ADNA workshop - Hosting notes (not for attendees)
Date/time: Tuesday 25th 2026, 11:50am-1pm [70 mins] (AEST)
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Make sure all can chat
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Make sure captions on
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Make sure recording on
[Jon begins] Greets group, acknowledges Country and First Peoples present, thanks Jacquie, Timothy and Sarah-Mace, introduces ALL.
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Why ALL? Our backgrounds and practises, and what led to the formation of Access Lab & Library;
- Commitment to access — as we will expand on later — as a condition of social and public life, and earnest attempts to enact the core tenets of the social model (as analysis) and disability justice (as praxis)
- Especially in this era of looming threat … recognising the power and agency we have, even with our limitations, to extend and produce and spread access between us
- Hence, we work across an imaginary of broad scale: spanning low- and no-cost strategies, and strategies that are not yet possible
12:00 — 12:05pm — Habits and Protocols (5 minutes)
[Fayen guides Habits and Protocols exercise]
I’d like to open our time together with a very short attention and movement exercise.
This is an exercise that I like to use to think about habits, or rather, to think about questioning habits.
I have a habit when I'm remotely joining a meeting like this to automatically sit and rest my hands face down. If I’m not aware , I can actually stay locked in a hands-down position for many minutes, sometimes even hours.
Yet I’ve realised that if I take the simple action of flipping my hands over, I can begin notice subtle shifts in my posture, and in the space available to me to breathe.
So, if it is available to you, wherever and however your hands are now, I invite you to turn them over or place them into some other different position than they have been, and as you do so, notice how your body shifts. [-Wait-]
If its available, I now invite you to lift your hands and begin to rotate your thumbs, or your wrists. Notice if your thumbs or wrists are moving together, or randomly? Do you keep moving them in the same direction, or do you find yourself unwinding, back and forth.
If you notice you are repeating particular motions, try to reverse the direction, or shift the orientation in space.
Notice which movements activate different muscles than usual. Notice which movements feel better.
As you continue to circle, are you are falling back into any repetitive motions? Any habitual pathways. And if so, think about whether you want to play with changing the path. [-Wait-]
Now, if it is possible for you, I’d like to invite you to bring your attention to the weight of your head.
I invite you to make a very small movement to shift that weight - just very slightly. It could be a slight tilt of your head to the left or right. Or it could be to move your head just a tiny bit backwards in space, so that your vertebrae stack on top of one another.
As you do this, can you find a position of more comfort and ease? Can you find a position that expands the space available for breathing?
As we move into the rest of the discussion, let us carry the prompt of questioning habits.
Are we collectively repeating habits and protocols that are not supporting our own participation in change processes - or our community’s participation? What opportunities are there to play - whether radically or just slightly - with where the weight sits? Or to play with changing pathways, directions, or shifting attention, to create more breathing space, politically or creatively?
How might questioning habits support you and your community to participate more fully?
12:05pm — 12:25 pm — Audio-description examples & exercise (20 minutes)
[Jon introduces and discusses examples]
We’ve been very interested in how different communities are using audio-description as a creative practice. We argue that so-called objective audio-description is unfeasible, especially within the hierarchies of ocularcentric culture and capitalism — and instead embrace different examples that describe from a voice, perspective or a position. This creates a relation between the describer/s and the audience.
[Jon shares Keynote]
- Andy Slater’s TikTok request for descriptions of the 2023 Montgomery dock fight – and one of the many rich and creative responses he received (5 minutes)
[Play clip] - Miyuki Tanaka’s 2017 audiodescriptive dance development at Kanagawa Arts Theatre, featuring three simultaneous audio-description tracks that the audience can switch between using the preset buttons of handheld FM radios. (2 mins)
[Play first clip]
[Play second clip] - This project emphasises questions and opportunities of perspective. Is there a definitive position of spectatorship in any given audience? How can divergent or dramatised — performative — perspectives be embraced, amplified or held together through access? What personas or traditions can hold a point of view? Why is access rarely considered theatrical, and how much non-linguistic information is expressed simply through this kind of voicing? Could these different layers of description be considered works of art in themselves?
[Fd introduces exercise]
- Let’s experiment together with audiodescriptive language. In a moment, we are going to play a short excerpt from a film, a 1967 work by Ubu Films, the experimental filmmakers. The film was called “The Tribulations of Mr Dupont Nomore.” We have selected an excerpt that is 1 minute 27 seconds. We are going to play it through twice.
- You can either write some descriptive words or phrases intuitively, or you can choose to write from the perspective of particular position or character.
- OK, now lets share some of what you’ve written (5 minutes). Jacquie, can you help invite people within the room to share?
12:25pm — 12:40 pm — A simple collective captioning exercise (15 minutes)
[Jon introduces]
We are going to continue to explore sensory translations, and coauthoring, through a captioning exercise.
For our collective captioning today, we are going to be using two excerpts of audio pieces by Shareeka Helaluddin. The voiceover narration is captioned, but other sounds are not. We invite you to share some descriptive words or phrases to describe these other sounds.
This time, we would like to invite you to share your descriptions via an online chat, which you can access on your phone or a laptop. Here’s the QR code, or you can click on the link that Sarah will have shared.
As you are listening, you can either describe the sounds intuitively, or you can take a particular position.
We will play the audio sample twice.
[Fayen provides context to how we have worked with these collective descriptions]
This technique of listening together, and inviting descriptions, is one of the techniques we have used in the past to develop a wordbank of language, to draw from in creating captions. This has allowed us to invite a wide group of collaborators - including people who are remote or isolated - to join in coauthoring access strategies.
Let us show you an example.
[Play clip]
12:40pm — 12:55pm — Access desires (15 minutes)
Introduce Open Access (5 minutes)
[Fayen provides introduction]
In our work, we acknowledge and are grateful for the contributions of Disabled artists and writers and thinkers who have shaped our understandings of access. In particular, we often work with non-visual artist Carmen Papalia’s principles of ‘Open Access’.
Carmen came to Open Access after frustratations with the supports he had been receiving from the Canadian National Institute for the Blind, and also disappointing experiences in museums, where sighted designers seemed to be producing very limited ways for blind visitors to engage with art. He felt that these supports and access approaches made him feel more distanced from society. Around 2013, Carmen began to work with radical accessibility could mean for a grassroots community; thinking of access that considers power, oppression, strategy, agency, mutuality, solidarity, collaboration, creative practice and justice. As he imagined a radically accessible space, he came up with five principles.
[Jon reads the first one; we take turns thereafter]
1. Open Access relies on those present, what their needs are and how they can find support with each other and in their communities. It is a perpetual negotiation of trust between those who practice support as a mutual exchange.
2. Open Access is radically different than a policy that temporarily removes a barrier to participation for a group with definitive needs. It acknowledges that everyone carries a body of local knowledge and is an expert in their own right.
3. Open Access is the root system of embodied learning. It cultivates trust among those involved and enables each member to self-identify and occupy a point of orientation that centers complex embodiment.
4. Open Access disrupts the disabling conditions that limit one’s agency and potential to thrive. It reimagines normalcy as a continuum of embodiments, identities, realities and learning styles, and operates under the tenet that interdependence is central to a radical restructuring of power.
5. Open Access is a temporary, collectively held space where participants can find comfort in disclosing their needs and preferences with one another. It is a responsive support network that adapts as needs and available resources change.
One of Carmen’s first Open Access projects was to gather a group of artists and activists; some identified as disabled, others as young, Indigenous, trans, queer, mad persons of color. Their focus was how to reimagine an art museum. At their first meeting, they were invited to respond to the question: “What conditions must be in place in order for you to thrive or elect into the museum community?” This led to a collective list of wants that provided a first step to understanding the collective needs and politics of the group.
Access Needs and Desires (5 minutes)
And this leads into our last exercise together. As our time with you draws to a close, we wanted to reframe this as an opening. We would like to invite you to think about this question: What conditions must be in place in order for you and your community to thrive within ADNA? What are your access desires to support you and your community to thrive within this new network?
Let us take a few minutes now, for each of you to consider that question, and then we will circle around for a final collective reading.
[Stop sharing Keynote]
Sharing (5 minutes)
12:50pm — 1:00pm — Closing (5 minutes)
We’d like to close this time together by thanking you for the invitation to share this space for a short time. We’re grateful for the earnest persistence of your work and your advocacy for fuller, richer disabled lives. We also recognise that in the shifting currents of bureacracy and uncertain resources, your work demands a particular kind of creativity, and all creativity requires a kind of habitat in which to grow. We hope to plant seeds beside yours.
But this habitat is punctuated by hefty stakes. The knowledges, strategies and responsibilities you carry — and that we all inherit from disabled elders — are perhaps as urgent as they have been in our lifetimes. The demands from our kin are for the right to live a life. We extend our solidarity and our faith that as colleagues, collaborators and community, we might hold our collective nerve. That we might move with spirit and purpose. And that we — as you are doing this week — might organise.
Please adjust and edit freely, wildly!