Rehearsing Accessible Futures
A conversation led by:
29/10/2023
15:00 – 17:00
ICF @ Block 336
336 Brixton Road
London SW9 7AA
Description
In this conversation we will be exploring the role of creative practice in reimagining new tools and approaches for making spaces, mediums and designs accessible. When we start to imagine potential accessible futures, what are the tools that get us there and how can creativity be a vehicle to rehearse these futures now?
For this discussion we will be joined by 5 practitioners, whose work spans textiles, illustration, creative coding, graphic design, publishing, writing, performance, theater, pedagogy, sound work and more. They will share their experiences and perspectives on accessible design, discuss how their creative practices have led to the production of new access tools & approaches and share prompts and learnings for other creatives to consider.
This conversation will be a critical, reflective and open discussion regarding the need to reimagine access tools, and speculate on what possible futures might come from this. Building on current accessibility practices, to reinvent and create spaces for thinking about the social model of disability as a design provocation, and more. The hope is that this conversation will start as a gateway for further explorations, sharing knowledge, making connections, celebrating lived experience and opening up space to explore the beauty, necessity and opportunities surrounding accessible practice.
This workshop will be BSL interpreted, captioned and live streamed.
Speakers
Arjun Harrison-Mann
Arjun is a designer, activist and lecturer, whose practice proposes the role of The Social Model of Disability as a design provocation. He is Co-Founder & Co-Director of graphic and interaction design studio, Studio Hyte, Year 2 Co-Lead on BA Design at Goldsmiths University, 1/3 of Access Power Visibility and member of activist group, Disabled People Against Cuts. Through his long standing collaborations with DPAC, APV and Studio Hyte, he has created tools to facilitate alternative protest with Deaf & Disabled people and undertakes ongoing practice-based & participatory research into radical accessibility. Over the years Arjun has given talks, exhibited at and been featured globally, which includes Design Indaba, Seoul Museum of Art, Serpentine Galleries, Kyoto Design Lab, The World Transformed, The Albany, Stanley Picker Gallery, Watershed, Transmediale, South Kiosk Gallery, Furtherfield Gallery and more.
Instagram: @arjun_harrisonmann @studiohyte
Kaiya Waerea
Kaiya Waerea is a chronically ill writer, designer and publisher from Aotearoa, now living in London. Her research is concerned with knowledge produced through marginalisation, particularly as it is produced through moving through this world in a disabled and indigenous body. Her writing has been featured in Counter Signals 5: Systems and their Discontents (forthcoming), Errant Journal: Learning from our Ancestors, AIGA Eye on Design and others. Kaiya co-runs feminist press Sticky Fingers Publishing and teaches on the Graphic Design programme at Camberwell University of the Arts London.
Instagram: @kaiyawaerea
Seo Hye Lee
Seo Hye Lee is a deaf South Korean artist based in the UK. Drawing on her personal experience of hearing loss and of being a cochlear implant user, Seo Hye utilises a multidisciplinary approach to explore a world of sound and silence through the mediums of drawing, moving image, and multi-sensory installation.
Instagram: @seohyel
Tzipporah Johnston
Tzipporah is an embroiderer and visual artist based in Edinburgh. Her textile work explores the complexities of autistic experience, particularly monotropism – the autistic tendency to focus deeply on one thing at a time.
Tzipporah is also the founder of Neuk Collective, a neurodivergent art collective, and its parent CIC, Door in the Wall Arts Access. This works for a more inclusive creative sector in Scotland and is underpinned by the belief that disabled and neurodivergent people are the experts in their own experience. She has a particular interest in neuro-inclusive communication, including Easy Read and other visual supports.
Instagram: @tzipporahfeiga @doorinthewallaa
Vijay Patel
Vijay Patel (he/they) is a performance artist, writer and neurodivergent access consultant. He crosses forms from live art, performance art and queer club/cabaret. The work they make predominantly surrounds cultural identity, making autobiographical/political work to shift perceptions and uplift marginalised, intersectional identities.
Instagram: @vijayrajpatel92
HOSTED BY
Studio Hyte is an award winning design studio, working between graphic design, interaction and emergent communication. Their practice expands across branding, print, website, installation and exhibition design. They specialise in forward-thinking, multifaceted visual identities within the arts and education sector. They aim to create meaningful, accessible and thought-provoking work, and work collaboratively with clients to facilitate their ideas into rich and nuanced projects.
@studiohyte
APV (an abbreviation of Access, Power & Visibility) is a London-based collective addressing issues around Disability Justice in the UK by exploring notions of radical accessibility, the relationship between power and presence, and accessibility as concept and medium. Formed by designer and educator Arjun Harrison-Mann, artist and producer Benjamin Redgrove and writer and designer Kaiya Waerea, the collective allies with the Disability Justice Movement, and their work is grounded in the social model of disability. Stemming from personal lived experience as well as experience of the UK disability benefits system, their work oscillates between provocation and service, contemplation and practicality.
