Blind and visually impaired people have been working over the last three years with Fruitmarket beginning with descriptive tours and developing into creative workshops.
The result is an exhibition which opens on Wednesday and runs until 13 May 2025 showing what it is like to approach art as a visitor who is blind. The exhibition includes touch boxes now a part of every display at the gallery, deconstructed maps with personal stories hanging on a scaffold and also tactile tabard artworks on hangers. Assistants will be on hand throughout the month-long display to provide visual descriptions of what is on show.
On Thursday 10 Aprilfrom 6pm to 8pm there is a discussion with See with Me lead artists, Kirin Saeed and Louise Fraser. They will share their experiences and insights into how blind and visually-impaired communities are changing contemporary art galleries and access to participatory art. This talk will be live captioned, this is a real-time process where spoken audio is converted into text captions, making content more accessible and understandable, especially for those who are deaf or hard of hearing.
The aim of the exhibition is to ensure visually-impaired visitors get the most out of Fruitmarket exhibitions and highlight the great work being made by the participants. See with Me follows the social model of disability, which is a way of viewing disability that focuses on removing barriers in society. It is hoped that both visually-impaired and sighted audiences will enjoy this, and it is on during the Easter holidays so children can also come along to experience the interactive installations.
PHOTO Neil Hanna
Founding Editor of The Edinburgh Reporter.
Edinburgh-born multimedia journalist and iPhoneographer.
