What do I mean by 'Access First' Producer?

This final blog post is a space for potential collaborators and clients to understand what I mean by Access-First Producer.

Accessibility, inclusive practice, and anti-ableism are central to my approach. Embedding these at the outset of any arts project is crucial, along with budgetting and scheduling that supports this. While I recognise that sometimes arts projects may fall short in delivering fully on these commitments, without them I will not consider becoming involved in them.

The remaining posts in this blog document my 2022 Arts Council funded DYCP project, Radical Accessibility, in which I shaped my practice by studying and researching radical thinking and writing around access and anti-ableism, as well as receiving mentoring sessions with leading disabled arts practitioners.

Reflections on my sessions with Touretteshero

This post is slightly overdue, since the sessions I’m reflecting on took place in late November / early December 2022. This is mainly due to the need to sit with and digest what I learned from those sessions, which built on the work I did with Quiplash earlier in 2022. I found my sessions with Touretteshero were nothing short of transformational. 

Touretteshero is a disabled- & neurodivergent-led project - now also an NPO - co-directed by artist, writer and activist Jess Thom. The aims of Touretteshero are “to celebrate and share the creativity and humour of Tourettes in an accessible way, with the widest possible audience”. In collaboration with Battersea Arts Centre, Touretteshero pioneered “Relaxed Venue methodologies”, which “offer a warm welcome to people who find it difficult to follow the usual conventions of theatre behaviour”. I had one session with Director of Research Will Renel, and one with Will and Jess together.

The first thing I noticed and really appreciated about Jess and Will is that they don’t pull any punches; their commitments to inclusive practice, anti-ableism and principles of collective liberation are rightly uncompromising. They are constantly looking to improve their own practices, and expect no less from the organisations and individuals with whom they work.

They provided an incredible space for me to explore several fundamental questions and themes, in how I think about and how I enact inclusive practice. They included:

My thinking

• how to think and work really expansively around accessibility and inclusive practice (and the differences between those things: an event can be technically ‘accessible’ but this does not ensure that it is experientially inclusive)

• to be aware of access hierarchies, and remain vigilant about who is or is not being prioritised on a project

• to think about how access tools may be valuable for wider audiences than those for whom they are typically provided - so, thinking expansively about how access resources are offered so that anyone could benefit from them, including those who don’t necessarily identify as needing a specific provision

• how to ensure at the outset of a project that I and the team are making commitments to equality of experience for all (while not necessarily expecting all experiences to be the same)

My action & practice

• how to enact inclusive practice as a non-disabled freelancer, on my own anti-ableism journey, usually working with teams made up of non-disabled people who have varying levels of knowledge, understanding and experience of working in accessible and inclusive ways

• how to ask, at the earliest stage of any project, the question of what the opportunities are for D/deaf, disabled and neurodivergent people to be involved

• to always ask who is and is not in the room, what the barriers will be for them, and how do we remove them

Beyond these topics, we also discussed a specific, real world example of one of my projects, through which we really dug into a key aspect of my entire DYCP project; namely, my accountability.

Up until now, I have thought about achieving accountability through a few methods. 

• By creating a (living) document which outlines how I work with artists on one hand, and with organisations on the other (I discuss this in my previous blog post).

• By keeping a ‘project reflection sheet’ where I evaluate my own work on a project, what I feel I did well or could have done better, and so on

• By giving a brief evaluation form to organisations and individual collaborators for feedback (this may be done through a ‘wash up’ meeting. Whatever form of evaluation is planned in a project, I ensure that individual collaborators are paid to feedback)

With Jess and Will I explored being accountable to D/deaf, disabled & neurodivergent audiences. Through my specific project example we discussed how some decisions I and the team made meant that we missed opportunities to do this, and what those opportunities could have looked like.

Beyond these questions, the sessions with Will and Jess made me think very deeply about my positionality. On recent projects I have been acutely aware that I am advocating for anti-ableism from the position of a non-disabled person in non-disabled teams. I am on a journey to increase my experience, expertise, and knowledge. It is impossible for me - or indeed, any one person - to be responsible for embedding anti-ableism in a project, or in a team, or in an institution - least of all someone with no lived experience. That being said, I feel it’s essential that I, as a non-disabled person, and albeit imperfectly, assume the labour of advocating for accessibility and inclusive practice that usually and unreasonably falls to disabled people. 
I am also acutely aware of the dearth of disabled leaders in the arts sector, which is one of the reasons why arts organisations are moving so excruciatingly slowly in terms of accessible and inclusive practice, and why they/we get so much of it wrong. It is crucial that all non-disabled arts workers are committed to anti-ableism in their practice, and part of my DYCP has focussed on ensuring that I articulate these values up front for future clients / collaborations.  Butin thinking about some work I’ve done lately, along with an observation made by Touretteshero, it is important to consider whether, for some organisations, there may be an appeal in working with a non-disabled collaborator who is committed to anti-ableism so that they can feel that they are making a gesture towards ‘doing the work’ without necessarily engaging disabled practitioners / producers. That has given me serious pause for thought. It is absolutely vital that non-disabled people working in the arts are committed to anti-ableism, but it is all the more vital that there are more disabled people in senior and leadership roles to produce more embedded and long-term change, as well as creating opportunities throughout creative projects to work with disabled collaborators.

Reflections on my mentoring / coaching sessions with Quiplash

Over the summer and autumn of this year I have worked with Amelia and Al Lander-Cavallo of Quiplash. In their own words, Quiplash “is here to take space for queer crips (quips), further queer crip performance, queer accessibility, and fuck shit up”. Together with Amelia and Al we explored a number of questions around anti-ableism and access in a series of organic, free-flowing and very enjoyable conversations which took place over three online sessions.

In our first session, Amelia ran through the ten principles of Disability Justice as articulated by Sins Invalid. Sins Invalid is “a disability justice based performance project that incubates and celebrates artists with disabilities, centralizing artists of color and LGBTQ / gender-variant artists as communities who have been historically marginalized”. For me it was important to get this grounding as an integral part of my practice around accessibility: for me, accessible practice must be founded in a politically-informed critique of ableism - otherwise it becomes a diluted form of inclusion which (though important) is far from sufficient.

In our second session we focussed on a concrete aim I had articulated as part of my DYCP application: namely, my intention to draw up a kind of ‘living document’ that frames my principles, values, expectations, and working practices. I want (where helpful) to share this document with collaborators, and to draw on it as a way of cementing my curatorial practice. I set the intention to create one for organisations where I am contracted as curator or producer, and one for artists for whom I may work directly as a producer or as access support, or some combination of both. Amelia, Al and I discussed what kind of information should be shared in these documents, including my ways of working, my commitments to anti-racism and anti-ableism, and my expectations. I also drafted some questions to ask artists with whom I work directly in order to ensure I take account of any access needs. In our third session, Amelia and Al offered feedback on my draft documents.

Beyond this concrete output, Amelia and Al encouraged me to think about how to approach my future projects in regards to access. They encouraged me to:

• Develop a capacity to utilise and appreciate criticism

• Accept the likelihood of failure - seeing each project as an opportunity / possibility of doing any number of other things, including ensuring that previous failures don't happen again.

• Recognise that as a non-disabled curator/producer trying to work in an anti-ableist practice, I am nonetheless ‘followed’ by the harm that the non-disabled world brings. That harm is bigger than me and I will never be able to offer perfect, harm-free experiences for disabled artists and audiences. As someone who finds it very difficult to make mistakes or ‘mess up’, I will need to accept this, and to accept that anti-ableism, like anti-racism, is a life-long journey, and will never be complete.

A final outcome of my sessions with Quiplash was the generous permission to use a term they introduced me to: Access-first practice. I want to describe myself as an ‘Access-first’ curator/producer to make it clear that I will always centre access as a non-negotiable part of my practice, and as a way to publicly hold myself accountable for this commitment.

Reflections on my first research question

I feel like now might be a good time to post some of my reflections on my first set of research questions, which was: “Can an arts project - whether an exhibition, or event - ever be ‘fully’ accessible? If so, how? And if not, why not? How do we arrive at the best possible version of accessibility that compromises as little as possible?”

The place I’m currently at has primarily been informed by a wonderful three part podcast produced by Unlimited. Unlimited is a UK organisation that commissions “extraordinary work from disabled artists until the whole of the cultural sector does. This work will change and challenge the world.” The podcast, called “Making Art Accessible”, is hosted by Mandy Colleran, and features interviews with arts practitioners and sector leaders.

In the first episode, dancer and choreographer Krystal Lowe talks about how she makes her work accessible in different ways. She is exploring how different audiences can have the same quality of experience, rather than attempting to offer one identical experience. She recognised that the work can exist on multiple platforms, and that instead of ‘forcing’ different audiences to have the same experience, she accepts that blind and visually impaired audiences will have a different experience from a seeing audience, which is different again from a d/Deaf audience, and so on. Her aim is to ensure that different elements of the work support engagement for different audiences. 

Above all I was struck by Krystal saying that, for her, the key is to identify the purpose of the work and what she wants to share.This frees her up from trying to ‘force’ the work to offer the same experience to everyone, or forcing audiences to have the same experience. Rather, if she knows what she wants to share and what is the work’s purpose, then different ways of accessing these can be developed that are of the same quality.   

In episode 2 artist Jo Bannon spoke frankly about a work she made that deals in part with her lived experience of low vision. She described how she needed the piece to take place in darkness, which meant that BSL couldn’t be offered. This in turn meant that for some d/Deaf audiences the work could not be fully accessible. She described how this made her feel like a failure, or a ‘bad’ artist. Her conclusion was that there may well be occasions when the specificities of the piece don’t allow for complete accessibility. Like Krystal, she also talked about how the key was to identify what story you’re trying to tell and for whom. She also talked about how access needs can be in tension with each other.

In the same episode artist Vijay Patel spoke about how making your work more accessible is a constant journey. I found this observation about the ‘journey’ towards greater access both generous and nurturing.

Finally, the CEO of University of Atypical Damien Coyle suggested the need to learn and reflect from past experience where there have been access challenges or difficulties. He also observed that the idea of having ‘equal access’ to a cultural experience isn’t achievable. The fact is that every audience member is different, and will have different experiences of a cultural venue (whether they are disabled or not). Just as audience members have different access needs, they will inevitably have different experiences as a result. 

I’m going to end with a quote from the report “Demystifying Access”, also produced by Unlimited, which feels like excellent advice for artists, producers, and cultural organisations alike:

“Be open and honest about access provision, and how it aligns with the artistic nature of the work. If you have little means and capacity to address the accessibility of your [work], don’t let yourself be overwhelmed by all the different elements “access” could require. Instead, focus on the few things that feel really aligned with the nature of the work, and deliver those well.”

Radical Accessibility: What might this mean?

It feels important at the start of this research project to set out my terms, so I want to start with the title of my DYCP application, “Radical Accessibility”. 

I first was introduced to this phrase in an online workshop in late 2021, led by the Canadian artist Carmen Papalia. Carmen’s website explains that his work “uses organizing strategies and improvisation to address his access to public space, the art institution, and visual culture”. Carmen interrogates the idea of accessibility as it is typically conceived in mainstream institutions, highlighting structural power dynamics and asking what it means to have ‘access’ to those, and to be ‘included’ within them (and by whom). 

In the workshop, Carmen described “radical accessibility” in part as a measure of disabled people’s agency to define the terms of their own care, needs and safety in a space. He also talked about how much of what ‘accessibility’ means in the mainstream is about compliance with procedures and law, which he characterised as “ground floor” access - the bare minimum.

When I use the term ‘Radical Accessibility’ I am imagining a future of access that goes well beyond this bare minimum. To help me articulate this future, I have been reading and reflecting on some concepts that I have found in the work of several disabled artists & activists: Mia Mingus, Kevin Gotkin, and Artistic Director of Graeae Theatre, Jenny Sealey. 

In her online blog Leaving Evidence, Mia Mingus coined the term “Access Intimacy”, which she describes as “that elusive, hard to describe feeling when someone else “gets” your access needs. The kind of eerie comfort that your disabled self feels with someone on a purely access level. Sometimes it can happen with complete strangers, disabled or not, or sometimes it can be built over years.  It could also be the way your body relaxes and opens up with someone when all your access needs are being met.  It is not dependent on someone having a political understanding of disability, ableism or access.  Some of the people I have experienced the deepest access intimacy with (especially able bodied people) have had no education or exposure to a political understanding of disability.” She also explains what Access Intimacy is not: 

“Access intimacy is not just the action of access or “helping” someone. We have all experienced access that has left us feeling like a burden, violated or just plain shitty.  Many of us have experienced obligatory access where there is no intimacy, just a stoic counting down of the seconds until it is over. This is not access intimacy.“

I was struck by the depth and poignancy of the relational, emotional, and social dimensions of access intimacy. Mia seems to be describing a space (or a relationship) where she feels able to bring, and be, her whole self. To me this is a beautiful aspiration both as a person and as a professional. 

Jenny Sealey’s work on the “Aesthetics of Access” in the world of performance and theatre is really thought-provoking for my work in the visual arts. The aesthetics of access is described by journalist Paul Cockburn as “essentially, the ways in which accessibility concerns are not simply last-minute add-ons but actually influence and shape the work in wonderful, unexpected ways”. I am eager to explore this principle when working with artists in order to make their work more accessible in more imaginative and integrated ways.

Kevin Gotkin’s concept of Access Magic is another fascinating framework when considering more radical conceptions of access. Kevin explains that he likes to frame access as magic “because it feels like the opposite of regulatory compliance, which is such a dominant way of conceptualizing accessibility. Even seemingly declarative language around access, like the word “accommodation,” is constraining what is truly possible when we think of the artful dimensions of access. so access magic is the stuff that you can only do with others, only with the specific forms of collaboration we discover at the parties. it is knowing and doing more than any individual can do.”

Lisa Prentice, a former artist and practising bodyworker who is passionate about health justice and community approaches to access, healing, and repair, explains the appeal of this framework:

“I was so excited…because of the way the word magic immediately suggests the emotional and joyful dimensions of access practice to me. Building capacity and collective responsibility for creating and engaging space with care and intention feels aligned too with an idea of magic. I also love that magic suggests the possibility of the transformation of material conditions in an instant. It pushes the idea of “access” completely out of the sphere of retrofits and adaptation.” 

The concept of Access Magic was introduced as part of an online event, “Remote Access: Witches & Glitches”, a crip nightlife event curated and designed by a team at the Critical Design Lab that included artist Kevin Gotkin. The event was supported by a number of (disabled) individuals who were in the event space to help monitor the gathering and to look for ways to help enhance access. Kevin coined the term “Access Doula”, to describe this role. Traditionally the term “Doula” refers to an assistant who provides non-medical support during and after significant health-related transitional experiences (such as birth & death). Kevin explains how expansive the role of the Access Doula can be: 

“I think for me, Access Doulas are folks who can be present in the space and aware of needs as they arise. I think that is the trickiest part, where folks can tell us their needs ahead of time, but no one really KNOWS how they would feel in a space until they are actually in the space. And circumstances change all the time, with our bodyminds, with other folks in the space, with certain environmental factors. I think the Access Doula is someone who understands this fluidity of access-making and is dedicated to ensuring that when needs arise, they are available to listen and be present to try and meet them.” I would love to imagine a future where such a role becomes more the norm in arts spaces.

I am holding on to these three concepts of “Access Intimacy”, “Access Aesthetics” and “Access Magic” as ways of framing what I think Radical Access could and should be. 

DYCP Radical Accessibility: Opening questions

As I begin my DYCP project “Radical Accessibility” I want to set out some of the key questions I intend to explore.

Can an arts project - whether an exhibition, or event - ever be ‘fully’ accessible? If so, how? And if not, why not? How do we arrive at the best possible version of accessibility that compromises as little as possible?

How do I, as a freelancer who is often brought into a project with a challenging timeline and/or budget, ensure the best possible version of accessibility? Especially in teams or organisations that do not have a strong track record in these commitments?

What are the best ways to hold myself accountable for my commitment to radical accessibility?

Arts Council Develop Your Creative Practice Award

In late February 2022 I was delighted to learn that I had been successful in my Arts Council “Develop Your Creative Practice” (DYCP) application to develop my understanding, and advocacy, of “radical accessibility” within the cultural sector. The phrase “radical accessibility” stemmed from attending an online event presented by the wonderful Canadian artist Carmen Papalia. According to community organiser and educator Madison Mahdia Lynn-Greene, radical accessibility is ‘a dramatic revisioning of what "accessibility" really means in the vision of a movement towards justice where truly no one is left behind.’

In my application, I outlined my intention as follows:

“I will undertake research to deepen my understanding of & expertise in accessibility practices in relation to my work with artists & with audiences. Accessibility is, & should be, a far more expansive practice than large print guides, wheelchair ramps, captions and so on (although it is also all of these things). I will research how accessibility can be interrogated, problematised & enlarged, especially recent concepts of ‘radical accessibility’ & ‘access intimacy’. Rather than typically being a tag-on, last-minute addition, I want to explore how accessibility can be embedded at the outset of cultural projects, so that what is being produced has disabled & neurodivergent audiences in mind as a default. In essence, this research will help me to be a more competent advocate for disabled & neurodivergent artists & audiences.”

I stated that the benefit of this research would be threefold:

1: As a consultant producer working directly with artists, gaining a more nuanced understanding of accessibility will enable me to ensure that any projects I produce are conceived of, & budgeted, to take an “access first” approach, embedding these practices & budget lines from the outset.

2: As an access support worker/producer working directly with neurodivergent or disabled artists, this deeper understanding will make me a more effective advocate & producer with greater sensitivity to their needs, & will enable me to draft a set of care methodologies & principles by which I can hold myself & be held accountable.

3: As a freelance curator/producer working directly with organisations across a variety of sectors (cultural, scientific, higher education/research institutions), I will be able to learn from & bring best practice to those institutions, especially those where understanding of accessible/inclusive practice is often found wanting.

As I begin working on this project, I am setting the intention of documenting my research via this blog. My hope is that by doing so I can hold myself accountable for the aims of this project, use it as part of my evaluation, and also share my experiences with others for whom this might be relevant.