A Language of Holes is a project co-developed by Wysing Arts Centre and Sarah Hayden, as part of Voices in the Gallery, with support from the Arts and Humanities Research Council. Together, we are developing innovative and creative approaches to making live art and performance events maximally (and excitingly) accessible.

This collaboration comprises three strands, each designed to extend different elements of the Wysing programme: The Art of Captioning, Club Urania, and the Sensory Support Programme.

Nat Raha at Club Urania
16 September 2022, 8pm
Cambridge Junction

Re-entering the atmosphere after a sold out first season, Club Urania is back!

For the first Club Urania in the next season, Wysing Arts Centre, in conjunction with A Language of Holes, are pleased to present Nat Raha.

Nat Raha will be presenting a new work-in-progress with a particular emphasis on centring captioning and access in the development of the work. This work-in-progress is commissioned by Wysing in partnership with Sarah Hayden and AHRC funded A Language of Holes, a project that explores innovative approaches to captioning in live contexts.

This event will have live CART captioned by Bo from 121 Captions and BSL Interpretation from Sue MacLaine.

There is also the option to watch the event via live stream with the same access provisions.

Club Urania is Cambridge’s premium performance and music night for LGBTQ+ people and allies. Bringing you a constellation of star performers, otherworldly open-mic, and heavenly mixes from resident DJs.

For more information about this event please click here.

For tickets to see Club Urania at Cambridge Junction, please click here.

Sensory Support Programme with Hannah Kemp-Welch
September-October 2022
Wysing Arts Centre

Returning after a successful project in Spring 2022, a group of young people from the Cambridge Sensory Support Unit join us again for a series of workshops and events led by social practice sound artist Hannah Kemp-Welch.

The young people, who all experience different hearing profiles will undertake a project to build their own radio from scratch. They will learn how to make an electrical circuit that picks up the radio waves in the air around us, and design and decorate the inventions to reimagine what a radio can be.

This project will take place over 4 sessions, plus a final celebration for the young people and their friends and families, sharing the results of the workshops and sound experiments.

Temporalities of Access
5 November 2022, 12-5.30pm
Online

Temporalities of Access is a partnership event between A Language of Holes and British Art Network funded project, The Art of Captioning. Both projects are supported by Wysing Arts Centre and this event, on Saturday 5 November will bring together the culmination of a year’s research into the creative possibilities of captioning, along with the necessity of centering access and accessibility arts contexts.

Speakers to be announced soon.

About Sarah Hayden

Voices in the Gallery is a research, writing and curatorial project about how voice, text and access intersect in contemporary art. Funded by the AHRC, Voices in the Gallery is led by Sarah Hayden at the University of Southampton. Sarah’s work on Voices in the Gallery also encompasses ongoing collaborations with John Hansard Gallery (Liza Sylvestre | asweetsea), Nottingham Contemporary (Caption-Conscious Ecology) and LUX (slow emergency siren, ongoing)

A Language of Holes takes its title from the Raymond Antrobus poem ‘Dear Hearing World’ (The Perseverance, 2021)