Art & Audio Description Symposium "Bridging the Gaps....." (Ways of Seeing Art) and my

On 24 February 2017 from 1.30 to 4.30pm, Shape Arts held a symposium at Tate Modern - 'Bridging the Gaps: Exploring the link Between Art & Audio Description' - as part of our Tate Exchange programme, Ways of Seeing Art: www.shapearts.org.uk/Event/tate-exchange-2017

A panel of advocates and practitioners of audio description were gathered in conversation with curators and museum professionals to examine the gaps between access and artists, galleries and audiences. This event was for those interested in applying audio description to contemporary art. With a focus on how blind and partially sighted people connect with art, we explored how creativity, innovation, technology, knowledge of art and the user experience enhances the current offer.

The Panel:

Chair: Tony Heaton OBE (Chief Executive, Shape Arts) Craig Ashley (Director, New Art West Midlands, Birmingham School of Art) Dr Louise Fryer (Audio Describer and Audio Description teacher at UCL) Vidar Hjardeng MBE (Diversity Consultant, ITV News, Chair of Audio Description Association and Shape trustee) Anna Murray (Assistant Curator of Public Programmes & Access at Tate) Zoe Partington (Disability Art Consultant and Creative Equality Trainer for the art, heritage and cultural sector)

One of the things Zoe spoke of a successful audio accompaniment to the 2012 exhibition of the photographs of Vanley Burke “The Rivers of Birminam” at the Midlands Art Centre. Successful, in that there was a choice of a traditional voice and the voice of a black actor, who approached the description as an emotional viewer with a colloquial accent.

Since watching the symposium, I have tried to find the audio that accompanied these photographs on the net, but although this exhibition has toured to places such as Johannesburg (2014), there is no mention of the audio description. This leads to two conclusions, the first is that I am not a good researcher or secondly the audio is not considered to be of importance and is unavailable.

For me the symposium had one powerful message and that was to get on with the job of making audio. Craig Ashley, director of New Art West Midlands described the holy trinity of Artist, Service Users and Audio Descriptors/Organisations. It needs to be embedded in the practise of the Artist not just an add on by the galleries and museums.

I have created 2 choices of audio. The first is a discussion of two persons confronted with my painting in a gallery. To do this I asked two friends to improvise a discussion about the work. I then created a script from the improvisation. Finally I asked the friends to read the script before improvising a recording. The second audio is of me, the artist, reading a poetic description. As all of my paintings are inspired by music, the audio track sits on top of the musical score used to create the painting.

The next step is to present these attempts to the RNIB in Cardiff. With their help I hope to be able to modify the audio so that in my final show in September it will be ready for audience consumption.