The responsibility of integrating children and adults with special needs, rehabilitating them, and providing special care for them so that they can face the battles of life, falls on the shoulders of society, special care centers for people with special needs, and also parents who have children or adults with special needs.

This rehabilitation contributes to re-evaluating the skills possessed by this group that can be utilized and developed, providing opportunities for them to be an active part of society. This positively reflects on their mental and psychological state, making it easier for them to adapt to their disability and even making it a source of pride for them. There is nothing that diminishes their abilities.

Rehabilitation, in short, is an attempt to develop individuals with special needs physically, mentally, and emotionally as much as possible so that they can have an impact on the community around them and reach the best possible medical, psychological, social, educational, and professional aspects.

Vocational training is a series of services designed to help our children and students move from the stage of artistic education towards the goal of employment in a useful profession that matches their abilities and skills.

Vocational (technical) training goals:

1- Integrating students with special needs in community activities like everyone else.

2- Including people with special needs in developmental activities and programs to develop their skills like any other person and regain confidence in themselves.

3- Removing the drawn image of people with special needs in terms of their effectiveness in society, their absolute abilities, or their unwillingness to work and live normally.

4- Feeling like a productive member of society and working like his peers.

Types of vocational rehabilitation available within the Center for Visual Arts:

 

1- Woodworking:

The process of executing a wooden piece starts with an idea and ends with an artistic work that is characterized by the availability of artistic, aesthetic, utilitarian, and skillful values to perform a specific function or multiple functions in a certain time. It also includes a set of intellectual processes and skillful performances without neglecting the artistic and technical assets, finishing methods, and taking them into consideration.(1)The formative and technical foundations of wooden craftsmanship and surface treatment are considered a skillful and innovative process, taking into account several factors that affect the composition, capabilities, and skills of the practitioner. These factors include the type and nature of the material, how it is operated and shaped, the available skills in its work, surface treatment elements, and the function of wooden craftsmanship, as these factors determine these skills.

"So in this profession, the apprentice learns several skills in woodworking, and training begins gradually from simple to difficult. These skills include spreading and cutting wood, peeling skill, grafting skill, and finishing the product in its final form."

2- Handmade fabric:

The art of hand weaving is at the forefront of manual skills known to history from the earliest times to the present, to offer each era what it needs in a new functional form. (1).

It's a flat body made up of a set of longitudinal threads called "Sadda" intersecting with transverse threads known as "Lahma", intersecting regularly and the woven fabric varies in appearance and type depending on the intersection of the threads and their composition.

The student is trained in using the knitting needles, wool threads, and knitting needle. They are also gradually trained from easy to difficult stitches, using multiple colors of threads in the artwork, and how to create a pattern on the knitting needle from easy to difficult, as well as different spaces and other skills.

And training to use that product, whether it's a painting, a carpet, or other artistic products.

3- Sculpting with clay:

"Playing with clay and handling it, and touching it, can help the student stimulate a sense that is no less important than the sense of touch."

Through this skill, the student is trained on how to use clay and deal with it, and how to make different sculptures and products with different materials, and finish the artistic work.

There are also other artistic professions such as printing, jewelry and accessories industry, and artistic crafts of all kinds.

1 - Daulat Saeed Abdul Zaher - Proposed program for the artistic potential of wood material and its impact on the category of learning difficulties - Master's thesis - Faculty of Specific Education, Department of Art Education - Benha University - 2022 - p. 2.

1 Hind Fouad Isaac - Art education and the development of skill practices for special needs groups - Egyptian Journal of Specialized Higher Studies - Volume (1) - Issue (3) - October 2006 p. 109.

The References

  •  Dawlat Saeed Abdul Zaher - A proposed program for the artistic potential of wood material and its impact on the category of learning difficulties - Master's thesis - Faculty of Specific Education, Department of Art Education - Benha University - 2022 - p. 2.
  •  Hend Fouad Isaac - Art Education and Development of Skillful Practices for Special Needs Groups - Egyptian Journal of Specialized Higher Studies - Volume (1) - Issue (3) - October 2006 p. 109.

By A /Dawlat Saeed Abdulzahir

Specialist in Art Education and Vocational Rehabilitation