Art/Access Labs
Art/Access Labs foster a vibrant disabled artist ecosystem through cross-discipline and cross-impairment professional development activities.
Art/Access Labs are centered around artists with a lived experience of disability including Deaf, disabled, sick, neurodivergent, and Mad artists, and those working through their relationship to these categories, working in all mediums. Anyone who is invested in fostering a vibrant disabled artist ecosystem in Chicago is encouraged to participate. This audience may include professional artists, students and pre-professional artists, educators, curators, arts administrators and other arts professionals.
Presented in Partnership with Unfolding Disability Futures
Next Art/Access Lab
Building Community & Connection
The arts sector is increasingly committed to audience accessibility, with ASL interpretation, live captioning, sensory-friendly performances, and accessibility training increasing in recent years. What work is being done to ensure that artists with disabilities have a viable and vibrant path presenting their work to inclusive and enthusiastic audiences?
There are countless barriers preventing traditional professional development tracks from being accessible, welcoming, or relevant for disabled individuals. Beyond physical accessibility, residencies, fellowships, and institutional opportunities often set program expectations that may be unreasonable for someone navigating certain disabilities, and fail to offer or provide adequate accommodations.
Career advancement in the arts relies heavily on building relationships and support networks through programs like residencies. With mainstream professional development tracks out of reach for many people with disabilities, it is often untenable for artists with disabilities to transition from student, “emerging”, or pre-professional status, to professional.
Our Art/Access Labs address this through creating a community space for artists with disabilities to share resources, to nourish artistic and professional relationships, and support the development of each other’s creative practice.
Work In Progress Showings
Work in Progress Showings provide artists in the disability community an affinity space to share and discuss developing projects. These gatherings offer a flexible platform for artists to share, test ideas, and develop perspective on their work through community exchange. Audiences are invited to witness and share back through moderated conversations that nurture a community rich in cultural, artistic, and intellectual discourse.
Each showing features one or more projects that are in development. Following each presentation, the artist or artists asks questions of the audience, and vice versa, in order to support the continued development of the project.
Projects in any medium are welcome including time-based work such as movement, dance, song, spoken word, healing arts, video, etc. Any fine art should not require installation.
Peer-Driven Professional Development
Work in Progress Showings alternate with other professional development opportunities, with the format and topic of these gatherings guided by the needs and desires of participants.
These gatherings will encompass a wide range of opportunities to build a successful career in the arts, and might range from mixers to instigate new collaborations, to panel conversations with invited experts, to facilitated conversations that build trust, accountability, and understanding among disabled artists and venues, curators, and production teams.
Attendees are invited to guide the direction of future gatherings, based on where they most need support in the creative and career development.
Anyone interested in presenting a project is encouraged to fill out the Art/Access Lab: Work In Progress Showing Interest Form.
Artists are selected on a rolling basis, with artists selected two months in advance of each gathering.
Program Culture
A driving aspect of Art/Access Labs is to hold space for communion among individuals with a lived experience of disability. Care is taken to ensure that all Art/Access Labs center ease of accessibility across various types of impairment. In that spirit, all Art/Access Labs feature the following:
A hybrid format that strive for a high-quality experience for in-person and virtual attendees alike, with ample opportunities for interaction among all attendees, regardless of their location;
Built in time to get settled, allow for content to be shared at a moderate pace, and welcome movement throughout the space.
ASL interpretation and CART services always provided; AI Captioning is always available via zoom;
Multiple types of seating (mats, chairs, floor cushions/bean bags);
The event space will not use fluorescent lighting;
Stim tools, ear defenders, and PPE are provided;
Water and individually packaged snacks are provided;
All speakers use microphones;
Agendas are provided to all registrants in both text and symbol-based formats;
Attendees are welcome and encouraged to bring their own access tools;
An Accessibility Coordinator, and their contact information, is always listed within promotional materials.
RSVP forms offer the option to share additional requests related to comfort and/or accessibility.
Past Art/Access Lab Events
Unfolding Disability Futures
Unfolding Disability Futures is a collective of Chicago-based disabled performing artists.
Formed out of a performance and exhibition under the same name held in June 2022 at The Plant in Chicago’s Back of the Yards neighborhood, the organizers and artists involved recognized the need for a support structure for experimental performance that centered around disability experience and creative access.
The current work of UDF is to provide a container for the wide range of work emerging from both its core collective and its wider community of artists, educators, and access workers. This means platforming and seeking funding for showings, providing key development support and feedback for works in progress, and working to make the wider Chicago arts community more accessible via resource sharing, skill building, and access consultation.
“We value cross-impairment collaboration, which revels in the variety of perspectives and practices that come from folks with different impairments working toward a shared goal. Through conflicting access needs and priorities that arise during the creative process, we arrive at exciting and innovative solutions that are essential to the type of artistic community UDF seeks to create.”
