Juliet England: Meet Omeima Mudawi-Rowlings, MBE – deaf textile artist and creative consultant

“It’s Hove, Actually,” smiles Omeima Mudawi-Rowlings as I remark on the gorgeousness of her home in the background when she comes on Zoom to talk to me through a BSL interpreter, Jill.

It is indeed a lovely living space – full of rich colours, musical instruments and arty creations.

The area has been home to Omeima for around seven years, since she moved here from London. But her story starts in Sudan, from where she moved to the UK aged 12.

At the age of four, following a bout of meningitis, Mudawi-Rowlings became deaf. Her twin brother Khalid is hearing, while another brother, Ahmed, became deafened as a child , and is now a BSL Zone TV presenter, translator and Black and deaf awareness trainer. (Omeima is from a large family with five brothers and four sisters.)

“There were no deaf schools in Khartoum when I was growing up, and Arabic was my first language, although we also learnt English,” explains the British-Sudanese citizen. “I never met anyone else who couldn’t hear, there was no community of deaf people, and my teachers didn’t really get that I was deaf, especially when I changed schools. Attitudes have improved now, with two deaf schools in Khartoum – and Sudanese sign language has a lot in common with the American version.”

Aged 12, Mudawi-Rowlings moved to the UK to attend deaf school here. After A-levels, she began a course in Business Studies and Finance (a BTEC National Diploma), but didn’t enjoy it.

“I had always loved art at school, so decided to follow that. One of the teachers noticed I had a natural flair for working with textiles.”

A three-year BA degree in Textile Design at the Surrey Institute for Art and Design, University College (now the University for the Creative Arts) in Farnham followed.

After graduating, she struggled to apply successfully for grants from the likes of the Crafts Council, and for studio space from London’s Cockpit Arts. So creative plans were shelved, and instead Mudawi-Rowlings took her first job as an ethnic minority worker and development officer at Friends for Young Deaf People.

This was followed over the years with various roles supporting vulnerable and marginalised deaf people in cultural and social welfare settings, and throughout this time she was a freelance creative consultant working to make mainstream arts more open and accessible to deaf participants. However, the dreams of one day making it as a full-time artist were not shelved; she was still selling small individual pieces.

Mudawi-Rowlings went on to study for an MA in Arts Policy and Management at Birkbeck, University of London. Then she founded Resonant Arts, a deaf women’s arts-led initiative which allowed hearing and deaf female artists to integrate through creativity and hear about each other’s practices, Through Resonant, she worked in partnership with Shape Arts and SPACE, before eventually landing herself studio space with Cockpit Arts, for which she’d previously applied unsuccessfully.

“I had a feeling it would work out – I’m very determined, and my dad said I would need to be courageous and resilient before we came to the UK. So I was.”

Now running her own business, Omeima Arts, Mudawi- Rowlings continues as a creative consultant working with deaf /disabled artists, focusing on advocacy and deaf awareness training.

Recent work in this field has been with Fabrica Gallery, Outside In, CraftSpace and DASH, during which time she has successfully applied for Arts Council funding to support the development of art practice, building on successful exhibitions and commissions, including a British Council commission and international artist residency in Qatar.

In 2019, Mudawi-Rowlings received the runner-up prize for the Arab British Centre Award for Culture (individual award) and is a Clore Leadership fellow – a programme which develops leaders from across a wide range of cultural disciplines and sectors.

Small personal commissions for everything from notebooks and lampshades to cushion covers and cards fit around other, bigger projects. In 2018, to mark the centenary of female suffrage in the UK, she was a driving force behind the creation of a banner reading Be free, Be Visible, Be counted.

In bold colours, it featured the Brighton Pavilion and involved an element of deaf awareness training before a dedicated group of local artists (deaf & hearing locally artists integrated) started work on it.

Mudawi- Rowlings has also worked with glass artist Mike Barrett for the project River Runs Through and with deaf musician/composer Ruth Montgomery for inspirational projects allowing her to combine textiles and music in a unique artistic fusion.

Another creation is a zoetrope project called The Wheel of Life, a Victorian invention similar to a lampshade with multiple images which, when spun, give the illusion of movement. Interestingly, given its creator’s deafness, it’s accompanied by the sounds of the oud, a stringed Arabic musical instrument, in which she collaborated with the Syrian hearing musician and composer Rihab Bazar.

“It’s a metaphor for the way we perceive each other. And I wanted to integrate that eastern part of my identity. I hope to travel to festivals with it.”

Of her MBE, awarded in the Queen’s New Year’s Honours list this month for services to people with disabilities in the arts., she insists she had no idea it was going to happen.

“It never entered my head that this could be possible – I still don’t understand it!”

But it comes after a four-month secondment to the Crafts Council, during which she updated the organisation’s diversity and equality policies and inclusivity practices. And if she feels she doesn’t know why she was honoured, the Crafts Council certainly does.

“They told me it was for the impact of my using of my skills and experience to improve diversity and inclusion. Also for my work raising awareness of the importance of integrating deaf and hearing artists so that both groups can learn from each other’s experience. Equally, it was for the way I have overcome barriers to be the individual artist I am today.”

By Juliet England