Workshops
Summary
- ALL offers workshops to individuals, groups and institutions
- The workshops showcase different tools and ideas about sensory access
- Workshops can be online, in-person or something else
Our focus is on introducing ideas, methods and tools with the potential to radically expand sensory, multisensory and intersensory access for artists, commissioning organisations and audiences.
We can deliver online and in-person workshops, as well as tailored learning for specific contexts, from access interventions in conference settings, to semester-long tertiary courses.
Online workshops
We produce and deliver online presentations and interactive workshops, on topics related to access-led and access-infused creative methods. This enables to reach out to a broader audience of access practitioners around the world, and is also a favoured option for those who are especially vulnerable to Covid.
One of our favourite examples:
- Archives of Lunacy: A collaborative image description workshop guided by Joseph Rizzo Naudi
26 May 2025
This two-hour event was presented in partnership with ALL collaborator Joseph Rizzo Naudi, a blind writer and facilitator based in London, United Kingdom. Guided by Joseph, participants explored collaborative, blindness-led description of archival images and artworks. We co-created a new, self-contained, language-based artwork, and reflected on experimental image description processes and practices. Joseph said: ‘Preparation heavily discouraged. Come as you are. Non-blind people or those who identify as visually-dependent also welcome. Wear what you like. BYOB (bring your own body).’
- From late 2025 to mid 2026, we have been engaged by the team at Race Matters (fbi.radio) to support the delivery and accessible public archive (forthcoming) of Listening Through — an experimental anti-racist listening syllabus that has taken place over 12 remote sessions.
In-person workshops
We have facilitated workshops and participatory presentations in partnership with organisations including Arts Centre Melbourne, Arts House, City of Greater Dandenong, ACCA, Newcastle Art Gallery and the Ruskin School of Art at Oxford University.
Below are some examples.
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Generative encounters — sensory access and digital art
ACCA Digital Signals Summer School, 14 February 2026
What can sensory access reveal, provoke and generate — and what collective acts can generate access? In this short participatory session, we shared how encounters with digital access and art can quickly lead to rich, ekphrastic texts from aggregate imagination. And with new computational tools poised to assume responsibility for providing sensory access where it is otherwise elusive, we also considered new access apps and their caveats.
- What do you see in this image? A practical introduction to image description of artworks
Newcastle Art Gallery, February 2025
This workshop, developed for Newcastle Art Gallery staff, introduced image description as a writing practice to enrich observation, interpretation, communication, and conversation. The workshop distinguished between various forms of image description, guided practical exercises to loosen writers block and explore several descriptive approaches, and prompted conversation about ways that image description can be valuable for different roles within the museum.
- Next in Audio
Arts Centre Melbourne, 7–9pm, 18 September 2024
Access Lab & Library presented a session on experimental uses of spatialised audio and live captioning to make sound more accessible and exciting in live performance, exhibitions and other media. You can view our documentation here.
Tailored learning
You might be keen to grow your collective literacy in image descriptions, or to encourage artists in your orbit to make access a part of their work from the very beginning. Your specific context likely has specific needs. With experience in writing and delivering workshops and tertiary coursework, ALL can devise and produce a tailored learning programme with and for you.
As university lecturers and tutors with a strong focus on supporting burgeoning creative practice, we’ve written and taught courses on intersensory digital publishing, composing sound spatially, tactile and gestural typography, and access-infused communication design. We especially favour practical, experiential learning.
If you’re looking to host similar studios and subjects at your higher learning institution, talk to us.