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Help us bring artists living with disability to centre stage. All donations doubled thanks to the Plus 1 program by Creative Australia!
What is Body Code all about?
Body Code is an ambitious performance project by Vulcana Circus that will premier in Brisbane at the Kingston Butter Factory in November 2025. This project is a collaboration between Vulcana, artists with lived experience of disability and AI researchers at Queensland University of Technology. The project aims to highlight the potentials and risks of emerging AI technologies and how they can interact with the lives of people living with disability. It will bring together a diverse group of disabled artists and support them to be able to collaborate across artforms and communication differences. It is a project designed with accessibility at the forefront, and embedded at every stage of the creation process with Auslan interpreters, audio describers and support workers present during developments and rehearsals.
Why does it matter?
On average artists with a disability:
- Earn on average 42% less than their counterparts (1)
- Experience higher levels of unemployment – 1/3 of artists with disability are unemployed compared to 1/4 of artists without disability) (1)
- Experience numerous barriers within the arts that result in only 9% of professional artists identifying as disabled, despite 18% of Australians identifying as people with disability (2)
At Vulcana we are passionate about bringing diverse stories to the stage. We want to make sure that artists of all kinds have the opportunity to share their own unique perspectives. People living with disability face countless barriers to participation in everyday life — help us to knock those barriers down and bring this group of incredible artists to centre stage.
How can you help?
Every dollar donated helps bring the project to fruition and thanks to Creative Australia every dollar donated will be matched – this means your donation will effectively be doubled! If you can’t donate right now please consider sharing this page – help us extend our reach and build a community of Body Code supporters.
These donations will be directly fed into the project and are what makes performances like this possible at all.
$25 Assists costume design
$50 Contribution to an hour of Auslan interpretation during rehearsals
$200 Construction of an adaptive circus apparatus
$400 Audio description for 1 performance
Partners and supporters:
Research Partner: Queensland University of Technology
Community and Access Partners: The Brotherhood of the Wordless, VantagePoint Audio Description
Artistic Director/Facilitators: Celia White and Jo Dunbar
Cast and creatives: Lauren Watson, Julie Lyons, Chaos Beth, Courtney McKee
and Allycia Staples
Venue Partner: Kingston Butter Factory, Logan City Council
References:
(1) Throsby D & Petetskaya K 2017, Making Art Work: An Economic Study of Professional Artists in Australia, Australia Council for the Arts.
(2) Research overview of arts and disability in Australia | Office for the Arts
What’s happened so far?
Body Code in Conversation
September 2024
This event explored a performing arts lens on Artificial Intelligence and disability inclusion. It was a collaborative conversation with Vulcana’s performance director Celia White, and researchers from Queensland University of Technology, Disability advocate and researcher, Bree Hadlley, and researcher in human computer interactions, Laurianne Sitbon.
This conversation invited contributions from anyone interested in the intersections of art, disability and technology to contribute to Vulcana’s performance project, Body Code, in 2025.
The ideas generated in this event will help shape the project. The event was attended by people from Brisbane, Charleville and the Gold coast.
Body Code Creative Development
October 2024
Following the Body Conversation in September 2024, Vulcana invited 6 artists with Disabilities to collaborate and delve into the themes of the project over one week of exploration in October 2024.
Facilitated by Jo Dunbar, Melbourne-based, is a choreographer, director and facilitator, with 20 years’ experience in the professional arts industry. Jo’s facilitator strength is enabling the learning space to be one where we learn from ourselves and each other. She co-founded Australia’s first dance company for deaf and hearing performers, The Delta Project, performed with renowned arts companies Strange Fruit and Restless Dance theatre, taught dance and physical theatre workshops to companies both regionally and nationally and co-directed Momentum for the Women’s Circus in 2022-2023. Born profoundly deaf and bi-lingual in both English and Auslan she is passionate about all things diverse, experimental and inclusive. Jo worked with artists Lauren Watson, Julie Lyons, Chaos Beth, Courtney McKee and Allycia Staples.
Together we teased out what we thought about AI and its potentials and risks, and discovered ways to work across languages, communication styles, senses and performance possibilities. This gives us a range of starting points for our Body Code performance project in 2025 when we invite more participant artists to contribute to devising and presenting this new work at the Kingston Butter Factory, November 2025.
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