Joys of visual art come to blind children

China Daily

25th May 2021

Joys of visual art come to blind children

In Helen Keller's essay Three Days to See, the famous advocate for the blind and deaf wrote that "darkness would make him more appreciative of sight; silence would teach him the joys of sound.”

How do the blind feel about color and painting? To answer this question, Hu Jun started the Art Without Barriers project. Starting in 2016, he would go to the Zhejiang School of the Blind in Hangzhou to give art lessons to the children there.

Born in 1967, Hu Jun is a professor of art instruction at Hangzhou Normal University in Zhejiang province.

"I prefer to refer to the project as an academic experiment," Hu said. "It's kind of a pity that we spend most of our time giving art lessons to normal children and ignore those with visual disabilities. However, our research shows that blind children do have the ability to understand and create visual images.”

In the project, blind children can try out woodblock painting. The goal is to give them confidence and help them integrate into society, Hu said.

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202105/25/WS60ac8ddda31024ad0bac1477.html