Access Working Group Report

Spearheaded by Toronto’s Critical Distance Centre for Curators alongside collaborators at Carleton University Art Gallery and Tangled Art + Disability, the Access Working Group spent the years 2021 to 2023 exploring the creative possibilities of accessibility strategies in exhibition-making and live events. They recently released their final report, and Akimblog spoke with some of the participants to get a sense of what was accomplished. We asked about two initiatives in particular – the establishment of an access reserve fund and the development of remote access tours – as well as the work that still needs to be done.

Given that 20% of the population identifies as Disabled, and as Disability justice becomes more mainstream, there is hope that meaningful representation of Disabled concerns at all stages of the artistic and curatorial processes will become more common. There are no simple solutions, but we can all work together towards a more equitable future.
– Quoted from the Access Working Group report

The work that all the partners did for Access Working Group was experimental, ambitious, optimistic, and eye-opening in both challenging and rewarding ways. Collectively we covered so much ground, took risks, and learned so much. Critical Distance is not afraid of “failure” because that’s how we learn the deep lessons – and this is ultimately what transforms any failure into a success. As someone I greatly respect (aka Sean Lee from Tangled Art + Disability) once said, “Access is love, and love is complicated.” That complexity is not something to fear, but rather to embrace, even if imperfectly. That said, we’re proud of the successes too – particularly as they relate to building on our relationships with colleagues, artists, and community members who also want better. At Critical Distance we see access as key to any critical curatorial practice, and we look forward to continuing and expanding upon these conversations going forward. If there’s one thing we learned, we’ve still got a long way to go with respect to access in the arts, and not just at the organizational level.
– Shani K. Parsons, Director, Critical Distance Centre for Curators

The access reserve fund we were able to create for the duration of the project was a wonderful way to provide a commissioning opportunity for artists who had ambitious plans for embedding access into their works. While we have always worked with artists to build access into each of our exhibitions, the access reserve fund created the resources for our artists to deepen this work through exploratory means. These included a number of innovations that have continued to inform the work we do today. That said, access work is long and slow. It has to account for long-term sustainability and cultural shifts. Financially, we need more consistent funding structures to support and prioritize access. Culturally, we need to continue challenging the perception that accessibility is static and conventional, rather than a generative artistic practice. This includes normalizing access as a creative process and advocating for institutions to take on more responsibility in making accessibility a cultural aesthetic.
– Sean Lee, Director of Programming, Tangled Art + Disability

Remote access tours started to happen during the pandemic when everything was shut down and we couldn’t be in the physical world. We started with an iPad on wheels and booked Zoom tours. As we rolled out of the lockdown, the remote tours were very popular. We get almost a 50/50 split between in-person versus online bookings. Because of that, we were able to work on a grant to get a teleport center, which is a self-driven robot that anyone can navigate from a smartphone or a computer. Now we have the remote Zoom tours where a staff member will guide you through the exhibition, and we also have the robot (named Rosa) where you can book an appointment and navigate at your own leisure. Since we started the remote tours, we have expanded our audience to include people from all over the country and all over the world.
– Jet Coghlan, Digital Coordinator, Tangled Art + Disability

My big takeaway from this project is that these conversations need to be happening with artists at the time of creation, and with curators at the beginning of their thinking through their curatorial premises. Conversations need to be had with the community all along the way, and the time for that needs to be built in. It has to be something that people are thinking about at multiple stages of creation – starting with art school. And there are no quick fixes. Folks have to think about it differently for each exhibition and each artwork. There’s no other way through it. And no one thinks that it’s easy. But it’s also revolutionary and amazing, and it opens the world up in a way that is incredibly beautiful. It’s too important to not do.
– Emily Cook, lead researcher of the Access Working Group, former Director of Education and Accessibility at Critical Distance, accessibility consultant, and founder of Paperhouse Studio