Video: Towards an Accessible and Inclusive Culture – Text Description

The scene is set in Italy, looking onto the town of Rovereto with a view to a bridge over a river and houses with hills behind. The captions read, ‘Rovereto, September 2024’. The image changes to the grand, modern atrium of the Mart art gallery in Rovereto. This image fades out, revealing the words, ‘Seminar on Accessibility as a Transformative Force in Contemporary Culture’. There is music comprising calm, piano and string sounds throughout the video, which is sometimes quieter when someone is speaking, and at other times louder when there are just images on the screen.

The scene cuts to an interior view of the art gallery. Eight people are looking at an artwork. We cannot see their faces; rather, they are in silhouette with a dramatic gold sculpture reminiscent of a bull in the foreground. There follow different images of people in the gallery space, overlaid with the voice of Prof. Delia Ferri of the School of Law and Criminology at Maynooth University, who we also see briefly being interviewed and saying, “Today we are at Mart Museum – the Museum of Contemporary Art of Trento and Rovereto – and we are having a seminar for the ‘Giornata del Contemporaneo’. This seminar is about accessibility as a transformative force in cultural participation.”

The scene cuts to two people who are sitting together. Prof. Maria Della Lucia from the Department of Economics and Management at the University of Trento is sitting to the left of the screen and speaks first, “Accessibility and inclusion are very complex so we need to blend different competencies so disciplinary perspective, law, environmental management, and arts, and museums management and so on, and you need also to have direct contact with people – entrepreneurs associations, organisations that every day deal with accessibility and inclusion.” Every few seconds the scene changes to another element of the seminar including a scene of people talking and smiling while using sign language and an image of the seminar programme.

The scene moves to an interview with Ornella Dossi of ‘Area Educazione’ at Mart. She is talking in Italian and there are English subtitles as follows, “Accessibility, inclusion, mediation, active participation are themes that are especially important to Mart. These are the themes I also found within the DANCING project. For this reason, it was a pleasure to collaborate with Prof. Delia Ferri and I am convinced that when we work for accessibility and inclusion, we work for everyone. So, by creating activities aimed at people with disabilities, we are working for the entire community.” In between scenes of the interview, there are scenes of a conference top-table where Prof. Delia Ferri is presenting with slides behind her and a museum guide explaining an artwork to a group of seminar attendees.

The scene cuts back to an earlier scene, where the two people are sitting together. The woman on the right-hand side of the screen is now identified as Dr. Giulia Dore, Researcher in Comparative Law at the University of Trento. She says, “I think that the main goal of our work here is to let people know what we are doing, let people know what we do to make really sustainability to be a reality. We need people to understand that people who works in University are not separated from reality. We want really to share our broad, wide idea of accessibility. It is a culture that open to all, and it is a culture that you want to be engaged with, and you should not be afraid.” In amongst scenes of this interview we see other scenes of the event, with various speakers in the conference room, a sign language interpreter and audience members.

We hear the voice of Prof. Delia Ferri again, “Well I hope this will have multiple impacts. First of all, given that we have a collaboration between Maynooth University, Mart Museum and the University of Trento, I hope that this is a platform for continuing research on how to facilitate cultural participation of persons with disabilities. Secondly, I hope that we can learn good practices from each other, and I hope this seminar will stimulate discussion what is more effective in supporting cultural participation of persons with disabilities.” The interview scene is intercut with other scenes from the event including a lively, informal discussion amongst attendees and a tea break.

The camera goes to the exterior of the gallery again, where we see a large atrium with hills behind. People are moving through and standing in the space, where there is a large sculpture in pink, green, and yellow.
We hear the voice of Ornella Dossi speaking Italian again. The subtitles read as follows, “In recent years, the attitude of cultural institutions has changed. Active participation, inclusion are fundamental themes, but there is still a lot of work to do, and there is still a lot to do because stereotypes still exist in our society.”
The image fades, and the following text is overlaid on the screen, “Participants at the seminar were given the opportunity to experience a ‘touch tour’. These are offered to visitors who have visual impairments.”

Attendees of the event are seen putting brightly coloured sleep masks on to cover their eyes. We can hear the voice of Dr. Giulia Dore again, narrating this part of the video, “We had a fantastic guide that helped us all along and she asked us to walk together touching the other person near you so you could feel more comfortable and then she placed us in front of the work, but it was very three-dimensional work.” Eight attendees are experiencing different artworks with their hands, while the guide is talking. One is a huge ball reminiscent of elastic bands atop a pair of running legs. The attendee with the eye mask is running her hands over the ball. In another image, the attendees are all squatting down touching large cuboids, rather like bales of hay, except different textures and colours.

Ornella continues, talking about the guide of the touch tour, “and she asked us to listen to what she had to explain. She really guided us very well and she was able to describe the work for us and with this part was really emotional.” In another image, the guide is placing the hands of two attendees on an artwork. In another, the guide is talking animatedly about an artwork, before which attendees are standing, listening attentively.

The scene cuts back to the interview of Prof. Delia Ferri. She says, “I hope accessibility can be embedded in creative processes and in organisational processes. It is important to embed accessibility from the very beginning. Equally, I hope that accessibility can be achieved through a collaboration with persons with disabilities themselves, so from the very beginning of organising an exhibition or performance. Embedding disability in culture is essential and reaches the society as a whole.” During this speech, the camera cuts to the conference room with a screening of Stopgap – an inclusive dance company – performing. The scene moves to the exterior of the art gallery once more, with people leaving the building. There appears a scene of the town of Rovereto, where we see beautiful, tall buildings with hills behind, and a bus departing in front of us, and finally, cars moving through the town.

The image fades to a slide of acknowledgements with logos of the following organisations: The ERC DANCING project, the ALL Institute – Assisting Living and Learning – Maynooth University, National University of Ireland Maynooth, iNEST, Interconnected Nord-Est Innovation Ecosystem, the University of Trento, Mart museum, the European Union and the European Research Council.

The following text appears on the screen at the end, “This video presents the event “Per una cultura accessible e inclusiva” (Towards an accessible and inclusive culture), co-organised by Delia Ferri (Maynooth University), Ornella Dossi (Mart), Giulia Dore, Maria Della Lucia, and Erica Santini (University of Trento). Besides addressing the topic of cultural participation of persons with disabilities from interdisciplinary perspective, this event underscores the collaboration between two research projects – the DANCING project hosted by Maynooth University led by Prof. Delia Ferri and funded by the European Research Council, and the iNEST project funded under the Recovery and Resilience Facility (NEXTGenerationEU), which links a consortium of universities which the University of Trento is part of. Such cross-university also tallies with an important collaboration with Mart, which is one of the most important cultural hubs in Italy.

Video: Towards an Accessible and Inclusive Culture – Audio Description