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Mass Culture, Mobilisation culturelle.

Mass Culture is an arts support organization that strives to harness the power of research to learn and generate new insights, enabling the arts community to be strategic, focused and adaptive.

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Access in Counterpoint

Hand-drawn title card with the words “Aaron Richmond” in the middle, surrounded by two brown-skinned ballet dancers in blue leotards posing in two different dance positions and holding a pink leaf in each hand.
Art by Harmeet Rehal

Research in Residence: Arts' Civic Impact

Introducing Access in Counterpoint by Aaron Richmond (McGill University), a qualitative arts framework that explores the dimensions of accessibility by measuring the impact of making dance accessible to people with blindness and low vision. This framework examines similarities and differences in the language used to describe projects, ambitions and creative approaches to making dance accessible in blind and low vision communities.

The Framework

What follows is the result of research which followed multiple creative initiatives aimed at making dance accessible for people with visual impairment. While considering the creative process and language used by each of these initiatives, I asked: How does the exploration of dance beyond the visual enable a rethinking of accessibility beyond its strictly logistical dimensions?

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The Video

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View Aaron's video to understand:

  • The framework's foundation: how it came to be;
  • The framework: what it is and how to use it;
  • The framework's potential

About the researcher and initiative

Aaron Richmond
Aaron Richmond is an interdisciplinary artist and PhD candidate in the History and Theory of Architecture program at McGill University. His doctoral project addresses the medicalization of Modern art and architecture within the French periodical L’Esprit nouveau (1920 to 1925). His doctoral work is supported by grants from the Fonds de Recherche du Québec and the Joseph-Armand Bombardier Canada Graduate Scholarship. His art critical writing has appeared in the Brooklyn Rail and e-flux.

On the Research in Residence webpage, find a rundown of Aaron’s approach at the inception of the project, as well as more information on his collaborators. 
 

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This initiative is made possible through the support of the following

Canada Council for the Arts logo.
danse-cité logo.
Federal-Provincial-Territorial Table on Culture and Heritage
McGill University
Mitacs
Ontario Trillium Foundation logo
Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

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