About

Project

According to the 2021 joint EU and UK study, Time to Act, the European cultural sector is not equipped to create an accessible environment for audiences, artists, or art workers with disabilities. From our direct experiences, as persons with disabilities, we fully agree with the results of this study. This is the unfortunate reality, that due to inaccessible infrastructure and culture, the Danish art field is not set up or prepared to create an environment that gives art workers with disabilities the same opportunities as if we were able-bodied.

Motivated by these findings and our own frustrations with these barriers, our ambition is to use our creative perspectives to begin collectively addressing these issues and mapping out what access currently means in Danish art spaces.

This project features individuals who have experienced barriers to access affecting their career within the art field due to a health condition including physical disability, neurodivergent, or chronic illness. This pertains to artists, curators, art historians, and art workers who have direct experiences and concerns on how inaccessible infrastructure, usage of space, and architectural norms hinder access to opportunities and resources in the art sector.

Participants are asked to map what access, or rather inaccess, to Danish art spaces means for them, their disability and their access needs, by using the following brief:

— Approach your practice and your search for opportunities and resources as if you were able-bodied, document each circumstance of barriers to your access.
— Document any changes to procedure that you were forced to make yourself or times when your access needs were met through approaching and working with the space.
— We welcome individual approaches to documentation/visuals/writings or any incorporation of your practice into the mapping work.
— You choose how much to share, it can be anonymous or include as much connection to yourself as you wish.

Each of these cases will be used to create individual maps showing the livable area and access to the art field for an individual living with specific access needs. These individual maps will be incorporated into a digital resource bank where users can explore the limited space that art workers with disabilities must operate under.

Demonstrating our access barriers by visually showcasing the many spaces within the Danish art field that we do not have access to, along with personal accounts, will confront the public with a newfound way of understanding the urgent need for accessibility improvements.

Under the current circumstances, institutions are often unfamiliar with the needs and issues of those with disabilities who wish to use the space. Because we cannot access the spaces in the first place, our physical presence is largely absent. This means that administrations rarely come face to face with these issues. We wish to change this by creating a new resource that presents a standardised, easy-to-find, informational resource on accessibility measures currently in place at art spaces and institutions in Denmark.

When considering whether it is possible for us to attend an event or exhibition it requires research into the individual space, where often the necessary accessibility information is hard to find or not listed. When the appropriate information on accessibility is not listed, we then must contact these spaces ourselves, which can be met with confusion and frustration when employees are often not aware themselves of what their institution offers in terms of accessibility. Because of a lack of standardization and consolidation of this information into one easy-to-find location, we’re often unable to participate in important events and exhibitions in the art field.

We are by no means experts on all disabilities or on universal design, however we hope that by creating a new disabled-led format for demonstrating our lack of access, we can foster increased awareness of the need for access reform. As our work grows and we create a framework for people across disabilities to share their access maps, in the future, this will be a bank of knowledge where, for example, a visitor to Copenhagen can view a detailed map of the city’s art spaces in relation to their specific access needs.

Organisation

UKK Art Workers with Disabilities was formed for artists and art workers to have better access to opportunities and be able to take part in cultural life at the many inaccessible spaces that still exist in both private and publicly funded art institutions in Denmark, that should be catering to all.

We are calling to address the outdated and insufficient guidelines (new guidelines or audits from the Danish cultural ministry have not been done since 1999, and a lacking national response to the 2021 EU and UK report) that govern accessibility and dictate whether or not we as persons with disabilities have a right to a successful life in the arts. This needs to be done through changes to both physically access these spaces and having the freedom to operate our careers without putting our needed accommodations in jeopardy.

Sponsors and Partners

Mapping Access to Danish Art Spaces is administered by UKK’s Art Workers with Disabilities and generously supported by Bikuben Fonden and BKF’s Udvalg til Fordeling af Kulturelle Midler.