Welcome to the Arentshuis. My name is Piet Devos and I’m delighted to present, together with Tonia In den Kleef, an exceptional heritage collection. For several years now, the non-profit organisation De Kade (with the Spermalie department) and the Bruges Heritage Cell have been collaborating with various partners on the Spermalie Institute’s historical collection. The institute is a household name in Bruges. Founded in 1836 by canon Charles-Louis Carton, it has played an important role in the development of education for blind and visually impaired children, including internationally. The collection of educational material for this target group has been preserved. It includes writing, reading and arithmetic devices, as well as objects relating to the teaching of geography and handcrafting training, for example. All these objects offered, and still offer, the opportunity to live a more independent and richer life.
Tonia In den Kleef and I are both blind, which makes us experts by experience. As curators, and at the request of De Kade and the Bruges Heritage Cell, we are showing a selection of objects from this fascinating collection in a venue provided by Musea Brugge. A similar presentation will be shown at KADOC in Leuven. Several ambassadors (former pupils and teachers) have shared their experiences through film or audio and discuss the significance of education in their lives.
Inspired by the nineteenth-century quest for a script for the blind, the artist Peter de Cupere developed – together with visually impaired people – a scent-based alphabet.
We hope you enjoy this multifaceted journey of discovery!
Over the course of the nineteenth century, institutes for the blind became increasingly convinced that pupils needed to familiarise themselves with the wider world, even if this remained inaccessible for many of them. However, rendering reality in a tactile way is far from simple. There was experimentation with models, relief maps in wood and fabric, globes in relief, and so on. Often these were one-off pieces. Later, from 1970 onwards, maps in plastic were more commonly produced. Tactile undulating lines, for example, showed the course of rivers; larger or smaller spherical markers represented the relative sizes of the cities. The ‘Atlas of Belgium’ was produced on a bigger scale along these lines, and it can still be found in many institutes for the blind.
Curator and artist Tonia In den Kleef offers a contemporary interpretation of the fragile nineteenth-century models from Spermalie. A fjord designed to be touched.
"My name is Jan De Fauw. I trained as an occupational therapist. And I worked at Spermalie for forty-one years. An occupational therapist’s job was to adapt educational material to enable the class teacher to deliver their lessons more effectively, both for partially-sighted and blind pupils.
At a certain point, the question arose from the classrooms as to whether it might be possible to make tactile maps, and then we started making small adjustments, making small models. These models then led to the question of whether we could make a model or a tactile map that showed the nine provinces of Belgium and their capital cities. Then we tried to do that, to enlarge Belgium in triplex, after which we cut out the entire surface area of Belgium with a jigsaw, to make the nine provinces tactile by sticking string onto them with contact glue. A large copper nail was driven into the wood for the capital cities, so this is Bruges, this is Ghent, this is Antwerp, and so on. The smaller cities were marked with smaller copper tacks, and then we had a kind of motherboard. But how could we create several copies of that motherboard? That was the big problem. In the blind world, there was a kind of photocopier for copying texts for the blind. But you couldn’t simply run a model through it. With Spermalie, we had a good relationship with another institute for the blind in the Netherlands, the Institute for the Blind in Nijmegen. We had a good relationship because they were also looking for ways of copying something like this, ways of making braille maps, and so on. There was one particular brother there who had seen that something similar did exist in industry. And then we said that we should now make our braille maps with this special machine that was used in industry. So a sheet of blue plastic was laid over my model. The plastic was heated, the air was sucked out of it, and after a few seconds you could pull off the plastic imprint of this map, of the motherboard, and in this way we could make several copies of one particular motherboard. So that is more or less how the first plastic pages of the braille atlas were created."
It goes without saying that mobility and orientation are important for people with a visual impairment. Insight into one’s own direct surroundings is taught at an early stage in blind education. The school environment or a city quarter, for example, are initially explored with the help of models. This familiarisation is a stepping stone towards navigating your way around public streets. Over the course of the twentieth century, the white cane has increasingly been used for this.
"My name is Meilan, I’m twenty-nine years old, and from the age of five I slowly began to lose my sight, until I became completely blind at the age of sixteen. As a teenager, I was a border at the Royal Institute for the Blind and the Deaf in Woluwe. I now work as a self-employed consciousness coach.
On the one hand, a cane walking lesson teaches you the technique of walking with a white cane, how to tap it on the ground and how to use the cane to get the maximum amount of information out of it, and to achieve maximum mobility. But often, it’s also about learning one specific route, about wanting to go from home to work, or from home to the place where I do a hobby, and then someone helps to find the easiest route for getting there, the mobility trainer or teacher will check for obstacles that I need to know as a cane user, and teach me as fluid a route as possible.
There are different kinds of white canes. You have a cane that you can only tap with, and then it’s really a kind of little dance with your feet and the cane, tapping to the left and then putting your right foot in front of you, and then walking in this rhythm. Then the distance between where you are as a cane user, as a person, and the tip of the cane, which is detecting a post, for example, is actually the greatest, then you have a tapping cane. There are also canes that you roll along. These have a wider tip, and then you don’t tap from side to side, and you also don’t lift it up in between. You roll it from side to side, then you get more information about the tiles, about the surface, because you’re not tapping over it.
For me, cane walking lessons came at the time when I was in primary school, I think, and when I was losing my sight more and more. I think this happened at the time when a fully-sighted child would be learning to cycle to school or would be allowed to go to the bakery alone for the first time. I think this is around the age when I was asking for it myself, and also when I realised that my sight was going to get so much worse, and how much more relevant it was becoming to learn to use the cane, so in primary school I think, when I was around 10 years old.
Of course, first and foremost, a white cane is a tool. I think this is what most people think too, because yes, it’s handy, no doubt about it. But it’s also a stigma, the inelegance of it, and you’re reduced to being a blind road user, and no longer to a woman that…, you’re blind, and I find that difficult. Also, I haven’t been able to think of anything that gives me the same freedom as my white cane, and now that I’ve managed to get over that typical teenage feeling that it’s not cool, it’s truly part of my life, and it stands by the front door, and it’s as essential for everyday use as my house keys and my shoes. So it’s absolutely a part of me, a part of my life, and it certainly gives me the liberty and opportunity to move around freely that I wouldn’t have without that white cane, above all alone. Because if I didn’t have my white cane, then I could gather friends and acquaintances around me to get where I want to go, but of course that’s a completely different feeling to simply stepping out of the door on my own and just nipping to the shop or taking the train."
In Bruges, canon Charles Louis Carton took the initiative to create an institute for the deaf and blind in 1836. For its practical operation, he founded his own congregation, the Sisters of the Holy Childhood of Mary, to which ‘of Spermalie’ was later added to the name.
Carton established a national and international network. In 1837, he travelled to France, England and Scotland. He visited existing institutes for the blind, which inspired him in his quest for suitable teaching methods and aids for his pupils. One of the biggest challenges: how to teach blind children to read and write.
Carton brought back all kinds of scripts for the blind to Bruges. Most were based on the regular Latin alphabet, but in tactile relief. We call them ‘relief writings’. The most famous example being the relief letters developed by Valentin Haüy, the director of the first school for the blind in Paris. His special printing technique was later refined in Germany and England.
However, Carton also met Louis Braille in France, a young blind man who devised an ingenious alternative to relief printing. His script consists of only six dots. Depending on the combination of the dots, you can form any letters and numbers, and even write down music! Braille is a fairly simple system and is therefore easy to learn. Another great advantage is the compactness of the script. A braille letter is much smaller than an embossed letter and fits exactly under the sensitive tip of the index finger. This makes braille much quicker to read than relief printing.
Yet braille also met with resistance. Carton and many of his fellow teachers were not in favour of blind people using their own arbitrary script. After all, unlike relief printing, braille is wholly unrelated to the alphabet used by sighted people. So how could sighted and blind people communicate through writing? The ‘relief printing versus braille’ debate dragged on for decades. But the advantages of braille ultimately prevailed. At an international congress in 1878, teachers involved in education for the blind adopted braille as the standard script.
Unlike relief printing, braille does not require any complicated printing technique. A simple writing board or pin board and a pricking tool are sufficient. The Spermalie collection therefore contains several early examples of such pin boards. Many blind and visually impaired people still use Braille today, but now in combination with a computer. You will discover all about this in a film, with fervent braille user Inge Piotrowski as your guide.
At the beginning of the nineteenth century, pioneers such as canon Carton and Louis Braille might not have foreseen such developments – not even in their wildest dreams. But today, blind and visually impaired pupils usually go to mainstream schools. Thanks to modern technology, they no longer need to attend a special school. This marks the beginning of a truly inclusive society, where children with and without disabilities grow up together. But if it hadn’t been for educational innovators like Carton and Braille, such inclusion would be inconceivable. They paved the way for the gradual emancipation of people with visual impairments.
Arithmetic is high on the agenda from the very start of a blind person’s education. Attention is paid to addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. Tools for more complicated arithmetic exercises are adapted to the new target group. Iron or lead boards, so-called counting boards, already existed in the first half of the nineteenth century. These contained different configurations of holes. Rods with numbers or arithmetical operations could be slotted into the openings. Numerous variations on this theme were created. Today, the talking calculator, for example, is a much more convenient alternative. For geometrical exercises, a folder with plastic foil is often used. The foil is stretched taut on a rubber surface. If you draw on it with a pen, the lines are clearly perceptible.
"My name is Leticia Larangé. I’m partially sighted. I studied at Spermalie between 1991 and 2002. I’m now a receptionist at a school in Bruges.
What I remember very well, for drawing triangles for example, is the drawing folder or relief folder. It actually was a folder into which you inserted paper, a kind of relief paper, and you could simply draw on it with a biro, so you could draw squares or rectangles or triangles on it, and then you could actually feel them. When we learned to count, we used a number board with those square blocks, and you could also feel the Braille numbers. When we were very little, so in primary school really, we used one of those little abacuses for the tens and units. These are some of the things that make up my earliest memories.
I recall using the talking calculator, especially from the fifth year onwards, because by then certain sums were getting more difficult, but it was often used in secondary school as well, also because I was on a course where accounting was taught, so those were complicated situations in which you did need extra tools and the talking calculator was one of them."
One of the reasons for setting up bespoke education for blind people in the nineteenth century was to help them live more independent lives. That’s why the pupils not only received a general education, but were also given vocational training. The idea was simple: a straightforward profession that they could carry out fairly autonomously would make them less financially dependent on others.
Pupils, and girls in particular, learnt lacemaking, crocheting, sewing or knitting, Other typical vocational training included chair rushing, and basket and brush making. A postcard bears the inscription: ‘Royal Foundation for Deaf-mutes and the Blind. Woluwe-Brussels. Reed and rush chair seat workshop.’ Some fifteen pupils and two teachers are working outdoors. Almost all pupils have a chair in front of them for which they are weaving the seat. Before them are two bundles of rushes or reeds.
"My name is Francky Van Onacker. I live in Sint-Jozef in Bruges. I became partially sighted at the age of 12, and at the age of 16, on 1 September 1976, I went to Spermalie. I was there for four years until the end of June 1980, so that I could become fully proficient in weaving chair seats from reeds and rushes. I currently work as a chair weaver.
The teacher provided a general explanation. There were five of us in the class at that time. So this was supposed to be the general theory that he was teaching. And then he went from person to person to show you how to do it in practice. So we did get one-to-one tuition, in fact.
I base a lot of my work on touch, because that’s how I taught myself to do it, as I was afraid that I was going to go blind. Because of that I decided to learn by touch. So if I did go blind, then I wouldn’t have to learn it all again. I still look at my work, of course I do, but not all that much really. I’m so used to doing it by touch that I actually look very little at what I’m doing.
I started work after graduating in June 1980, and in September, I started weaving chair seats at home. I have never gone out to work. I’ve always worked weaving chair seats at home. In the beginning, when I was there at Spermalie to find customers, I was allowed to pick up any surplus work they had at the school and take it home. They really helped me on my way, which allowed me to work full time as a chair weaver. I’ve been doing it for forty-one years now.
I usually repair chairs. I don’t make new chairs, because that involves woodwork too, and I don’t see well enough for that. In Dutch, weaving with reeds is colloquially known as ‘cannage’. There are a series of octagonal holes side by side, like honeycomb. And the method for rushes is like the old fashioned one used for chairs in churches. I’ve always focused on individuals, because companies are all about mass production, and then the quality goes downhill. My teacher always impressed upon me that I should try to deliver high-standard work. I’ve always focused on work for individuals. I’ve come into contact with a great many people through old craft markets, at which I would demonstrate chair weaving. That’s how people got to know me."
World orientation – as you’d expect – aims to introduce pupils to the multifaceted reality of the world. In the nineteenth century, for example, stuffed animals became increasingly popular in education. Even exotic animals were transported, in their turn, from the colonies and stuffed. All this so that pupils could experience what an animal is really like: what shape is it? Is it big or small, hard, soft or prickly?
Miniature animals and objects are completely different. Of course, they give an impression of what something is like, but you don’t get a full picture of reality. You can see or feel the shape and often many details, but to a much lesser degree than if the dimensions and texture were true to life.
"I’m Tonia In den Kleef and I’m actively involved in everything related to art and visual impairment. Through the association Kunst Zonder Zien, I’m also an accessibility advocate for art collections and museums. Which is why I’ve been invited to curate this exhibition. I was visually impaired as a child but I never went to an ‘institute’. I simply attended school. I’d approach the blackboard to read what was written on it, and I could still read a book if I held it up to my nose. It was only later that I really became blind.
In primary school, we were taught world orientation, which was actually a bit of biology, about animals and plants, but also geography, the course of the rivers and the like, and what a volcano was. In the school itself, I wasn’t singled out for special attention. So I listened to the stories about the animals but didn’t really know what they looked like. But I was lucky enough to spend a lot of time with my grandparents in the countryside where, for example, I could touch a blind mole when they found one. So I’m in favour of using stuffed animals, at least when they’re small and can be handled. Large animals, of course, are much more difficult. I also encountered some bigger animals, such as a cow. The alternative is a plastic toy deer, for example. You can then feel the shape of the animal, but a child has to be old enough to realise that the actual animal is much bigger. A small child won’t know what one metre is, for example, and will think that a deer is tiny. The disadvantage of toy animals is that they’re not always true to life. You don’t have the right material, it’s made of plastic for example, and I think it’s more of a ‘second best’. You know that an elephant has a trunk, and what a trunk is. It’s much more difficult to imagine the size of the animal.
I remember when I was about six or seven years old, I was in the Ardennes with my parents. There was a stuffed wild boar there, which I thought that was fantastic! Yes, it was a real animal, and then you could feel the material, the fur, and the positions of the eyes or horns. I think the advantage is that if you can touch a dead or stuffed mole, then you can also feel the thickness of its fur. You can’t see that on a drawing or a photo. When I first came into contact with collection of educational material at Spermalie, I thought it was wonderful to be able to see and touch the stuffed animals. I would have loved to have done that as a child."