This FEELed Note was written by Emma Carey who is a research affiliate working on the Enhancing Access and Inclusion in Environmental Humanities Research Practice Project.
Hello fellow FEELers! After reapplying this year for the Access and Inclusion in Environmental Humanities Research project, the team was successful in securing the funds to conduct this exciting project! You can read more about the project here. It contains four main frameworks that inform how we think about access: race, Indigeneity, (dis)ability, and gender/sexuality.
I started as a Research Assistant on this project in September and have been very grateful to get to know our fabulous project team, composed of Astrida Neimanis, Matt Rader, Natalie Forssman, Jenica Frisque, and Rachelle Hole.
When I first came into this project, I knew I would have a lot of learning and unlearning to do. It was very humbling to immerse myself in the project and realize just how much I do not know (like Deaf culture!). Access and inclusion work involves a lot of deep self-searching to examine the unconscious biases in our minds.
Thinking about how you have internalized wider structures of power such as (neo)colonialism, ableism, neurotypical hegemony, racism, and other oppressions can be difficult when there is a self-blame attached to that recognition of seeing the ghosts of these structures within yourself. In the first three months of this project, cultivating the ability to challenge my own unconscious biases and being humble about what I know has been one of the best learnings.
Understanding that there are multiple “correct” ways of being rather than just one way has been very inspiring. A great example of this was a misconception I had coming into the project that there was an end goal or product that we were working towards, and at that point the work would be done. As I tried to envision this final end product, the idea kept falling out of my grasp and left me very frustrated.
The reason it felt so difficult to think of an end product was because this project is about the process of access and inclusion and a process means the work always continues. I owe thanks in particular to Matt Rader (of our project team) for challenging me on this idea. It felt difficult to be challenged in this way with my ingrained fear of being wrong (I’m working on that), but breaking from the idea of an end product has been very freeing. Sometimes ease can signal when something is right (Natalie’s idea of this week).
So, what can access and inclusion look like as a process? What’s the difference between process and product?
A great resource on these questions is Carmen Papalia’s “Accessibility Manifesto for the Arts”. I highly recommend reading his full essay (link above) as it is very thought provoking. As an excerpt:
“Open Access […] is a perpetual negotiation of trust between those who practice support as a mutual exchange. Open Access is radically different than a set of policies that is enforced in order to facilitate a common experience for a group with definitive needs.”
How is our project team enacting accessibility as a process? Last week we held a zine creation activity, where we thought through five terms (access, disability futures, affordance, cross-species debility, and conflict) together in a creative and generative way. We came up with this idea after Jenica kindly sharedUBC’s Equity and Inclusion Office glossary of terms.
Each person started the title page of a zine, then everyone switched what zine they were working on and had about 5 minutes per zine to add a page. After switching many times, each person had added at least one page to every zine (Astrida calls this ‘exquisite corpse style’).
Some interesting themes emerged from this activity. Many of our terms cross-pollinated and aspects of one emerged in another zine on a different term. Maybe this has something to say about linkages between topics in access and inclusion? Using visual elements, like drawing and collaging, helped to break the tyranny of words (a term that Matt particularly likes). Using an artistic process drew us together as a team and allowed a more open dialogue to start thinking on what these terms can mean for our project and what sort of considerations we want this project to begin addressing.
Since we gave ourselves only a short amount of time for each page, we could not overthink what to add! Instead the first or second thought in our minds was what was put in the zine and these associations feel more free than a long thought-out idea where you worry about getting it right. In this way we were allowing each other to simply be and think with the concept with no judgment of right or wrong.
Stay tuned for more updates from our Accessibility and Inclusion in Environmental Humanities Research team! Coming soon: profiles of each team member that details why this research feels so salient to them at this moment in time.
The FEELed lab 