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.