Poetic Learnings in Access and Inclusion

Two people pose in front of a chain-link fence, smiling brightly. A wooden sign is carved with the name “Woodhaven Eco Culture Centre”. To the right of the sign, Astrida carried an orange coat and a large bag. They hold a purple and green plant and wear brightly patterned clothes. J stands to the left, carrying a couple tote bags and a white coat. Dey wear black clothes and a seashell necklace. A gravel path to the left of J leads into the forest, trees stand to the right behind the fence.
Astrida and J stand at the entrance to the FEELed Lab on the day of our access and inclusion storytelling workshop (April 2, 2025).

This FEELed Note was written by Emma Carey, Research Affiliate with the Enhancing Access and Inclusion in Environmental Humanities Research Practice Project, in collaboration with FEEled Lab Director Astrida Neimanis.

Now that we wrapped up the FEELed Lab’s Access and Inclusion project, we asked our team members to reflect on what they learned from the experience. What thoughts/insights/lessons would they take into their work and daily lives?

Natalie

In spaces that ask us to be endlessly productive, careful, and responsive, the practices I’m bringing more intentionally into my work with students, colleagues, and community partners are: lowering urgency, building next steps together, checking in, making room, and being encouraging. Through this project, I was reminded again and again that trust and creativity can emerge from simply showing up in the ways we can, and that shared attention is generative and nourishing.

Inspired by a practice in our group, I combined snippets from emails I sent today into this piece:

I hope you feel better soon
and get some proper rest.
Take care.

I always appreciate you keeping in touch —
letting me know how it’s going for you.
I really want to support your success
in finishing the program
in a way that is successful
and healthy
for you.

Thanks to all four of you
for your wonderful contributions yesterday.

This can evolve after we meet.
We’ll build the next steps together.
I am hopeful.
I am excited.

Agree — this might be too much
to fold into this newsletter
with all the other pieces in play.
No rush to get back to me.
There’s no urgency on my end.

Thank you for reaching out
and being accountable.
I completely understand.
It’s an easy mistake to make
and we can remedy the situation.

Checking in
how is it going
gathering group tasks and memory?
Can you send me a quick update
when you can?

I hope you’re doing okay.
I’m just writing to check
that my last-minute request
didn’t cause you too much stress.
All worked out.
The students found each other.
It turned out to be a great class.

If you have context to share,
I’m listening.
For now, please hold the time —
in case.

I know you’re juggling
a lot of balls over there.
I’m here to support
the shaping of this
at whatever level
feels best for you.

If there’s a chance you can print this,
I can swing by.
If not,
no worries.

A white hand holds a yellow sticky note that says “hummus + gluten-free crackers” in red ink. The background is a blurred green and black.
Offering healthy snacks in your meetings can be a small step towards better access.

Jenica

It was a true delight to be considered for/in this project, and to participate in the journey. People say form follows function, or the process is the product. Basically, it’s not the destination – it’s the journey that counts. These sayings have rung true throughout my entire experience with the Access and Inclusion Project.

Meetings were scheduled to accommodate childcare needs and hybrid options were available to ensure we could still participate if we felt unable to make it in person. Meetings in-person were hosted in well-lit spaces with a variety of nutritious and delicious snacks. Events started with thoughtful check-ins, warm smiles. A mic was used in outdoor spaces to ensure all could hear.

The project looked at access, inclusion, affordance, at how access is signaled, at how considerations are made, which ones and to what/which end. I’m left thinking about the nuances between accommodations and considerations, how each aims to include but how considerations somehow feels different, better. To be continued. Hope you can make it!

A comic with nine panel, three per row, is drawn in thick black ink. Yellow forsythia flowers frame the panels on both sides. At the top is a yellow ribbon titled “April 2, 2025 Access + Inclusion Workshop”. The first panel is a thin black ink drawing of bikes and cars arriving at a place, transportation. The second panel has soothing colours of blue, green, and brown. People sit in a circle in the forest, with a cottage in the background. In the third panel, people sit around a table with collaging materials. Some people wear masks, others wear sweaters. The fourth panel has different people than the third, drawn in thicker black ink, around another table. The collaging material on this table is represented by two cut-out pieces of magazine text. The fifth panel is a collage itself, with a bear, salmon, purple aster, grass, boxes, and the text “melting tensions”. The sixth panel has a sketched blue table with plates on it, representing communal food. The seventh panel has text bubbles of people saying “listening; welcome; relations; tears, land, time; and access”. The eighth and ninth panel have cut out text glued across them both, saying “never feel guilty for starting again, the road to changing the world is never-ending -pace yourself”.
A graphic representation of our April 2, 2025 Access and Inclusion Workshop, created by Jenica.

Emma

Some of my first interactions with access were in the corporate world in the guise of DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion). I felt glad others were starting to think about how to involve more people in their work, but I also felt something was missing.

I found that missing piece at the FEELed Lab, where we used storytelling to connect with each other and our own lived experiences (instead of a check-the-boxes approach to access!). We built and held space where relationality, affordances, and welcome were used to create inclusion. My definition of what’s included in access has broadened. As I go through my daily life, I find myself pondering questions of who might feel (un)welcome. I’ve felt a small but significant internal shift in how I move through the world. To echo Jenica, thanks and see you next time!

The back of a person with black hair and a black sweater is visible. They hold a piece of paper with a collage bursting with colour, reds, greens, whites, greys. An astronaut in a white suit is positioned on the edge of a swirling vortex of green. There is blurred cut out text on the page, and a painted white line representing an EKG or heartbeat. Two other people are in the background, blurred. One is cutting a piece of paper while talking as the other seems to listen to what they are saying.
 In our storytelling workshop, people brought many different kinds of stories (including visual). Sharing and creating these stories in community altered them.

Matt

Writing about what I learned from this project turns out to be a harder request to fulfill than it might seem at first. Often these days, I feel that I am learning the same lessons over and over throughout my life. That may make me sound like a fool—which, I may well be—but that’s the pattern whether I like it or not. In this project, I witnessed once again the familiar slipperiness of access and equity, their living mutability, their constant coming-into-being, and their sliding away.

It’s difficult to be specific about this without writing a much longer message. Perhaps what I learned (yet again) was the importance of kindness. It’s exactly the type of word that makes a certain segment of the world cringe. It’s exactly the kind of word used to mock work in the creative arts and humanities, but its effects are enormous, persistent, and pitched against everything that wishes to destroy. I’ll live in that enormity as long as I can. As far as lessons go, I’m grateful to learn it over and over.

A two-page zine spread is held against a tablecloth with green leaves. The pages are white with black ink text and a few drawings. The first page has a poem reading “access as comfort, as putting your apprehension, down for, a minute, or two. access as being, able to not, have to constantly, think about the, how the how, the how …”. The second page has trees with a bubble containing text, “What if a place could just hold you, gently? even for a minute or two.”
What does access have to do with comfort and place? A ziney exploration.

Christine

I am grateful to have been included in the Access and Inclusion project, where I learned how nuanced and complex the idea of access is. Coming from a public service background, I had predominantly thought about access from a top down, engineered solution perspective. What I learned in this project was just how communal access and inclusion can be, how important communication is – asking and listening carefully – to ensuring that everyone’s needs are understood.

It is only from this understanding that we can adequately move forward together to overcome barriers. Spaces don’t have to be ideal for access to be performed by a community.

Astrida

I initiated this project because I already knew that the notion of “access and inclusion” needed to expand to encompass far more than many researchers assume. What surprised me most, though, was seeing how useful storytelling could be as a method for connecting abstracted ideas of “access and inclusion” to lived experience.

Importantly, in the process of implementing this project the team also really tried to embody the values and principles we were examining: about taking care of ourselves and each other; responding to needs and limits as they arise; understanding place as important context for thinking about access; and being vulnerable.

I hope one of the contributions of this project will be a slight shift in (our) university culture around outputs and productivity. Moreover, our meetings were always caring and joyful, and I looked forward to them – how often do you hear that about university meetings?

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