This workshop shares learning from the grunt gallery team, who have been engaged in low-sensory and voice-off hosting since 2022. They consider this practice to be on-going and to be ever evolving. Access needs vary widely and are hard to predict. Budgets are normally designed to serve a majority, with terms such as universal access used to celebrate inclusion while ignoring “minority” audiences with specific and often conflicting access needs as too expensive or insignificant to be prioritized. grunt’s exhibition team has instead looked at those who are pushed to the margins and asked how they can be centered in our gatherings, exhibitions, and events, and have challenged themselves to respond creatively with each new exhibition.
This workshop explores the many sensory barriers we may take for granted in art spaces, and invites participants to consider these more fully when designing spaces for gathering, exhibition and presentation.
About the facilitator:
Kay works in art spaces across occupied Coast Salish territory to examine value, inclusion, and expectations within gallery and fine art environments. They are queer, hard of hearing, and mad, they are not seeking medical validation or diagnosis, and they work with an attitude that welcomes conflict, change, and fire, specifically challenging the professional world to explore discomfort and radical change. They want institutions to be both interested and scared to work with them. They are especially ready to be wrong and to be in discussion about how they can do better. Visit them at grunt on Thursdays for voice-off and low sensory visiting hours, see them moving public art and designing art spaces for youth at ArtStarts in Schools, join them as they host weekly inclusive practice spaces at Queer ASL, and see them fumbling into art shows with an awkward hope that we can support each other in multimodal ways based in care.