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Contribution short abstract:

A short presentation that reflects on the process of using participatory visual arts to better understand marginalised aspirations of persons with disability, particularly Deaf youth, and calls for inclusive knowledge co-production that challenges the current epistemic structure in city-making.

Contribution long abstract:

This contribution looks at the process and explores the reflection from an action research initiative with Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing (HoH) youths in Surakarta, Indonesia, that aims to articulate their aspirations of an inclusive, ideal city through participatory visual arts as methodology. The initiative bases its intervention on a critical question of how the current urban development process overlooks the experiences of marginalised communities such as persons with disabilities, particularly Deaf communities—and how visual tools could facilitate more meaningful participation and further strengthen their agency and foster a more empowered community. This co-learning process facilitated a more democratic approach where participants can express their 'voice' through visuals, i.e. photographs, collage art, and illustrations, in response to prompts of imagining an ideal city according to their collective experiences. This process acknowledges how visuals have been important in the Deaf culture and proposes the potential of exploring visual tools as an inclusive method of capturing more nuanced knowledge that should be included in city-making. This short presentation will walk through the initiative. It starts with an introduction about the process, followed by a quick showcase of the Deaf participants' artworks, and will conclude with a discussion of takeaways from this project. This would bring an important reflection on what it means to use visual art as a medium of participation—calling for more knowledge co-production that challenges the meaning of an inclusive urban development within the current epistemic structure.