ideas for exhibition

While thinking about accessibility and engagement, the first question that comes to mind is “Who are our audience?” By that, I’m asking, are we presenting to just students and faculty in the bi-co? Artists and their families from CCW? People from the community near Haverford? Do we have a priority for any particular audience? How can we accommodate for people who are deaf, or blind, or people who can’t read/who don’t speak English? People who are unavailable at the time of the exhibition? People who feel uncomfortable around large crowds? Also, how about people who are wheelchair users or are very short?

So from these questions, it becomes apparent that we must have an audio element of the exhibition (perhaps through computer with headphones attached and one of those read-aloud system), and a textile element that people can touch. We should not have things put up too high. We can loan laptops from IT department to make sure we have multiple ones at hand for translation, video, audio, and other things. For people who can’t stay for long, maybe we can give them a catalog? And for people who can’t make it there at all, maybe we can make a blog post on the haverblog about the exhibit (pretty sure it will exist anyway)?  For artists at CCW, perhaps reading large blocks of words might be difficult; honestly, it’s difficult for everyone in a space where people are walking in and out. So have more visual and textile elements to compensate? Also for people who are uncomfortable around large crowds, we can have writing center to be a chill-out space, where we can even label on the door “don’t talk here” or something like that.

The second question that comes to mind is “What do we want people to see and to take away?” How much details do we want to know? How much work can be put in given the limited amount of time we have?

Since students will all be busy with final, I think it’s important to have some fun elements that includes more than writing down a comment. Photo booth is definitely a nice one, and perhaps games that give out small gifts? (We can just use the catalog as a gift as well.) It would be great if we can have a small amount of material there, where people can make some of the simpler crafts quickly and we can have the artists teach them if possible. Or perhaps we can teach them. I believe that people who are able to actively participate will remember the event much better in the future. As for how much details people should know, I think the catalog is a nice resource. (Should we have a catalog in large print for people who have visual impairments?) We can just give a few brief statements and let art and lab notebooks dominate the walls.