About ALL (mobile) — Access Lab & Library

About ALL

Welcome to Access Lab & Library.

Access Lab & Library (ALL) was created in 2023 to develop and nurture disability-led and artist-led access in creative settings. Our tools and strategies are suited to live performance, exhibitions and publishing.

We approach access as a temporary, collectively-held space, as an experimental field, and as a platform for generosity.

We are Fayen d’Evie, Lloyd Mst and Jon Tjhia. Our lab offers iterative prototyping of inter/sensory access innovations, with a focus on collaboration. Our partners are artists, collectives and commissioning organisations.

Our library will share case studies and guides to artist-led access strategies—and soon grow to offer a lending system for access equipment, starting with Naarm/Melbourne and regional Victoria.

Purpose

From our local communities to intercontinental collaborations, we research, prototype, and co-present tools and strategies that radically expand sensory, multisensory, and intersensory access for artists and for audiences.

We work with creative partners to develop innovations in access beyond baseline compliance; access that is artist-led and disability-led; access that aligns with distinct, individual and collective ethics, aesthetics and practices.

Values

ALL’s goal is to build collective capacity for access. We pursue this by foregrounding the proliferation of skills, knowledge, experimentation and direct experience.

Our approach to access builds on concepts like ‘access intimacy’ (Mia Mingus) and ‘access as a temporary, collectively-held space’ (Carmen Papalia). We embrace the concept of abundant subjectivity, where all perspectives are welcome and relevant.

ALL is underpinned by broad principles of inclusion, access and self-determination for disabled people. We recognise the social model of disability and aspire to the ideals of disability justice. We honour the interconnectedness of disabling factors, and value the multiple, intersecting identities of partners and audiences.

Credentials

ALL formed in response to our experiences trying to gather and source equipment and tools for the presentation of ~~~~~“…derelict in uncharted space…”, the 2023 Chunky Move x Melbourne Fringe Radical Access Commission.

Through this production, we developed:

A graphically-rich web-based captioning tool, allowing artists to combine live and pre-written/styled captions;

Stage design incorporating multiple caption interfaces within performances, and tactile stage materials (using surplus and secondhand materials);

Sound design and spatialisation that considers various perceptual experiences (such as vibrational sub-bass cues by Deaf performers; spatial diffusion for wayfinding by blind performers; sensory-friendly mixing);

Collective audiodescription learning and performance frameworks, bringing un/trained describers (including artists, poets and writers) into dialogue;

Accessible binaural broadcasts for a digital radio season;

Access-driven merchandise, including tactile screenprinting … and more.

~~~~~“…derelict in uncharted space…” was recognised as:

2023 Fringe Awards: Innovation in Dance; Sound and Technical Excellence
Nominated: Best Dance and Physical Theatre; Spirit of the Fringe
2024 Green Room Awards, Contemporary and Experimental: Design/Technical Achievement
Nominated: Outstanding Work

Since forming ALL, we’ve presented a hybrid workshop for artists and programmers at Arts House, incorporating some of these developments and techniques. In June 2024, with our regular collaborator Nelly Kate and others, we’re developing a short programme of workshops and collaborations taking place around MIT’s Spatial Sound Lab in the US.