About the project

Unlocked: Mapping Technology for Creativity is a research project sponsored by Arts Council England.

With many Deaf and disabled people needing to make use of technology in order to develop their creative practice, Unlocked aims to amass intelligence relating to Deaf and disabled artists and disability arts organisations use of arts-based technologies and how these technologies can maximize their creativity.

Decibels’ objective is that this research will support Deaf and disabled students, emerging artists along with national and international arts organisations working in this field to enhance their creativity.

The Research

The way Decibels’ gathered the research for Unlocked was made up of various strands such as:

Q&A"s – Decibels hosted live Twitter Q&A’s with Deaf/disabled professional artists and disability arts organisations to ask questions about their use of arts-based technologies in their creative work
Case studies – invited artists & organisations to submit a written case study around what arts-based technologies they use, there advantages & disadvantages
Academics / researchers – inviting those working at the intersection of creativity, technology and disability to submit work that provides further insight into how technology is being used in the disability arts setting and to what effect.

All of this information and more can be found here below.

Decibels hopes that the online resource will provide Deaf and disabled people –and their colleagues, friends and carers – information about which products might offer them the greatest opportunity to develop their creativity and talents.

Get Involved: Deaf and/or disabled artists / disability arts organisations

If you would like to get involved with Unlocked (this could be submitting a case study or a user review of a new technology available) then please get in touch.

About the Artists

We asked each of our participating artists some questions about their work and how they use technology in it. You can view their responses below.

The Future

Decibels is looking to gain more funding to further the research of Unlocked and in doing so, develop the Unlocked online resource. Watch this space!

Additional Resources

Throughout our research for Unlocked we came across a number of further resources for those wishing to find out more about arts-based technologies & creativity. Below are just a few useful resources for further learning.

Organisation: Epic Arts
Project/publication: Pop Up and Play
When published/created: July 2015

What’s it about: Epic Arts are exploring the use of video sharing/live streaming internationally to share and discover different worlds between artists and students in partnership with Attenborough Arts in Leicester. This is being done through the recently developed ‘Pop Up and Play’ system.

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=84LhwI9SH44

Organisation: Access All Areas
Project/publication: Eye Queue Hear
When published/created: 2015

What’s it about: Access All Areas is a theatre company that works with people with learning disabilities, based in Shoreditch in London’s East End. Eye Queue Hear is a performance audio walk that was devised in 2013. Gareth White writes about the production in his publication Applied Theatre: Aesthetics

Link: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=hCfbBQAAQBAJ&pg=PT42&lpg=PT42

Organisation: Jo Verrent
Project/publication: Getting Closer to No Boundaries
When published/created: April 2014

What’s it about: Jo Verrent’s blog post Getting Closer to No Boundaries is about The Arts Council of England’s State of the Arts Conference and how it had become accessible by using technology in 2014 compared to 2013.

Link: http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/jo-verrent/getting-closer-to-no-boundaries_b_4872268.html

Organisation: Short Circuit
When published/created: 2013

What’s it about: Short Circuit is all about the art not the access – the aim is to design an accessible process for artists to explore the potential of digital rather than a process for artists to explore the accessibility potential of digital. It’s a process that is about exploration, play and learning, not focused only on output/creation, although that might be a by-product.

Link: http://shortcircuit.org.uk

Organisation: Nesta
Project/publication: Making Digital Work: Accessibility
When published/created: 2015

What’s it about: The Digital R&D Fund for the Arts is a partnership between Nesta, the Arts Council England and the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC). Accessibility is one of the major learning themes from the Digital R&D Fund for the Arts. The accessibility work across the R&D Fund projects has mainly been focused specifically on improvements for disabled people. But as the projects have reported, improving access for a targeted section of an audience often improves it for all. The user testing that makes a better product for disabled people in an audience has benefits for everyone. These projects from the Digital R&D Fund for the Arts have been using digital to make the arts more accessible, creating the possibility of a rich interaction with arts and culture for everyone.

Links:

http://www.nesta.org.uk/publications/making-digital-work-accessibility

Read more and download the accessibility toolkit at: artsdigitalrnd.org.uk/features/accessibility-video

Organisation: Creative Case
When published/created: February 2012

What’s it about: Digitising Disability: on the work of Ju Gosling, Simon McKeown and Merce Cunningham

Link: http://www.creativecase.org.uk/creativecase-digitising-disability

Technology Apps

Organisation: Epic Arts

What’s it about: We are currently in the initial stages of researching the development of a mobile app to enable our deaf dancers in Cambodia who are unable to read and write to be able to plan movement workshops, record choreography ideas and make notes on their weekly schedule using photos, video and images instead of words. We hope that this may be helpful for other artists as well. We use technology a lot within our work to encourage and enable independence in our students and artists and Skype and video messaging is a huge help along with Facebook groups to share information and updates.

Link: http://epicarts.org.uk

Organisation: HeartNSoul

What’s it about: A project to help people with learning disabilities express themselves musically and collaborate with other people using readily available musical technologies.

Link: http://www.makeyoursoundlab.org

Organisation: Rhythmix
When published/created: October 2014

What’s it about: Using iPads in Participatory Music is in an extensive piece of work done by Graham Dowdall (one of our key practitioners) for Sound Connections. Part 1 is the research and Part 2 is the Review and Guide

Link: http://www.sound-connections.org.uk/news/using-ipads-in-participatory-music-part-one-research

Organisation: Edutech

What’s it about: A digitally based storytelling multimedia authoring environment for young children 3-8 year olds

Link: www.i-theatre.org

If you have a resource that you would like to be displayed on the Decibels website, please contact us here.