"Access Test Kitchen" is a series of immersive workshops created by long-time collaborators and friends Staci Bu Shea and Mira Thompson. Over the course of five workshops, you will engage with texts and concepts centered around Disability Justice, Activism, Art and Literature. With support of the kitchen, cooking and eating as metaphors, our focus material and discussions will support the development of “recipes” that practice accessibility from a disability-centric perspective. Students from all departments are welcome to join us along with their various media interests and diverse artistic practices.

Throughout our time together, we will explore questions that challenge conventional narratives around access and ableism. How do our ideas and dreams about disability reshape our understanding of the physical spaces we inhabit? What transformative possibilities arise when we conceptualize access not merely as a challenge to be addressed, but as a rich aesthetic experience to be celebrated? This is where our “test kitchen” comes in. We respond to these questions by experimenting with the creation of recipes, meeting access as cravings to be met and collective desire for sharing food together around the table. 

Together, we will investigate the interplay between ableist structures and the artistic expressions that emerge from them, seeking to navigate and redefine these dialogues through creativity and collaboration. What do we carry into our shared spaces when we embrace a social understanding of accessibility—one that encompasses not just physical access, but also emotional, intellectual, and social dimensions? We’ll riff off of existing recipes, create new ones, and recreate them to define our situated, collective taste. 

To participate in the workshop series, you’ll already have a proposal in mind for a recipe. By the halfway point of the series, you’ll have an idea for how you will choose to share your recipe (some might be theoretical sketches while others “fully cooked”). We’ll consider what our test kitchen will look like as a hospitable support structure wherein each participant will feature their recipe as a unique contribution and determine this together. Each participant's voice and experience is vital as we craft a collective narrative that transforms challenges into artistic and meaningful expressions. Let's reimagine what it means to be together in spaces that honor and celebrate our diverse identities and abilities.

The Access Test Kitchen workshop will culminate in a collaborative and collective presentation, part of the Rietveld Uncut exhibition at Stedelijk Museum.

To participate:
At the start of the workshop series, you'll share a brief proposal for a recipe to develop for the test kitchen. Consider a seed of an idea that relates to accessibility, accommodations, abilities and various states of being in a body, and related cultural practices from what you gravitate to so far. You may think of an issue or situation of possibilities or limits in the built environment (mobility, senses, shared space) or relations (communication, organization, learning) and your imaginative and artistic response to it. We seek a balance between the material and immaterial: objects that interact and intervene with our relations as well as affect and vibes that influence how we come together. Sculpture, installation, performance/scores, text-based works, audiovisual and various mixed media are all very welcome. 

Access Note: 
- The workshop series takes place on Wednesdays: February 5, 12 and 26 and March 5 and 12, from 17:00-19:00, on Zoom which includes automated closed captions.

- The workshops feature presentations on theory and practice by Mira and Staci, discussion, student presentations, and feedback for the development of the student works. Students might also need to develop/work on their ideas in between workshops. 

- It is important for the lives of the organizers that we minimize the risk of Covid infection and spread, and we will need to discuss what that means for us to get together onland instead of online. 

- Upon first meeting, we will create a temporary collective access rider from which to work from.   

- If you have any access related questions, please write to us staci.bushea@gmail.com mira_thompson@hotmail.com. 

Schedule:
February 5 - With Staci and Mira

Introduction and welcome; creation of collective access rider; initial 5-minute presentation each of recipe proposals (students should be able to introduce their recipe idea in the first meeting)

February 12 - With Mira 

Presentation: Disability Justice and aesthetics; 

Workshop prompt: what ingredients are needed for the recipe?

February 26 - With Staci 

Presentation: Commoning accessibility; cripping the curatorial while working with form and encounter

Workshop prompt: what equipment and facilities are needed to cook the recipe?

March 5 - with Staci and Mira

Workshop prompt: welcoming others into our kitchen, how are we going to set the table?

March 12 - Last session with final works to run through curatorial and mediation of the installation. Materials are to be transported to the Stedelijk Museum on March 14.