Seekers Braille Trail at Portsmouth Victorious Festival

The Victorious festival that took place at the end of August this year in Portsmouth offered amazing music and entertainment. Clarke Reynolds, Seekers Blind Braille Artist took part in the festival in the most amazing and creative way, and it was his first big festival participation. The audience had the chance to follow a trail with colour-coded Braille around Portsmouth to find the plaques and decode the Braille to spell V-I-C-T-O-R-I-O-U-S. The project aimed to be both attention-grabbing for the sighted and still tactile enough so blind people can experience it. In that way, he hopes, sighted people will understand blind people’s way of living. ​

According to Clarke, our world does not have enough Braille which was one of the main reasons for starting his project. He believes Braille should be normal and it is a vital thing blind people need access to. The Braille Trail project was the first big festival participation for Clarke. To bring the pieces together, 3 weeks before the festival, Seekers created maps for the public choosing 10 locations around the festival site. By using bright colours, Clarke colour-coded the dots, thoughtfully putting everything together to create a meaning of duplicity in words. For example, near Southsea Castle, the letter ‘C’ was located which also represented ‘communication’. With Clair Martin and Steve Baker, this amazing idea came to life in no time. ​

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Clarke Reynolds, who lived both in Portsmouth and Gosport, considers himself to be a visual artist. His condition, retinas pigmentosa, has left him without his sight. He creates most of his art using tactile work and sound. The artwork he creates is also aimed at the sighted people to help them understand how the blind feel the world. 
A future project for Clarke will be talking about his work during the World Sight Day on 14th October 2021. This year’s theme for the day is #LoveYourEyes. The idea is to raise awareness of everyone’s eye health and encourage people to get their sight tested.
For more information about World Sight Day, look here. 
Story credit: Dani Basina