Accessible Arts Festival

Manifesto for Accessible Arts Festival was a 2021 digital arts residency organised by

Access for All, a consultancy firm based in Mumbai, Maharashtra, India “determined to push the boundaries of physical, intellectual, and social access in spaces like museums, art galleries, cultural tourism, monuments, and other public/private sites of social significance.” The goal of the residency was to design a Manifesto for Accessible Arts Festival (MAAF) for an all-inclusive festival co-hosted between Wales and India. MAAF will be a structured toolkit that focuses on providing a global platform for artists with disabilities. A core principle of the residency was to  cater to the needs of audiences with disabilities and provide a universally designed space, without adopting an ‘able-ist’ approach. 

Read the full Manifesto HERE.

Cooked Illustrations was requested to provide sketch-noting visual summary services. Our visual note-taker extraordinaire, Ian Cooke-Tapia, sat in during their live conversations to document the conversations in visual ways. The aim was to create not just a graphic record of the conversations that took place, but to elevate and showcase the information in a way that would be accessible to a wider, albeit sighted, audience.

• Elevate the stories of life as a disabled individual

• Visually summarise complex idea through visual metaphors to reduce barriers to engaging with the concepts

• Using visual metaphors and a touch of humour to improve information recall for participants

• Act as a visual record of the proceedings of the meeting

 In keeping with the spirit of the residency and the people we were working with, we tried our best in ensuring the metaphors, colours, and design matched the Accessible for All’s branding colours and the beautiful and powerful messages shared in these conversations.