Norfolk charity appoints MA graduate as first Artist in Residence

MA Communication Design graduate Amy Fellows has been appointed the first Artist in Residence at The Norfolk & Norwich Association for the Blind.

The Norfolk & Norwich Association for the Blind (NNAB) will be known as Vision Norfolk from early 2020, and the move comes after Fellows worked with the charity to conduct research into the extent to which the visually-impaired and sighted communities interact with each other, what boundaries there are, and the stigmas attached to sight loss.

Fellows comments, “A large part of my MA research (which I carried out at NNAB) involved undertaking Visual Impairment Awareness Training focused around whether sighted people know how to interact with a visually impaired (VI) person. I looked at whether there are boundaries, discomfort, awkwardness, ignorance or naivety. 

Work I created on my MA investigated stigmas, misconceptions and questions I had about blindness and was created with the help of VI participants. I asked them a series of questions and they responded with drawings. Their drawings and words from interviews were then used to create cyanotypes- capturing image in a similar way to how our eyes work.”

During her residency, Fellows will lead art, graphic design and screen printing classes in various locations around the county, leading up to an exhibition in Norwich next year.

She hopes to learn more about communicating differently with visually impaired people, and communicate about sight loss to the wider world which sometimes can feel uncomfortable or clinical.