The next residency:
The online cross-disability residency brings together people who love dance/movement, to co-create access-focused dance films, grow skills and nurture leadership.
The next online residency will likely start in 2025.
There is a residency artist interest list being gathered of people who would like to receive information when the call for residency artist applications goes out.
A project team of disabled and Deaf artists will co-facilitate the residency. There is a job postings interest list for people interested in possible contract roles collaborating on the next residency. Roles will likely include: access support workers, logistics organizer, tech access facilitator, active listener, note-taker, workshop access host, workshop facilitators, advisory team, mentors, and bookkeeper. Almost all of the roles will be remote/online.
If you would like to be on either interest list, please be in touch.
Update from the first residency:
The Collective Access Screendance Residency started in June 2022 and wrapped up in March 2023. There were 14 dance artists involved – many are on the west coast, and some are out east, up north and south, in the lands of multiple Indigenous Nations on Turtle Island.
Artists worked in three creative pods meeting online once a week during the residency. Since the residency the pods have applied for funding to continue collaborating toward finishing their films.
Below are visual notes by D’Leen Betts about the layers of access that the first cohort needs for the films being created, followed by a link to the image description.
Link for image description of the visual notes about layers of access for the cohort.
The original invitation to apply for the first residency is below, in case anyone would like an overview of the project.
The invitation to apply for the residency is offered in multiple modes. Please choose which mode you would like!
On this page:
- Audio invite
- ASL vlog invite
- Image invite, and image description
- Project overview text
- Who the project is for
- Access notes
- How to apply (application deadline was May 11th, 2022)
- Contact info and project team
- Project supporters
Audio invite
ASL vlog invite
(Click to skip ahead to the application link. Deadline is May 11th, 2022.)
ASL vlog created by Deaf Spectrum
Image invite
Go to image description of the image invite
Illustration by Skye Louis (illustrator’s website – opens in new tab)
Project overview text:
Collective Access Screendance Residency
This online cross-disability residency brings together people who love dance/movement, to create access-focused screendance (dance on film), grow skills and nurture leadership.
Residency artists will co-create short dance films that centre dancers (and audiences) with myriad bodies, minds and senses. The residency will have two ‘creative pods’ each with five artists collaborating in different roles to co-create a short dance film that integrates multiple modes of access.
There will be workshops with disability arts mentors once a month. Each creative pod will also choose a mentor to support their project process.
The residency is facilitated by the InterdepenDance Collective, in collaboration with Dance West Network.
Who the residency is for:
The residency aims to deepen practices around collective access, decolonizing and disability justice 
in dance.
Creative people with lived experience of disability, neurodivergence, madness, spoonie-ness, chronic illness, intergenerational trauma, and/or membership in Deaf, Blindness, and/or Deaf/Blindness communities, are invited to apply for the residency.
The project prioritizes opportunities for dance/movement artists who self-identify as BIMPOC (Black, Indigenous, Mixed, People of Colour), Two-Spirit, non-binary, trans, agender and/or gender-nonconforming.
The project prioritizes dance/movement artists “in BC” outside of Metro Vancouver, who may not have opportunities to develop their practice where they live.
All levels of dance experience are welcome. All forms of dance/movement are welcome.
Residency details
Where/when:
- The residency will take place online on Zoom from June 2022 to March 2023.
- Artists will meet on Zoom once per week for two hours. There will also be a workshop once per month.
- The application form asks applicants what time options they could do on Mondays (between 11 AM and 5:30 PM), Wednesdays (between 11 AM and 6 PM), and Thursdays (4:15 to 6:15 PM) in Pacific Time.
- Each creative pod will decide which weeks to take off in the summer, late December, and based on community holidays that are important to members.
Benefits:
- Two hours per week of paid time, at $35 per hour.
- Monthly workshops by mentors in disability arts to build skills in video accessibility (including audio description, captions, transcripts), collective access, multisensory creation, co-directing, creatively filming dance, and video editing.
Commitment:
- Artists are asked to commit to the full duration of the residency from June 2022 to March 2023, and to let their creative pod know if they will be absent from any sessions. The projects are collaborative and artists are relying on each other.
- Artists agree to be in a screendance that will be shared publicly and may be submitted to festivals and events.
Access notes:
The application form invites artists to note what would support your access realities. For example, sign language interpreter, captioning/transcriber, audio description, access buddy, note-taker, breaks, various ways to connect and communicate, brainstorming solutions for unreliable internet access, etc.
We will also connect before and during the residency for more detailed check-ins about ways to be together.
Once the residency starts we will brainstorm about access to video equipment and tech support for artists who are outside of the islands.
How to apply:
The application deadline was Wednesday May 11th, 2022 at 11:59 PM Pacific Time.
The online application form was at this link: https://forms.gle/EUYDNzHBXWudsV9k9
Alternate ways to apply include:
- Word document (ask us to email it to you)
- meeting on Zoom or by phone or Video Relay Service
- sending an audio recording
- or sending a link to a video response.
If you hire a support person to assist you in filling in the application form, there is likely funding to reimburse this expense: please be in touch for details.
Contact Jo if you have questions, or are interested in one of the alternate ways to apply.
The selection committee will be the project Advisory Team.
Applicants will be notified of results within 4 weeks of the deadline.
More details about the residency:
Residency artists will delve into learning specific creative and facilitation roles they are interested in, regardless of prior experience in a role. Each pod of five artists will have at least two creative facilitators or co-directors. The other roles will be different for the first phase (filming/director of photography, and dancers/co-choreographers), and second phase (two video editors and multiple audio describers). For video editing we plan to use Premiere Pro, or whichever program is most accessible to the video editors.
Artists will also each choose a facilitation role in their pod (access facilitator, logistics facilitator, note-taker, and two group co-facilitators/ check-in buddies), which can rotate as needed.
At the beginning of the project, each pod will brainstorm about how we want to work together and shared values.
Some skills workshops may also be open to additional artists who self-identify as experiencing disability, Deaf communities and/or BIMPOC (Black, Indigenous, Mixed, People of Colour) communities, to support more colleagues in increasing skills for sharing their work online, and to create connections among artists committed to access. If you’re not applying to the residency but are interested in the workshops, send an email to the contact info below with ‘Workshops’ in the subject line.
Contact info:
For questions, contact Jo.
Project team:
The InterdepenDance Collective is facilitating the project. The project co-coordinators are Claire Bruce, Joanne Cuffe and Lea Collins, who live in the homelands of the lək̓ʷəŋən, W̱SÁNEĆ and K’ómoks Nations.
Dance West Network is collaborating on the project, with Debora, Jane, and Dawn supporting admin aspects.
The Advisory Team is Alice Sheppard, Lindsay Katsitsakatste Delaronde, romham pàdraig gallacher, and Sarah Lapp-Bourne.
Workshop facilitators include Kayla Hamilton with a Crip Movement Lab and Alice Sheppard on disability dance films.
Project supporters:
Much gratitude to funders for making this project possible: Disability Alliance BC, Canada Council for the Arts, BC Arts Council, The Hamber Foundation, and Flux Gallery / MediaNet. The Thursday creative pod is grateful for a residency at Dance Victoria Studios. Thank-you as well to partner organizations: Dance West Network, and Creative Momentum.
Image description of the image invite:
The title reads: Collective Access Screendance Residency, with bold letters that are shades of blue, magenta, moss green, and turquoise. The illustration is divided into four rectangles of Zoom video conferencing frames that are described below, each with a drawing and text summarizing the project. (If you don’t want a detailed description then click here to go to the project overview.)
Claire Bruce (she/her) is in the bottom left Zoom corner. She is wearing a pink jacket and a lavender t-shirt. Claire is sitting surrounded by pink tulips in W̱SÁNEĆ territory. She has pink heart-shaped sunglasses on top of her black hair. Claire is a Peruvian-Canadian with tan skin. She is clasping her hands and smiling. Claire is part of the InterdepenDance Collective.
The text in Claire’s corner reads: June 2022 – March 2023; 2 hours per week on Zoom; pays $35/hour.
Lindsay Katsitsakatste Delaronde (she/her) is in the top right Zoom frame. Lindsay is a Kanienke’haka woman from Kahnawake who is a grateful, active and contributing guest on Lekwungen territory, Victoria, BC. She is wearing a red tank top and a red bandana patterned with small teardrop shapes on her head. Lindsay has a video camera over her right shoulder. She is part of the project advisory team.
Text in in this Zoom corner reads: collaborate with colleagues from Deaf and cross-disability communities; monthly workshops (building skills in film and access practices); mentoring.
romham pàdraig gallacher (they/them) is in the top left Zoom frame. They’re a white settler immigrant from Scotland living in so-called “Vancouver, BC”. They’re wearing blue glasses, plain black cap, charcoal sweater and a long scarf with playful horizontal stripes in the colours of the non-binary pride flag (yellow, white, purple, black) and trans pride flag (blue, pink, white, pink, blue). romham is smiling behind a salt-and-pepper beard, and sitting in their motorized wheelchair with their hands resting together in their lap. They are part of the project advisory team.
Text in this Zoom corner reads: Calling creative people who love dance / movement. Let’s create dance films together!
Access information is in the bottom right hand Zoom corner. At the bottom, there is a captioning speech bubble outlined in blue. Next to the bubble, three hands of a multiracial group of people each finger-spell one letter of A-S-L. Next to the hands is a pink audio description symbol A-D with soundwaves.
The text reads: access supports are available (for example: captioning, interpretation, audio description, etc). Let us know what else will support you.
Along the bottom of the image there are icons as if in a Zoom screen.
Text at the bottom reads: Organized by the InterdepenDance Collective, in collaboration with Dance West Network. There is also the link for this webpage. End of description.