High Concept Labs (HCL), in partnership with Unfolding Disability Futures (UDF), is launching Art/Access Labs, a series of convenings committed to fostering a vibrant disabled artist ecosystem through cross-discipline and cross-impairment professional development activities.

UDF is a Chicago-based collective of disabled, sick, injured and neurodivergent artists representing a wide variety of artistic practices, including dance, sound/music, theater, performance art, and storytelling. This partnership brings together UDF’s expertise centering the experiences, needs, and perspectives of artists with a lived experience of disability with HCL’s expertise developing artist-driven residency programs and creating community exchange around the creative process. 

The originating version of Art/Access Labs was curated by artist Maggie Bridger during her 2022-2023 residency with HCL. Now, under the joint leadership of HCL and UDF, these convenings will offer artists with disabilities a space for peer learning and resource sharing. 

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.

Half the gatherings will be funded opportunities for artists to share and discuss work-in-progress. This affinity space frees artists from implicit or explicit expectation to educate about or justify disability aesthetics/culture, and allows for more nuanced conversation and resource sharing. These gatherings will alternate with convenings developed with feedback from participants seeking to develop or sustain careers in the arts. Potential topics include skill sharing, a mixer to facilitate new collaborations, and moderated conversations between disabled artists and venues, curators, and production teams.

The inaugural Art/Access Lab will be on Sunday, June 2 from 2:00 to 4:00pm as a hybrid event with Experimental Station, an accessible community-imbedded venue in Chicago’s Woodlawn neighborhood, hosting the in-person component. During this salon-style gathering, attendees are invited to share works, short performances/readings, clips, scenes, or anything else they might be working on. The event will begin with an introduction to the Art/Access Lab series presented by HCL and UDF. The rest of the event will consist of short showings interspersed with time to mingle with fellow artists with disabilities. 

As HCL and UDF learn through presenting Art/Access Labs, both organizations will be a resource for artists and organizational peers seeking to increase access to arts training, funding, and participation for the disability community.