Chok's Story

Ly Chin Chok is a 19-year old man with Down’s Syndrome from Kampot, Cambodia.  Chok is a well known figure in town and can often be seen roaming through the streets with an old bag of treasures in his hand and a curious twinkle in his eye.

In January 2009, Chok was walking past the Epic Arts café when he stopped by to investigate, and he hasn’t left our company since.  He began joining regular workshops at the cafe, but having never had the opportunity to participate in group activities or enjoy positive relationships with other people, his behaviour was somewhat challenging.  When the team moved to the new Arts Centre there were even more things for Chok to help himself to and places to hide; but rather than send him away we hired a new staff member to support him and his participation in activities at the centre. 

As a result of this we then began to identify further people in the local community with learning disabilities and the Special Education Programme was born.  Today Chok comes to Epic Arts five days a week to learn literacy, numeracy, gardening and arts. In the 2 years we have known him, he has grown in to an incredibly popular and kind hearted member of our community. 

His family live very close to the café, but due to the lack of information and education for people in Cambodia regarding those with learning disabilities, they never knew what huge potential he had.  Chok never learnt to speak. Since joining the Epic team Chok has been studying Khmer sign language and can now communicate well through sign. His sister now studies sign language once a week so that his family can start to communicate with him.

Reflections on an Epic Arts UK project,

by Helen Bryer

I’d spent the last two Mondays working with the Blanche Nevile kids on their own.  I’d got used to their way of communicating and got to know some of their personalities.  But this week we were about to drop ten hearing kids in with them and see what happened.  When I arrived today the Blanche Nevile kids were still on their own, and going in I suddenly felt this pang of protectiveness for them.  These excitable, confident, forceful kids, stamping and shouting and tapping...it didn’t really make any sense for me to feel protective or worried for them. 

I don’t know where it came from really- my experience of disability has always been about embracing who you are, feeling good and getting on with it, going to those uncomfortable places, being positive about difference.  But here I was, ready to pounce on the hearing kids at the first sign of prejudice, warming up my fingers for some frantic ‘terping with as much BSL as my Level 1 hands would allow.  I wouldn’t let those hearing kids storm into these kids’ world and think them stupid or exclude them...
...and then the hearing kids arrived.  Tiny, pale, terrified-looking little things, gazing with fear at the rapid signing taking place in every corner of the room.  I suddenly felt ridiculous.  And prejudiced, actually.  It was suddenly so obvious that this was a scary experience for everyone involved.  Everyone was going into it with expectations and assumptions.

Amit had said that the kids would be working in groups today, and that we might as adults take a bit of a step back, but I hadn’t realised how much or how hard I would find it.  I guess if you see someone struggling to communicate and you know you can help, the instinct is to jump in.  I wanted to support the deaf kids, but I also really wanted to look after the hearing kids who still looked terrified.  So that urge, combined with my desire to sign because it is such a treat to be in an environment where I can use my limited BSL, made it incredibly difficult to stand back and watch the kids make their mistakes, get frustrated and thrash it out themselves.

 
So much of my experience with young disabled people has been about access.  I’d say (and others have said) that one of my strengths as a facilitator is that I get how important it is that everyone is involved and included, whether that’s through signing, voiceover, audio description, adaption or just explaining things differently.  It’s what I’m good at- spotting the participants on the edges and drawing them in.  So to not be allowed to do that was really hard- it felt like all the participants were on the edges.   It was really frustrating!  I wasn’t alone though- I could see that the teachers were really struggling to stay away too, especially with both the hearing and deaf kids turning around to us and saying “he/she doesn’t understand me”. 

But the kids got there.  It took a while, but they started to communicate.  And we hadn’t helped at all- it had been entirely their responsibility to sort out.  Sometimes the real world is like that- you have to make things happen for yourself and make yourself heard or understood- the kids started learning that today and will hopefully continue over the next weeks.

As for me, I had a helpful reminder of what I knew all along- that access is so, so important, but that it’s about more than the minority thinking about it.  If we had jumped in and interpreted, us 5 adults would have made the session more accessible.  But because we didn’t, most of those hearing kids will probably go away and do a bit of research on BSL now, and even if they don’t all go and learn to sign, hopefully they’ve made the first steps towards becoming deaf aware adults.  And that will be a step towards making the world more accessible.  And that’s much better!