As a part of the course Project Organisation and Context at Stockholm University of the Arts I took the opportunity to think about the form of agreements that we undertake when working together within art and in a creative field. Curious of workshopping agreements between colleagues that could strengthen art creating, social justice and producing and from a desire of bringing forth action for the climate crisis I came to know of the term access rider. Perhaps exchanging access riders as individual artists can be part of starting work, perhaps a dialogue between an institution and an artist can become clearer and perhaps access riders can help shape agreements, making them an even more useful tool to work, meet and as in my case – dance together?
On this page you are welcome to watch or listen to a low tech 10 minutes, slow home made video with some thoughts I share on access riders. Below the video are links to webpages that in different ways have instructions to make your own access rider and information and examples of what an access rider can be. You may spread the link to this site to anyone who might be interested.
An access rider is written by an individual, and can be shared when one is invited to take part in a project or any working relationship. It can work as a starting point for a conversation between the inviter and invitee about the accessibility of a certain situation.—Bullivant and Lindholm
The UK art commissioning body We Are Unlimited has a page on their webpage with instructions to make your own access rider here.
Here is artist Johanna Hedvas Disability Access Rider at her site Sick Woman Theory.
Here is a page and a pdf with collected access riders curated by Jessie Bullivant and Jemina Lindholm and published by Frame Contemporary Art Finland.
Here is the UK Music Unions page on access riders with key learnings and their access rider template.
My name is Tove Skeidsvoll, I work as a dancer, choreographer, actor and producer based in Sweden. I send a thank you to fellow student Sara Kaaman for making me aware of the existence of access riders, teachers Kajsa Wadhia and Tove Salmgren for pinpointing and making me notice new possibilities and support group members Darya Efrat and Robert Malmborg – for support! Thank you scenographer Annika Bromberg for communicating aims on directing theatres efforts of becoming more sustainable and thank you to the student group at Stockholm University of the Arts – Sharing practices of ecology and art.