Glossary
Accessibility
The degree to which a project can be understood, utilised or appreciated by the widest range of people. In particular, this amounts to concern regarding physical and cognitive access requirements, particularly in light of the barriers faced by disabled and neuro-diverse participants or other people with access needs.
Digital arts
Artworks or art-making that utilise digital technologies as a fundamental component within the creative process. Whilst this does not necessitate all aspects of the process are digitally-mediated, it assumes technologies such as screens, digital interfaces, and the internet play a role beyond simply hosting the final output.
Social Connectedness
The feeling of belonging to, or meaningfully connecting with, a community of others. This can take numerous forms, but it assumes the development of a meaningful social network from which auxiliary benefits - such as well-being and improved health - can emerge.
Inclusive design
An approach to design that focuses on enabling the broadest possible means of engagement. Inclusive design seeks to encourage a diversity of access points, eschewing a one-size-fits-all model in favour of fostering a meaningful sense of belonging and embodiment for all involved.
Co-design
A spectrum of participatory involvement, ranging from feedback-oriented consultation, in which participants are informed of an artists intent and offer limited reflection upon it, through to full co-design, in which participants fundamentally shape an artwork from the ground up.
Co-authorship
Similarly to co-design, co-authorship concerns the degree of collaboration within the creative process. Crucially, however, it refers to questions of ownership and representation, and assumes a more complex negotiation regarding rights and responsibilities when sharing a finished work.
Co-presencing
Simultaneous presence and interaction of people sometimes across different spaces: The presence of others can significantly change the behaviour of individuals.
Social model of disability
The social model of disability (Oliver 1990) posits that the challenges surrounding disability are an outcome of normative ideologies and attitudes - a culture designed to accommodate only a very limited scope of possible human experience. Accessibility is not a case of accommodating ‘difference’, but removing unnecessary barriers that hinder inclusivity.
Facilitation
A purposeful act of ensuring the seamless and meaningful delivery of a participatory art engagement: Digital facilitation happens on a spectrum from real-time human-centred, to fully automated. Facilitation substantially influences the experience for participants in providing context, influencing timing, chronology and interactions directly.
Gatekeepers
Working with particular demographics often requires engaging with specific gatekeepers embedded within a given community. This might include social workers or community groups who have a long-standing relationship to participants, helping to establish trust and understanding within the often limited timeframe of an arts project.
Onboarding /Offboarding
Providing participants with a bespoke context for the participatory art experience that helps to provide context, and ideally enables participants to listen and to prepare them for the engagement with one another. Through careful framing, onboarding (before the engagement) and offboarding (after the engagement) can support participants in ensuring their individual experience is meaningful, and that there is a takeaway, a sense of reflection and an emotional connection with the experience.
Autonomy
The degree to which a participant is free to make their own choices, or construct their own path through an experience. Whilst participatory artworks need not be entirely autonomous, affording participants a meaningful ability to shape the experience can engender embodiment, immersion, confidence and well-being.
Participatory presence
A shared feeling of being in the moment through creative practice - an exciting prospect that links artistic engagement and shared creative and cultural experiences with the potential for social connectedness, community building and social cohesion.
Participatory arts
A broad range of creative practices revolving around the desire to incorporate participants within the creative process. Operating as a spectrum, participation may include undertaking work with a pre-defined community, eliciting feedback or narrative changes in the development of existing work, or using art as a means of reflecting on existing modes of participation within a community.
Digital other
In collaborative digital experiences, it is not always possible to know who you are working with, or who is engaging with the work produced. A digital other therefore, amounts to an unknown collaborator or participant, and necessities inclusive strategies to ensure they can meaningfully engage with the work.
Salience
The impact of a given experience, particularly beyond its temporal parameters. In practice, this often refers to the manner in which a work stays with its audience once it has concluded. From the perspective of socially-oriented works, it might concern the degree to which the work continues to have a long-lasting affect (for instance, on well-being).