Shura Davey and Elora Kadir,

Central Saint Martins, UK.

An extract from a discussion between Shura Davey and Elora Kadir about Elora’s time at CSM, the barriers she faced as a disabled student and the perils of making a critical piece of artwork for her degree show and the institution’s response to it:

 

Facilities

 

E: There were some situations that started off my thinking about the way the building appears to myself and to other people – how it opens and works. I thought a lot about the help I was or was not receiving from the institution and used that as a starting point for a lot of pieces. With starting to make ‘How Quickly Would CSM Descend Into Chaos?’ I was in a few situations where the Facilities Assistants had helped me out with access issues when they didn’t need to and those are some of my better memories of CSM being a friendly and supportive environment. Something like that can totally change your day!

 

S: Is that what started your deepened friendship with facilities staff?

 

E: Yeah and then I had to change the routes I was using to move around the building because of a few lifts that were out of service. I started entering the building from a staff-only entrance to reduce any excess walking…

 

S: The rear entrance – or the loading bay?

 

E: Yeah, the security corridor or loading bay. Then I’d just start asking random questions occasionally as I was working with chairs at the time so I’d always be on the lookout for anything around the building that looked a bit lost or abandoned and the Facilities Assistants were the best people to ask because they had such an in-depth knowledge of the building. I really appreciate that kind of thing.

 

It also meant that I could be nosey and ask other questions about why it was taking so long for the lifts to get fixed and when you know these things, you can’t really be frustrated about it because at least I felt like I knew what was going on and not being kept in the dark. I used to really like sitting in the canteen to people watch and I started noticing them around the building, seeing what they were up to and realising that they do a lot and no one seems to notice that.

 

I had a very specific experience of the building as a disabled student and I’d been exploring that in my practice, but I wanted to take it out of my own experience and I wondered what they think about the building:

• How they experience it day-to-day?
• What do they think about all this art and stuff?
• When they walk through the studios, what do they think about what they are seeing?

 

So yeah, I wanted to talk to them [facilities] about what they do as well and I also liked the look of the loading bay and the security control room. I like all those more serious areas where the operational work is going on.

 

In my previous photographs, these are the kind of spaces that I am interested in anyway and I like being where the action is, I guess?

 

I’d also been watching some documentaries at the time by Andrey Paouonov and ‘Being Blacker’ by Molly Dineen was on iPlayer. I’d been reading books like ‘Brit(ish)’ by Afua Hirsch and ‘The Good Immigrant’, which furthered my thinking around institutions and how they are structured. A lot of the Facilities Assistants reminded me of people that I knew and they were much more open to talking honestly than my fellow students.

 

S: So on your last day, I came to help you clear out your stuff, contrary to previous suggestions that you weren’t angry enough at the institution, some of your cohort told you ‘you are so angry – you shouldn’t be so angry.’

 

E: Well yeah, there was my obvious disappointment with the degree show space I’d been allocated, and it unfortunately confirmed ALL my thinking about institutional bias, and I felt like it was happening to me… I was aware of these things, but I thought this couldn’t be happening to me, could it? I strongly felt that I’d made something really interesting, but the institution didn’t seem to care and had put the work that I had made, and wanted to effectively ‘gift’ to the building, under a staircase at the back of the show where no one noticed it.

 

I strongly felt that I’d made something really interesting, but the institution didn’t seem to care. Tutors curating the show had put the work, that I had made and I effectively saw as a ‘gift’ to the building and Facilities department, under a staircase at the back of the show where no one noticed it. I remember looking through the sets of images by two different degree show photographers and I couldn’t find one photograph of my piece…

I had worked so hard to make the video in a short amount of time and it was about Central Saint Martins! I think it was quite an ambitious thing to take on and I hadn’t worked with groups of people before and I was very conscious of that. I didn’t want to be that annoying person that suddenly appears and says ‘ so hey guys do you want to be in my video?’ [laughs] and then creates something awful.

 

S: But you’d already built up relationships with these people because of the interactions you had.

 

E: Only to a few of the FAs. Not everyone. As I was walking past them every day and asking questions about abandoned bits of furniture [for a previous piece], I thought it would be really interesting to get them involved in some way… I didn’t know but how maybe it could be really simple, maybe I could just get them to write their names, every time I walk past the security corridor, everyone who’s in the control room just writes their names on a sheet of paper, like my own weird sign-in sheet, because they have one on their desk… but then I realised that I don’t even know all the FAs so a video where I speak to everyone who wants to speak to me seemed like the most natural first step. I recorded those chats and made some kind of ‘weird’ video. [laughs] Weird in a good way!

 

S: Well I don’t think it’s weird’, I think its really, potent, you know as I told you, I’ve worked in a similar environment to the facilities staff, and erm one of the things I thought when you were talking about it before, it’s that you see these people, they are there all the time, and nobody else is engaging with them and I guess part of that was reflecting some of the experiences that you had been experiencing the whole time?

 

E: Perhaps, and I also really appreciate, when somebody helps you, and they are the hard work of the building. There were occasions where they didn’t need to help me out with specific access issues and that is the kind of thing that I really appreciate. Or when people go out of their way to help or ask you if you need help with something, and I found that nobody was really doing that at all apart from them. And then I was noticing the way they were helping loads of people, around the building.

 

S: They didn’t even make it just about you, they help everyone, it just happened that at that time, on that day you were the person who needed that help… and then it changed your perspective on who was doing the helping in the building maybe?

E: Yes, definitely! Back to the degree show space… I was upset and angry not just for myself but also for the FAs who had taken part. They do A LOT more than just act as “security” for the building [which is what the majority of staff and students think] and a better space would have given it more of a chance to reach people.

 

Some of my fellow students would agree with me on this and others would effectively tell me to get over it or let it go or calm down.

 

My ‘favourite’ time was when I was saying how ridiculous it all is and a fellow student just looked at me like she couldn’t comprehend that I could possibly be saying this about [what she clearly considered to be] the ‘good’ institution.

 

On the one hand, people tell you to calm down. On the other hand, I’ve had people tell me that I am not making enough of a fuss, which is ok for someone to say because they are not really affected, but I’m sick of constantly fighting the institution all the time.

 

That is what I always need to do… I always need to be calling people up on things that they haven’t done and it’s alright for you to say ok, you need to go and… make a fuss about that… get angry about it… tell them that it’s wrong… I’m already making a big fuss; if you knew the hours I’ve spent making a fuss you wouldn’t really be saying that.

 

And if people are going to be looking at me the way the person on my course did, then there is no way I’m letting you know how annoyed I am. Universities are still putting significant barriers before disabled students and failing to provide them with the support they need on campus, according to new research carried out by young campaigners.

 

www.disabilitynewsservice.com/universities-still-failing-disabled-students/