There were tears and a standing ovation as Alison Lapper MBE received a University of Brighton honorary Doctor of Arts at the Brighton Dome yesterday.
Alison, who graduated with a first class honours degree in fine art from the university in 1993, was honoured for her major contribution to the arts and as an ambassador for those with disabilities.
Alison said she was “completely overwhelmed” adding: “I never thought imagined in all these years that I would be back here to receive this amazing honour”.
She said she promised herself she wouldn’t become emotional but there were tears as she praised those who have helped her in her career, including university staff, from janitors to lecturers: “The fact that I came away with a first class degree still blows my mind … but I never felt like I was the only disabled student, although I was. I was able to do everything everyone else did.”
Alison is renowned around the world for her work but she proclaimed her son Parys, who was in the audience, as “my greatest piece of art work and creation”.
Professor Bruce Brown, Pro Vice-Chancellor (Research), in presenting the award, described Alison as a “Titan of the human spirit” and a force for everything that is good.
He said: “Alison’s creative intelligence has served to challenge amd change our notions of physical beauty, normality, disability and sexuality.”
Despite her significant challenges, he said, academics at the then Brighton School of Art, particularly Bill Beech, recognised Alison’s talent as a foremost above all and “removed every obstacle standing in the way of her ambition to become an independent fine artist – if not a famous one.”
Born without arms and with shortened legs, Alison uses photography, digital imaging and painting to question physical normality and beauty.
A member of the Mouth and Foot Painting Artists of the World, Alison has used her body as subject matter for artworks and in one she put herself into the image of the world’s most iconic symbol of femininity, the Venus de Milo.
The cinematographer behind Michael Caine’s classic film Get Carter,101-year-old Wolfgang Suschitzky, also received an honorary Doctor of Arts from the University of Brighton yesterday.
Mr Suschitzky, who also worked on the popular children’s TV series Worzel Gummidge, was honoured for his contribution to photography and cinematography.
Born in Vienna, Mr Suschitzky lost relatives in Auschwitz during the holocaust and escaped fascism in Austria by moving first to Holland and then to England to join his sister Edith who later ran an antiques shop in The Lanes, Brighton.
He became a specialist cameraman during and after the war and has worked on 200 films since the 1930s including Get Carter and Ulysses, and on the Oscar-winning short film The Bespoke Overcoat.
Mr Suschitzky told graduates at the Dome awards ceremony: “I have been a lucky man.”
