How we started
Summary
- Access Lab & Library began in 2023, as a response to access barriers experienced during the making of a ‘radical access’ commission
- While developing the commission, Fayen d’Evie and her collaborators devised a number of tools and methods that could be shared beyond the production they were working on
- Importantly, these access strategies honoured the access needs of disabled artists, performers and producers as well as audience members
- The production won several awards for things like innovation in dance, sound and technical excellence
- Fayen initiated forming ALL with initial partners Jon Tjhia and Lloyd Mostafa, to share these tools and strategies
- Creative Victoria contributed funding for a Feasibility Study
- This helped ALL start their equipment library, and do creative and service research
- ALL relaunched with Fayen d’Evie and Jon Tjhia
- It is committed unpacking the possibilities for access-led creative practice
Access Lab & Library (ALL) formed as a response to ~~~~~“…derelict in uncharted space…”, the 2023 Chunky Move x Melbourne Fringe Radical Access Commission, which was awarded to ALL co-founder Fayen d’Evie. Fayen had proposed a choreographic stage production that would celebrate an under-recognised milestone in audiodescription history, when an amateur Star Trek fan club in San Francisco launched Project Communicator, a non-profit initiative to bring the wonderment of Star Trek to blind audiences, through descriptive radio plays. Project Communicator developed a pilot as proof-of-concept, which translated the episode ‘Is There In Truth No Beauty?’ into a radio play. Despite being endorsed by the Star Trek cast, Paramount perceived the project as piracy; the pilot was never released, and Project Communicator was abandoned. For her Radical Access Commission, Fayen pitched the development of a live and radio broadcast performance that would retell the story of ‘Is There In Truth No Beauty?’ through audiodescription and experimental movement languages, including embodied typographies, gestural poetics, tactile writing and inter-sensorial translations. (You can read more about the commission in our case studies here.)
During the development phase of the commission, Fayen and collaborators encountered many barriers and obstacles in sourcing and gathering access tools and equipment. She was also frustrated by the scale of labour required to convince industry partners that methods oriented through disability justice were not only valid, but fundamental — creatively and politically — if we were to meet the promise of a radical access commission. Fayen also recognised that the collaborating team’s perseverance and crip ingenuity had brought to life a multitude of tools and methods that could be shared beyond the single instance of the stage production.
These included, among others:
- Collective audio-description learning and performance frameworks, bringing un/trained describers (including artists, poets and writers) into dialogue
- Sound design and spatialisation that considers various perceptual experiences (such as vibrational sub bass cues by d/Deaf performers; spatial diffusion for wayfinding by blind performers; sensory-friendly mixing)
- Accessible binaural broadcasts for a digital radio season
- 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 that guided wayfinding by blind performers
- Access-driven marketing and merchandise
Their case was assisted by industry recognition of the innovation that ~~~~~“…derelict in uncharted space…” had brought to experiences of contemporary performance, including 2023 Fringe Awards for Innovation in Dance and for Sound and Technical Excellence, and nominations for Best Dance and Physical Theatre and Spirit of the Fringe; and a 2024 Green Room Award for Contemporary and Experimental: Design/Technical Achievement and nomination for Outstanding Work.
Access Lab & Library has now been relaunched as a partnership co-directed by Fayen d’Evie and Jon Tjhia. We have recommitted to access as a platform for generosity and experimentation. We have also affirmed our commitment to unpacking the ways that access-led and access-infused creative practice can offer a counterpoint to historic and contemporary exclusion and erasure.