Barrierefreiheit und Performances per Post und im öffentlichen Raum

This project’s participants want attending a performance no longer to largely mean an experience of exclusion and worsened symptoms, but of art.

What is necessary to make outdoor dance performances and performances by mail accessible when considering the needs of people with chronic illness and people who are visually impaired or blind?

Every stage of making, producing, and performing was considered, from first contact (e.g. advertising, information about the performance/venue) to the final piece (e.g. audience accompaniment, aesthetics).

The first stage of digital meetings saw 12 disabled performance lovers (some of whom are artists themselves) come together in small groups to discuss the specific barriers they face in attending performances and ideas for removing them. These meetings concluded with a list of guidance/demands, which were entrusted to 12 cultural workers working within the free scene. They supported each other in figuring out how to implement these demands in their respective practices.

The culture of the project (peer-support, solidarity, and disabled-centered*) helped develop knowledge about how to open the theater doors a bit wider in general.

*Informed by the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities

Zwoisy Mears-Clarke (project leader), Juca Bender, Andrea Eberl, Melanie Hambrecht, Agnes Kappaun, Noël Labridy, Anajara Laisa Amarante, Juli Reinartz, Manuela Schemm, Lucie Schroeder (performance lovers / audience members), Ari Althaus, Angela Alves, Birte Opitz (moderator), Melmun Bajarchuu, Khadidiatou Bangoura, Zinzi Buchanan, Alina Buchberger, Roißin Keßler, Zwoisy Mears-Clarke, Lucie Ortmann, Céline Rodrigues, Janna Schmidt, Yvonne Sembene, Esther Siddiquie, Nara Virgens (cultural workers), Zinzi Buchanan (editing of English texts), Utku Mogultay (German translation)