ARTS DRIVEN PARTNERSHIPS
Organizationally we have always worked to find pathways that open doors for our creators, and opportunities to pursue career driven goals. That is why we actively work to create partnerships and work on projects with likeminded arts organizations. These partnerships can take a variety of formats and develop in hybrid pathways for us to be interested.
Our core metrics for choosing projects and partnering with organizations include alignment with our mission to create opportunities for autistic creators, and consistency with our values to promote inclusive practices for those that experience barriers to practice in their chosen art form. There are many barriers for artists on the autism spectrum to engage in professional arts based projects and receive professional recognition. These partnerships help us reach our vision to bring the conversation around autism to a place where we reflect positively on the talents and perspectives individuals with ASD bring to the creative arena. Collaborations bridge the gap between our respective communities, in turn setting the stage for artists to connect, collaborate, and explore project ideas and partnerships in the future.
Finding pathways into professional opportunities for our talented pool of creators finding is of high value to us. We aim to build long lasting relationships with artistic community partners that reduce barriers to practice and build opportunities for integration, representation and focus on recognition of talent, for the advancement of diversity in the arts generally.
Please have a look at our current and past partnerships below.
Read about the Creative Media Lab approach used to prepare our creators for this pathway here
OBORO PARTNERSHIP
PROJECT: INTERROGATING ACCESS
Jointly developed by OBORO and Spectrum Productions, and benefiting from the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, the Interrogating Access series of activities aims to equip artists, organisations, and cultural workers with the means to think through accessibility in broader terms, and to learn from the best access practices already undertaken in the cultural sector in Canada and abroad.
Interrogating access: resources for artists and organisations is a one-year series of conferences and workshops aiming to gather the tools necessary to stimulate better access practices in visual and media arts. Although accessibility guidelines are freely available [1], local independent arts centres seem slow to adhere to them. One important challenge many of us – including OBORO –face is the fact that our spaces are not barrier-free. However, these physical constraints do not justify the limited measures taken to accommodate other types of publics and participants, whose disabilities are unrelated to mobility.
Conference 1 - Oct 3rd Véro Leduc Deaf and Disability Arts Practices in Canada FB Event here.
Conference 2 - Oct 22nd Best practices and institutional models, FB Event here.
PILOT CROSSOVER RESIDENCY
OBORO and Spectrum Productions’ Creative Media Lab have initiated a pilot crossover residency offering support for a Montreal-based media artist to explore access-related tools as an integral part of the creative process. The residency, spanning the year of Interrogating Access activities, should explore some of the themes discussed in the series. These include: best practices and institutional models for expanding access; curating access; exploring access in creative media production; and accessible web interfaces. Privileging practical implementations as well as interrogations of the creative potential of accessibility tools, the resident artist will merge their existing knowledge and experience with the ideas presented over the course of the year.
In addition to the series, OBORO and Spectrum Productions’ Creative Media Lab have launched a pilot crossover thematic residency offering support for two Montreal-based artists to explore access-related tools in the creative process. Alexis Bulman was awarded the Interrogating Access residency and Claudette Lemay is undertaking a residency in creative audio description.
It is hoped that the framework developed by the artist will help to guide further explorations and implementations of best access practices in art and media production. With this pilot residency, Spectrum Productions and OBORO aim to expand both our visions and practice of what an arts residency might entail.
Grand Ballet National Center for Dance Therapy
ADAPTED DANCE AT SPECTRUM PRODUCTIONS
The National Centre for Dance Therapy of Les Grands Ballets is proud to join Spectrum Productions to offer adapted dance classes during the Friday Night Social Club. Guided by a dancer and by a dance therapy intern, with a combined vast toolbox of games and exercises, the classes draw from the interests of the participants, who will co-lead the program according to their feelings and states of mind. The adapted dance classes thus provide an outlet for participants to express themselves through movement and develop their creativity and expression.
We are confident that this program will inspire the imagination of the participants and will nourish their artistic practice in the arts of cinema.
DANS LA TÊTE 2018
AGENCE TOPO AND SUR LE FIL
Produced by TOPO – Laboratoire d’écritures numériques
Project Initiated by Martine Asselin & Annick Daigneault
In partnership with Sur le fil, Fondation pour l’inclusion ; Spectrum Productions & Osmos Academy
In the Showcase, heterogeneous objects are in suspension. Clouds, sculpted head of Abraham Lincoln and strange animals form a universe where converge the four projects of virtual reality created for In the head - an immersive experience. Extracts of these are projected on one of the walls of the Vitrine. In the light of the "Making of" broadcast on an iPad placed inside the glass, we understand the importance of the creative process at the origin of the projects.
Produced by TOPO and initiated with directors Martine Asselin and Annick Daigneault, the projects took shape during a series of workshops bringing together neurodiverse and neurotypical people. If we juxtapose the two types, the first of which corresponds to the many facets of autism, it is that In the head - an immersive experience falls within the paradigm of neurodiversity, which recognizes the richness of the differences in learning and of perception [i]. Rather than perceiving autism as a functional constraint, we see it "as providing new capabilities [...] [ii]". Thus, the project brings together singular voices in order to open artistic practice to new possibilities.
During the workshops, the discussions allowed everyone to express their interests, their ideas to explore. Whether by words, drawings, sculptures, sound work and moving images or by creating 3D animations in the Unity software, everyone has contributed to virtual universes. Programmers joined the group during the process, during programming sessions, following the game jam model, under the direction of Peter Wilkinson and the Osmos Academy project incubator, to integrate the content created in the workshop and finalize the results. projects.
Four main themes were selected during the workshops. They inspire the projects that are explored using the virtual reality headset (during the opening in the Showcase, and later, in the production area of TOPO at 608). Abstract world takes us to the heart of fantasy: an exploration of shapes, colors, strange objects and vertigo effects. Sweets with Pete offers an immersive version of the animator's cooking show to make a video "of which you are the hero": by putting on the headphones, the viewer is in the cook's position, as if the hands were an extension of his body. Terry's adventures take place in the heart of the forest. The spectator is in the skin of a ratel, a carnivorous animal that, during the hunt, sees improbable animals. A meeting with Lincoln presents the president's memoirs, told through his effigy: a sculpture whose face is animated. If the result is both fun and fascinating, In the head - an immersive experience is above all a group exploration whose crystallization evokes the possibility of a fruitful encounter between different relationships to the world.
