A Fair New Idea?! #4: Multiple Voices – Open Vizier
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Open Vizier (Open Mind) is an initiative of the Silence Radio art collective, which has set itself up in a development site in Villa De Vis, in Asse, Belgium, for research and artistic creation between the hearing and the deaf world.
With this pilot project, Silence Radio wanted to facilitate the discourse between a multivoiced test audience and organizations that want to work more inclusively. After an initial exploratory conversation, Silence Radio put together a pool of five artists (deaf, hearing, non-native speakers, with physical disabilities and from different generations) to visit artistic activities together and afterwards discuss accessibility with the makers and/or organizers. The five artists give suggestions for improvement, based on their lived experiences and expertise. All the feedback is collected in a digital toolbox that includes concrete suggestions and tips on inclusivity relevant to the entire arts field.
In May and August 2022, an open call was launched for organizations to subscribe to the proposition. Despite a clear sense of urgency and broad interest, almost all the interested parties soon found themselves impeded by the amount of time needed to take part in the project.
Was this just bad timing in a busy year of grant deadlines, too noncommittal, or was there a financial threshold? Or was there more to it? Dahlia Pessemiers and Max Greyson of Silence Radio concluded that there is work still to be done on raising awareness in the arts sector. There is indeed an awareness that something has to be done, but shortage of time and resources means that concrete action is still not forthcoming.
Silence Radio will continue its dialogue with interested parties. They are currently developing an installation in which the audience can experience what it means when one or more of your senses fails. In this way, they want to make people more aware of their own (privileged) position as a person without a disability, and to make a case for a more inclusive approach to artistic creation and programming.
Silence Radio is made up of Sandra Delgadillo, Elena Evstratova, Max Greyson, Sibren Hanssens, Lieve Peeters, Dahlia Pessemiers, Tomas Pevenage and Serge Vlerick. The Open Vizier project was drawn up by Dahlia Pessemiers and Max Greyson.
