Welcome to Access-In-the-Making (AIM) Lab’s first newsletter!
New to AIM? We’re a passionate collective of researchers, artists, makers and storytellers working together to critically engage with disability, access, the environment and care. We’ve worked on a wide range of projects—from exhibitions to knitting circles, to book clubs and research papers.
Our Substack will reflect our unique approach: expect creative and experimental blog posts, photo essays, and other dynamic content that challenges the limits of academic communication. We’re thrilled to launch this space as a hub for exciting lab updates, member spotlights and reflections, collaborative projects and community events, and new research in critical disability studies, environmental humanities, arts and activism.
For our very first edition, we want to trace a timeline of Access-in-the-making in 2024, and give a sneak peek at the exciting projects and events coming up. We hope this gets you excited to follow us into 2025 and gives you a better sense of what AIM is all about.
In 2024, the AIM Lab welcomed new residents, including Kim Fernandes, who explored the bureaucratic challenges disabled people face when applying for disability certificates in urban India, and Aimee Louw, who offered an early glimpse into her latest short fiction project and creative process.
We warmly welcome artists, researchers, and activists working in the disability space to join us for collaborative discussions, casual conversations, and shared research opportunities. Recent highlights include a presentation by Pamela Block and Nadia Meinerz talking about the Disability Portraits from Brazil project as Anti-Eugenics, as well as Accessibility & Aesthetics, an event co-hosted by AIM, and Janna van Grunsven from TU Delft and Ashley Shew from Virginia Tech. As well, A paper, informed in part by discussions from our ethics workshop with Michele Friedner, who visited AIM from the University of Chicago, was published in December 2024. You can read it here.
Our collective Skill-share workshops are a flexible initiative focused on knowledge exchange, fostering collaboration, and creating small pockets of resistance to the siloed, competitive nature of academia and art through shared learning and action. Recent sessions have included crochet with Sabrina, public speaking with Nick, and photo-books with Roi, offering diverse opportunities for participants to develop new skills and connect through creative practice.
Our exhibitions and events explore themes like disability, accessibility, decolonization, and the climate crisis, featuring workshops and art installations that examine how environmental harm intersects with disability and creative practices. As part of this, Reading for Palestine continues throughout 2024, bringing together readers from AIM, their kin, and invited guests to share their voices for Palestine through recorded readings of selected texts and media, available on the AIM website.
Other event highlights include:
Middle East Now Festival. Oct. 18 – Nov. 03
Ecologies of Access: Disability and Arts in the Anthropocene. Sept. 24-27, 2024.
EASST-4S 2024. (Conference attendance). July 16-19.
Vibrations from Gaza & Canada Park (Film Screening). April 11, 2024.
Two Days of Access in Contemporary Art. March 27.29, 2024.
Moving forward, AIM has a range of upcoming events, including a presentation by Affiliate member Sawsan AlSaraf, who will showcase I Leave My Little Heart in My Mother’s Closet and her artist book, Kitab Al-Ruh (The Book of the Soul), scheduled for Spring 2025.
Thanks for reading our very first newsletter. We hope you subscribe and share our Substack with your networks for more updates from the AIM Lab. See you soon!