Access in Counterpoint

Video description

This is a presentation on one framework from the Research in Residence: Arts’ Civic Impact project. Mass Culture, in partnership with Canada Council for the Arts, the Culture Statistics Working Group, the Ontario Trillium Foundation, and Toronto Arts Foundation, conducted research to understand the civic impact of the arts.

Access in Counterpoint, developed by Aaron Richmond , is a framework to measure the impact of making dance accessible to people with blindness and low vision.

Speaker

Aaron Richmond, Concordia University

Publication date

August 10, 2023

Resources

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Aaron Richmond

My name is Aaron Richmond. I am a postdoctoral researcher at the Milieux Institute for Arts, Culture and Technology at Concordia University. This project is called Access in Counterpoint, the framework I made is called Access in Counterpoint. The reason for that is I was trying to think of a structure for the framework that would suggest that it's not a set of policy guidelines. And it's not a straightforward set of suggestions, suggesting that one particular set of approaches should be followed, or that I have some sort of authoritative advice to share on what kinds of practices might constitute accessibility within the performing arts. Counterpoint for me suggests that there are multiple melodies or movements that are operating in tandem with one another. It suggests a sort of complexity of these questions. So when you're talking about accessibility, and you're talking about developing a set of processes that you are looking to make more accessible, "counterpoint" suggests that there are sort of always more than one set of criteria to be keeping in mind, and there's always a number of possibilities at play within a given situation.  

My research question going into this project was how does a rethinking of dance beyond the visual allow us to think in accessibility in ways that extend beyond its logistical or functional dimensions? So how does, how do the projects that I was encountering within the performing arts, how did they help us to rethink accessibility in such a way that then moves beyond the functional or logistical dimensions of accessibility? Where that question came from, for me was for about fourteen years I worked for a person with quadriplegia named Judith Snow, who was a disability activist based in Toronto, and Judith for years had done work around disability rights. And the last years of her life, she moved towards the arts, because she found that within the arts, there were a set of conversations that were looking at accessibility, and not just as this sort of needs to be addressed, but as something that could open up to a broader set of questions about inclusivity and the terms that we use within the arts to make contact with one another. So there was something interesting to me about the ways in which conversations about accessibility within the arts were being framed. And I wanted to use this project to sort of problematize the way in which as I understood it, there was a kind of segregation happening between, you know, questions about art and aesthetic experiences, and what constitute dance, what constitutes exciting dance for some people for able bodied people, and then what it constitutes accessibility or the sort of logistical concerns about accessible performance or bodied population. And it seemed that there was a way of sort of bringing those conversations closer together in ways that didn't segregate. There was a kind of speed to this project. Insofar as we were, within about six months, were expected to sort of enter the art sector and enter into a set of practices that were underway and make some sense of something that was going on, given the timeline of this project, I thought that rather than sort of invent a set of situations or programs that I could then observe from the outside, my interest was to sort of look at a set of projects that were already underway.

So danse-cité, the year before this project began, danse-cité initiated a pilot project that was intending to train a cohort of 1 people to become audio describers for dance. So that was the first year of the project. And there were a number of projects that sort of built on that. And so my research methodology was to sort of implant myself in a set of practices that were already underway that involved a dance workshop that was organized as part of danse-cité, where four different choreographers were tasked with making work in dialogue with people with varying visual capacities. My methodology was to insert myself in that set of processes and join that community, participate in the workshops that were being organized as part of that project, and also conduct a series of interviews in conversation with the people who were organizing these projects, people were participating in the projects, and people were supporting them in different ways. And the interviews were meant to get a cross section of people from all parts of the art sectors for people who were artists, developing works, and people who were working on the organizational side, people who were part of the blind and low vision communities that were asked to participate in some of these projects, to sort of really try to get a cross section of opinions and reflections on the different projects that were underway. I'm new to the conversations around impact assessment. And one of the ways in which I found a footing in these conversations was to think of it in terms of value, and to think about how we talk about, and how we measure value within the arts.

Even talking about measuring value, there is a kind of, they seem predisposed to quantity, to quantitative. So how much did something impact you? How much of an audience did you get? You know, like the, there's a real habit that draws us back into thinking about, even when we're speaking qualitatively, it seems that we're, always in our metaphors and in our language, always drawn back into thinking about value is something that is incremental, that that grows up that is built up. By focusing on words and words that are concepts, this framework was trying to draw attention to the ways in which value can also be studied, observed, noticed in how people use language, the ways in which different terms sort of seem to pop up or they re-emerge. And they become points for different people to come together around certain set of terms, they become, they become points of contention, they become ways of making distinctions, making divisions.

And so what I was trying to draw attention to with this framework. And so the framework operates through a series of paired concepts. And what I was trying to draw attention to what, within my experience entering into this field, I saw as being a set of conversations  in which value is being negotiated. As a way of talking about value and ways it wasn't just about measurement, but more about signaling where value is being signaled in some way. With all of these terms, there was often a kind of ricochet moment where I'd be sort of moving in one direction. So in this case, with creation and reception, working with danse-cité and working with the projects based in Montreal, are a lot of the conversations were about how do you make a dance community that includes a public that includes blind and low vision communities, so that folks from those communities can be a part of the experience, and that dance is reaching that public. And that was the sort of dominant conversation I would say for a lot of my interviews and a lot of the practices that I was witnessing. Towards the second half of the project, I started to talk to artists working in British Columbia, mostly in Vancouver. And there I encountered a, a really different set of questions, particularly talking to Carmen Papalia. Almost every question I asked, sort of turned it around and opened it up in ways that made me sort of rethink the entire framework in which I was thinking. And so with questions about creation and reception, I actually asked Carmen, a question about growing a public, or blind and low vision communities. His response was, to paraphrase it, was that there's a whole other side to this. And there's a whole other set of questions that have to do with working within the institutions and on the side of production, to make sure that people with different visual abilities are able to engage as producers. So I would say that the turning point in that set of conversations really had to do with being in conversation with artists from the West Coast, who were focusing on, yeah, who's in the room when decisions are being made about what kind of what work goes in an exhibition, you know, and who's in the room on a board, when it's deciding about what kinds of programming is being developed. And so those are conversations that have less to do with the kind of public that is grown on the side of the audience and has much more to do with the kind of people who are involved in production. For me, there was a kind of regional divide almost in those sets of concerns. So each of the performances that I attended, that were audio described, had a feedback session built into it already. So in those feedback sessions, anybody attending those could sort of get a feel for what this sort of group consensus was. I thought that rather than do sort of questionnaires, or something like that, that would try to gauge audience reception, to sort of attend those feedback sessions and try to get a sense of what's being talked about and they were often a lot shorter than I had hoped for, but there was there was enough sort of space around those feedback sessions to get a sense of how the audience was responding.

There was also an opportunity within the workshops, the creative workshops, to get a sense of what, what the how the audience was responding to the different works. The reception of works was being conceived by the people who are making the work, and by the organization. So how were the organization's thinking about problems around reception? To me, that seemed like a very interesting, problematic. So it's probably helpful here to give a concrete example. So with all dimensions of the kinds of performances that I was observing, and the kinds of creative practices I was observing, there, there were certain set of questions that seemed just very straightforwardly logistical. So for a while, I was really noticing a lot of these problems centred on welcoming and hospitality. So meaning, like what happens when somebody goes to see a show? How are they welcomed into the space of a performance? And that, to me was an interesting sort of set of questions, because, on the one hand, it seemed like they involved a set of logistic, purely logistical questions, you know, how do you arrange for accessible transport? To drop off at a certain location? How far in advance do you have to organize accessible transport? How do you mark the venue when people arrive at the venue? Is there a kind of table setup that is there to greet people? If there is then how do the how do the people arriving then get accommodated to sort of to the listening app? So there is a cell phone listening app that people use to listen to the audio description, so then there's a whole technical side of welcoming people into a performance, was really a complex set of questions that I just watched with amazement that mostly the organizational staff at all of these events had to had to be thinking weeks in advance about the sort of choreography of a performance in its purely logistical dimensions. There was also though a number of performances, a number of examples of performances, who where the welcoming of people into a performance also became sort of part of the way that they designed the artwork itself. So there was a project called Translations, that was developed in Vancouver by All Bodies Dance, and I talked to Naomi Brand and Collin van Uchelen, who, when they talked about the development of that piece, the visitors when they arrived, Collin came out and gave a preliminary statement, introducing the piece, and sort of getting the project underway.

Once people were in the actual space, though, they described a set of processes where the audience was introduced to a choreography, gradually. They both described it as a kind of layering of the choreography. So you're introduced to description through its enactment within a space, through its sound, and through somebody who is behind you acting it out on your back, so describing it through a kind of physical gesture on your back. And I'm not I'm not describing accurately the sort of really technical dimension of this, of this sort of layering. But it's interesting to me that when I spoke to both Naomi and to Collin, they both described this as a sort of entry into the choreography so that the process of welcoming somebody into a dance isn't just about the logistical dimensions of how do you get them inside that theater? It's also how do you get them inside the dance? How do you get people inside of a movement of a dance? So hospitality, welcoming, however you want to think about it, becomes a sort of interesting way of thinking about how the logistical and the aesthetic, they're integrated in ways that you can't parse them so easily. You know, there, there are a number of examples of that. One interesting example that I encountered around the question of both need an affordance was Emile Pineault's performance More Than Things. And so in that performance of the particular, let's say, performance structure that Emile played with, one of them anyway, was had to do with the way people were seated in the space. So within a sort of traditional, let's say, disability lens, the question of seating, you know, you go to a large venue, and there's often a spot for an accessible wheelchair, and so you have able bodied people and able bodied seats, and then you have a designated zone for people labeled with a disability, usually from a motorized wheelchair.

Within Emile Pineault's More Than Things, the seating had multiple levels. So when you walked into the space, or when you rolled into this space, however you moved into this space, there were seats that were on the ground, there were seats that were sort of low level, there were cushions, and there were seats that were upright. And those were sort of mixed together in ways that that allowed for different configurations. There was also a certain flexibility to this space. For example, if you were there with somebody who needed one kind of seat, and you yourself needed a different kind of seating, you could be seated together. And you could also adapt to how, you know, the people who are coming into the room. So if you took up, let's say, if you took up a spot that was in an upright seat, and somebody came into the room that clearly needed a seat like that, just because it didn't for age, or for whatever reason, it didn't look like they wanted to be lying flat on the floor on a cushion, then you could adapt and that happened. And so the whole lead into that performance, it produced a kind of a situation where people have various body types and abilities could sort of negotiate the space with one another and have to be sensitive to the fact that different people were in that space and that they were sharing that space. So that's an example whereby a straightforward need, so the need for a different kinds of seating, produced a set of a set of conditions. That was much more interesting, and much more integrated, and much more inclusive, I think, than just identifying one or two seats for people who use a motorized wheelchair. So the question of affordances, I think of it as, as a kind of as a question of locating possibilities. So where within the experience of somebody who is different from the norm, do we find possibilities for different ways of relating to one another or relating to works of art, producing works of art. So one interesting example that I encountered was in performance called Camille, by Adrienne Bouchard. And in that performance, is so, that was a unique performance in that people with visual impairment and people who were sighted, both entered the space without seeing. So if you were sighted, you are given a blindfold at the beginning of that performance, and you were given a pair of slippers, and you were introduced to a theater with a guide. So everybody went into the performance space with a guide. And what that meant was the first experience that you had, even before you were in your seat and the show began, was you were told by your guide, "okay, you're about to go down a set of stairs now". And they didn't say how many stairs you were gonna go down, but they just said "you're gonna go down some stairs now". And so here, here I was holding on to somebody's arm, and it was sort of amazing actually how paranoid I was that they were going to walk me into a wall. I had my arm out and I was so nervous in that encounter. It took a couple comfortable being led into the space, and before I was able to feel comfortable going downstairs with somebody, and being led by somebody down a series of stairs. And I remember from that performance, there were about - stairs. There was a there were there were a lot of stairs in the performance space. And I remember that there was something about starting a performance, being led, not seeing the space, being led into a performance through somebody else and having to find the rhythm of a staircase with another person. That to me was one of the most memorable experiences of the whole research project. It stands out as a situation where an affordance where not seeing, where being the experience of being led becomes a possibility for a different kind of relationship to another person, a different way of entering into a performance. So it became a real creative possibility.

Capacity was another one of these terms that seemed so basic that it was hard to question, because in a lot of the impact assessment resources that I was finding meaningful as a as a prompt for this research, capacity stood out as this really exciting term as a way of thinking about, in really broad terms, what an artist organization can do, and the kind of resources that it has, and how different creative practices can grow that with adequacy, and with reading with Jimmy, which again, I attribute Carmen Papalia, and to a section of Towards Braiding, which is  describing a kind of colonial tendency towards expansion. And within my own research, I started to notice that unchecked was, the kind of question about growth, that that the arts can be expanded, that the accessible arts can be thought of as something that can be developed and built upon and grown, and that being a kind of dominant model for how we think about these questions.

With the question of adequacy, there's a,  there's an element of modesty that enters into the mix, whereby instead of imagining the art sector, as this sort of organism that just has to get stronger and bigger and bigger, whether that's within a provincial level or at a national level, at a local level, Jimmy's critique and seem to be suggesting that it's more important to be noticing, within the communities that are forming, what is actually needed and to not sort of imagine the art sector as this thing that is sort of floating in mid-air, and that can be sort of grown and grown, but rather to think about what are the actual communities that's touching, and what are the needs of those communities? And to stay attuned to those, and to keep one's sort of structures and mechanisms as an as an arts institution, engaged in feedback loops, and in conversations that that makes sure that you don't have this kind of growth for the sake of growth, and you don't have institutions that are built up for the sake of building them up, but that are attuned to the needs of a particular community at a particular time and space. Think of like you go to a lot of American cities, and you have universities that have sort of ballooned into these enormous programs and enormous schools and incredible facilities, and there's a way in which the arts can kind of grow. I don't know a lot about the ways in which belonging has been used within qualitative assessment, but with integration and intimacy, one of the things that I was trying to get at or describe was the ways in which belonging can have different meanings, and it can have different it can be understood in different ways. You can belong to a group under the conditions set by the group. We are in proximity with one another, and we are, I think, more than belonging, I'm interested in describing the terms of inclusion. What are the conditions under which inclusion happens? What does it look like? You can have forms of inclusion, where differences is sort of the it's the thing that you have to give away. In order to be a part of a group.

There's a certain homogeneity that is required for inclusion, that's the sort of the price of admission within to creation and intimacy and trying to describe the ways in which inclusion happens under different conditions, and the ways in which some of those conditions require us to sort of check our differences at the door. And some of those conditions allow and invite us to engage those difference, and to be in the space that is multiple, in ways that sort of produce a different set of terms, does a different set of conditions. One of the ways in which intimacy is being described by people like me, and Mingus, as I understand it, is as a kind of proximity, and a kind of closeness, and a kind of understanding, that can withstand differences. So that you can be in a space with somebody who is very different from you, and you're both welcome. You're in a kind of shared experience in a way that doesn't try to do away with difference. Integration was a model that was developed in order to produce new levels of inclusion, and I think it probably did that in ways that are very important. What I noticed, and what I was trying to draw attention to, was the fact that the way the term has been taken up, more recently, integration that carries the risk of imagining a situation whereby you have a marginal, disabled experience that is integrated into a normative center. And what the idea of intimacy does is it imagines a set of conditions, whereby inclusion doesn't come at the expense of difference. So inclusion doesn't force people to leave their differences at the door. The framework, I guess is organized in such a way that every section introduces a set of terms, and it gives a description that is describing those sets of terms and what they are, why I think they're In dialog. What's interesting to me about that dialog, and then there's a set of indicators looking at each of those terms, and there is each section is followed by a set of field notes.

The field notes are quotations taken from interviews with the different participants reflecting on each of the set of terms. I guess I imagine people who are interested in making accessible art are in sort of embarking on accessible art projects, organizations who are wondering about how, how to think about or how to enter into a set of conversations around accessibility or are looking to sort of push their conversations around accessibility. It's really for people who are, I think, on this side of production more than anything else. So who people who are in involved in the art sector, either in the production of art, or in the in the organizational support, and in the showcasing of art. And it's produced through a set of through research that is based in the visual arts, but I think it would transfer, I think the set of conversations are broad enough that they would transfer into the interdisciplinary arts.

The political climate that we're living in, I think, is pretty combative, and I think a lot of people are very afraid of making mistakes. And I think that's true on a lot of different issues, and probably with disability or questions of accessibility as well. I know my own experience, and from just sort of judging from what I encounter within the art sector, people are, are afraid to say the wrong thing, people are afraid to do the wrong thing. It's just sort of, there's something about the moment that we're living in that is can be intimidating, and the conversations around accessibility are particularly complex, and I'm not an expert in them. So this document is really it's sort of a guide, it's sort of intended as an entry point, for thinking about some of the complexities, some of the stakes involved in making accessible work. It's, you know, it's written from the perspective of somebody who's used to making art. So I hope that it's sensitive to some of the things that are exciting about making accessible art. Like I genuinely think that there's a lot that's really tired about the arts community at this moment. Like there's so much issue that has been amplified, and there's so much cynicism in the art sector, maybe, that there's something about these practices around accessible, making accessible art, that I do think is genuinely exciting, that I think is genuinely experimental. And I hope that it prompts more of that experimentation. It's already happening, and I hope it continues to happen.