From audio description to closed captions, alt-text and remote viewing, there are a whole multitude of access adjustments that can open up the possibilities for people to engage, feel, and experience artworks.
In this workshop, Jamila will provide examples from her own artistic practice as well as artists who inspire her, demonstrating the importance of reframing how we view the relationship between access and the arts. Together, we will consider how access adjustments can in and of themselves be an integral art form, as opposed to an add on or an afterthought.
Further Resources
Accessibility in the Arts: A Promise and a Practice by Carolyn Lazard
Art of Access Adjustments Screening
A Primer on Working with Disabled Group Members for Feminist / Activist Groups and Organisations
How Open-Access Resources Can Support Disabled Artists
Carolyn Lazard in Conversation at Nottingham Contemporary
About Jamila
Jamila Prowse is an artist and writer, propelled by curiosity and a desire to understand herself through making. Informed by her lived experience of disability, mixed race ancestry and the loss of her father at a young age; her work is research driven and indebted to Black feminist and crip scholars. She is an active participant in a rich and growing contemporary disabled artistic community and has been ongoingly researching, programming and creating around cripping the art world since 2018. Self taught, Jamila is drawn to experimenting with a multitude of mediums in order to process her grief and radical hope.
Viewing her practice as grief work, Jamila uses visual art making as a way to process complex family histories, loss, trauma and the isolation of being a bedbound, disabled, autistic person. Often incorporating oral histories into the conception of her works; the location of voice is vital in her explorations. She embeds creative access adjustments from the outset of each project – seeing access as a method of artistic articulation.
She is currently articulating through moving image, painting, photography, textiles and performance. Previous exhibitions and talks include TULCA Visual Arts Festival, (Galway Ireland), Ormston House Gallery, (Limerick, Ireland), Somerset House, South London Gallery, Studio Voltaire (London, UK) and Hordaland Kunstsenter (Bergen, Norway). Her writing has appeared in Frieze, Art Monthly, British Journal of Photography and elsewhere. She is currently working on her first novel.
Instagram: @jamilaprowse
Youtube: @jamilaCAHProwse
Website: https://jamilaprowse.com/
This resource is part of a series of workshops as part of the West of England Visual Arts Alliance (WEVAA), a three year programme that includes professional development, commissioning, and support and resources. Find out more here https://vasw.org.uk/wevaa.
