Access Maker
With the project Access Maker, Un-Label initiates a qualification process for more inclusion and diversity within the cultural institutions of the performing arts. As “Access Makers”, persons with and without disabilities involved in culture and the arts work together to develop practical recommendations for cultural institutions and provide needs-oriented advice, in this way facilitating barrier-free designs for future cultural offerings and helping cultural institutions structure themselves more inclusively.
Culture must be seen and designed barrier-free and learn from the perspective of people with disabilities in order to create a new image of a diverse society.
Project term: April 2021 until March 2024
Unfortunately, people with disabilities are still marginalized in mainstream cultural life. But it is exactly there that stigmatization must be eliminated and forms of diverse normality created. The political mandate for culture is not only a duty, but also offers an opportunity to stimulate diversity reflection, to enable encounters and to act as a model for other areas of society.
Cultural institutions usually do not lack the interest, but rather the competencies to recognize and treat people with disabilities as equal cultural creators and audience. After all, the decision-making bodies in the performing arts are almost exclusively composed of people without disabilities. This is where we come in with Access Maker to support cultural institutions in a practical and individual way according to their needs to make their offers barrier-free and to open up inclusivity. We offer three parallel modules:
- In Module 1 three theater houses – Theater Dortmund, Schauspielhaus Düsseldorf and Comedia Theater Köln – will be trained and mentored for three years in their inclusive opening campaigns and development processes with cultural workers with and without disabilities in inclusive tandem teams.
- In Module 2, the Creative Labs, we develop innovative, barrier-free recommendations for cultural institutions. Selected experts from the inclusive cultural sector and interested parties with and without disabilities present successful practical examples and develop them further. Interested parties can obtain the results, practical guides and information films for free.
- In Module 3 we expand our national and international network of cultural workers and experts who are able to implement concepts of barrier-free, innovative cultural offerings and thus innovatively influence future inclusive work in the cultural scene. Module 3 will also include a symposium in cooperation with Asphalt Festival and kubia in 2022 in Düsseldorf to facilitate exchange between actors and the sharing of best practices.
With Access Maker, we enable inclusive access to be understood and used as an added value for the entire audience and the entire structure of a cultural institution. In the long run, we want to contribute to the continuation of barrier-free offers as well as a comprehensive, diversity-oriented organizational development in order to structurally and sustainably change the cultural landscape in an inclusive way.
Videos
Podcasts
Workplace theatre: Inclusive opening now! – The title was the program of the creative lab in October 2023 at the Akademie der Kulturellen Bildung in Remscheid. Cultural journalist Amy Zayed captured the atmosphere in interviews with speakers from the UK and Germany as well as with participants and asked what we can learn from each other, where we need to reflect on our own work as cultural professionals and what were particularly inspiring experiences over the three days.
Download
Amy Zayed in talks with …
Marcus Dickey Horley (MP4)
Curator for Access Projects for Tate Modern and Tate Britain, Tate Gallery, London
Cat Sheridan (MP4)
Head of inclusive practice at Battersea Arts Centre, London and Senior Producer at Unlimited, Wakefield, UK
Pictures
ALL IN Symposia
Creative Labs
Workshops
Final Event
Cooperation partner
Sponsors
