged with art in this way before. They really enjoy having their opinions valued. There are no limitations of what they are feeling. It shows how art can connect us on a deeper level.’ 

A participant examines a painting’s colour energy frequencies

It’s not just visually impaired people who benefit from such artistic initiatives. Sasha Galitzine, who curated the exhibition BEHOLD! (A show about touch) in 2023, alongside blind and partially sighted collaborators, says employing a multi-sensory perspective gives everyone greater access to art. Sasha points out that the silence of traditional galleries, while valuable, can feel intimidating, particularly to people who are less confident around art. In contrast, BEHOLD encouraged light-hearted ways of engaging creatively, from offering tactile floral installations to an interactive storytelling performance. 

‘If playful multi-sensory encounters with art were encouraged, many more people would feel empowered to interrogate art — out loud — with friends,’ she said.

‘Non-visual living is an art.’

Instead, Sasha suggests that museum programmes could encourage activities such as describing an artwork to a friend who’s looking away from it. ‘Conversations enable people to voice their emotions, connect with personal associations and be prompted by others to think more deeply,’ she says. This kind of small exercise is easy to implement yet encourages thinking outside the box – a skill most of us could probably do with honing. 

Fight For Sight staff and Furrah Syed

This frontier in disability and the arts is slowly getting more attention. Just last month, the Henry Moore Institute held a symposium on the arts and ‘blindness gain’, a term coined by Professor Hannah Thompson, an expert in disability studies. It describes how blindness can be treated as an opportunity to engage with the world in creative and multi-sensory ways. In turn, non-blind people benefit from measures which support blind people, whether that’s in the popularisation of audiobooks or programmes to make art more accessible. ‘Non-visual living is an art,’ Professor Thompson says. 

‘Blindness gain’ is an especially apt way of understanding why these accessibility programmes matter. In adding multi-sensory dimensions to museums, or helping blind and visually impaired people make art, these experiences can reveal new ways of experiencing art that we can all share.

For more information about Fight For Sight’s work or to read their latest report, click here.

To learn more about Furrah Syed’s art and workshops, click here.