Great to see Alastair Sill of Word of Mouth at my studio today.
Alastair will be developing and delivering audio tours of my forthcoming exhibitions at Ffin y Parc Gallery and Wales Millennium Centre, supporting greater access to the shows for people with visual impairments. This is an entirely new development for me and my work, and one which the venues and I are very excited about.
Having worked with company dancers and choreographers to create audio descriptions and touch tours for a number of recent productions (and shortly to begin preparations for this season’s Romeo a Juliet), Word of Mouth has an established relationship with Ballet Cymru. They’ve done tremendous work supporting the company in its commitment to make dance accessible to everyone – welcoming new audiences, and for many people enabling a level of engagement which wasn’t previously possible. Alastair’s expertise and experience makes him ideally placed to work on audio tours for the coming exhibitions, and I’m very much looking forward to seeing the development of this side of the project.
Today was a preliminary meeting, exploring some intriguing questions around the process of describing/interpreting visual art for a visually-impaired audience, and discussing the thinking and techniques which have so far informed my work with dance and Ballet Cymru. Looking at the pictures I’ve made so far, we also discussed plans for the coming months, and how Alastair will best be able to follow the project in preparation for the audio tours.
Dates have not yet been finalised, though will be available soon.
For further information about accessibility and the arts in Wales, and for listings of events across the country, please see hynt’s website here