Immersive art fires the imaginations of disabled patrons

Immersive art fires the imaginations of disabled patrons

Some of Sydney's top cultural institutions are providing world-expanding programs to students living with moderate to severe intellectual disabilities through programs that incorporate art and performances.

In addition to traditional accessibility adaptations such as audio descriptions and sign language interpreters, the Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) and the Opera House host events that let audiences with conditions including intellectual disabilities and autism come to grips with the work in a sensory way.

Students enjoy Whoosh! at the Opera House on August 9.

Students enjoy Whoosh! at the Opera House on August 9.Credit:Renee Nowytarger

The MCA's Jackson Bella Room features a different accessible, commissioned artwork each year.

"It's an interesting brief for an artist because it has to be accessible in many ways: for people who can't see very well, who can't hear very well, who might be in a wheelchair," the museum's director of audience engagement, Gill Nicol, said.

Children enjoy the wearable, touchable art of Hello, good to meet you at the MCA's Bella Room.


Hello, good to meet you — a giant wave of colourful strands suspended across the room that evokes a horse's mane — by Sydney artist Liam Benson is the 2019 work. It incorporates wearable tassels, tails and smaller manes, colourful cushions and audiovisual elements including sounds and video of horses to let disabled audience members hear and touch the art.

And this month the Opera House is hosting a production of Whoosh, an immersive play about space travel by the pioneering accessible theatre company Sensorium.

Penelope Earp, vice-principal at the Bondi special needs Wairoa School, whose students visited the show on Friday, said its immersive nature helped her students understand the complex concept of going to space.

Theatre for children with disabilities at The Sydney Opera House called Whoosh.

Theatre for children with disabilities at The Sydney Opera House called Whoosh.Credit:Renee Nowytarger

"To interpret these higher-order concepts, they have additional cues to help me understand," Ms Earp said. "There's music, there are songs ... then there's actually doing things: pretending you're in a space ship, pretending you're going to eat things, put things on us, take off us."

"Sometimes, it's the only way they can experience the arts and trigger the imagination, especially for people who can't hear, see or follow along to a traditional narrative story," Jenny Spinak, who manages accessibility programs at the Opera House, said.

Whoosh is an interactive, multi-sensory adventure.

Whoosh is an interactive, multi-sensory adventure.Credit:Renee Nowytarger

The works are part of a growing trend toward accessible performances. Australian Ballet offered an audio-described ballet for the first time this year as part of its production of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Likewise, Opera Australia has added shadow sign language interpreting to some of its shows in schools, where the interpreter is part of the performance and plays a character.

And in addition to Whoosh, the Opera House is hosting relaxed performances without harsh lighting effects and sounds to make them more accessible to people with autism.


But performances such as Whoosh are different in that they cater to students who often have more severe and multiple disabilities. Those students need preparation before they come to the performance to help them enjoy the show.

Sensorium has developed an app that explains to students what will happen when they get to the Whoosh venue: the characters they will meet, the story they will be told and the space they will sit in.

"A lot of our work involves preparing our audiences before they come to the show to enhance their engagement and understanding," Mr Italiano said.

Despite the educational and social benefits that students gain from attending Whoosh, Mr Italiano said Sensorium was limited in the number of shows it could put on because of financial constraints.

"All things in the area of disability generally take more human resources and more funding. That's why it's difficult for small companies and even big institutions to get behind these practices even if they support the intention," Mr Italiano said.

Ms Earp said that while inner-Sydney was well-served by accessible cultural events compared with rural and regional areas, the number of events in the city was growing only slowly.

"It's an expensive thing. If you're in the mainstream, you can do thirty students in thirty minutes," she said.

"We only have very small groups of students and it's very staff intensive. It's a specialist niche, really."

The MCA's Ms Nicol said it was common for other organisations to approach the museum to ask about how to create their own equivalent of the Bella Room.

"Because it's an artist's commission, we pay for that," she said. "We invest in it because we really believe in offering up this space for people with disability. We understand lots of people can't afford that. I just say to other organisations: 'start where you are.'"

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