TOPO is organizing a professional meeting around cultural inclusion through digital media on Friday, May 24, 2024. This forum will showcase projects that embody different artistic approaches to accompanying and understanding disabilities. These proposals are based on unprecedented partnerships and open, participatory innovation processes involving multiple stakeholders.

On the basis of their experience, artists and researchers will address issues of accessibility to digital arts and media for diverse audiences, as well as societal awareness of the different facets of physical and mental health.

The meeting, free and open to all, focuses on presentations and exchanges around ideas and projects, with a demo zone for experimenting with works and prototypes. This activity is a prelude to a more elaborate program aimed at audiences and artists of diversity capacity in the fall of 2024.

Registration
Places are limited - reservation is required

Program

Friday May 24th

12 h 30 – Greeting

13h00 - Opening statement

13 h 10 – Opening panel L'innovation artistique, sociale et technologique au service de la santé with Martin Lemay (UQAM), Simon Drouin-St-Pierre (OVA) and Keven Lee (Centre national de danse-thérapie des Grands Ballets canadiens) from the project Danser dans le métavers with the CHU Sainte-Justine.

14h00 - Project presentation and experimentation

– Les pieds en haut (autism and virtual reality) with Martine Asselin and Annick Daigneault

– Ludociels pour tous (accessible games) with Enrico Sinatra

– Voix rêvées (web work on the dream worlds of visually impaired people) by the Turbine center with Sandrine Côté and Réjane Bougé

16 h 00 - Screening of short films with Miguel Sorto of FICAM – Festival international de cinéma adapté de Montréal

– Martin Ecchymose by Emilie Peltier (7 min 19 s, french et LSQ)

– Braille. L’art au-delà du visuel by Obed Dejena (11 min 40 s, french with audio description)

– Enracinée by Annie Leclair (7 min 15 s, french)

16h30 - Discussions with directors Emilie Peltier and Annie Leclair and film producer Sendy-Loo Emmanuel on Braille. L’art au-delà du visuel.

Demo zone

Digital creation and mediation for cultural inclusion

Virtual reality :

Dans la tête (Les pieds en haut)

Dans la tête brings together 4 immersive projects created by a group of young autistic people following visual, sound, literary and media creation workshops conducted with some fifteen artists and collaborators. This multi-platform project, which includes web capsules, virtual reality clips and a collective installation at TOPO, aims to promote neurodiversity and positive recognition of autism. Produced by TOPO and carried out over two years (2017-2018) with the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the City of Montreal, the project is part of a wider documentary and immersive creation initiative, Les pieds en haut, by directors Martine Asselin and Annick Daigneault.

https://www.agencetopo.qc.ca/wp/dans-la-tete/

Dancing in the metaverse

Access to leisure activities is often limited for young people with disabilities, especially those living in remote areas. This is a particularly important issue, as it can have an impact on the motor, cognitive and psychosocial development of these young people, as well as limiting their social inclusion. The project Dancing in the metaverse aims to break down these barriers. The metaverse is a virtual world whose access can be adapted to suit the abilities of each individual: it will enable young people from different regions of Quebec to come together in a common virtual space to interact and take part in dance activities. The project, which brings together experts from the worlds of technology (OVA), the arts (Centre national de danse-thérapie des Grands Ballets canadiens) and paediatric health (CHU Sainte-Justine), is part of a participatory approach that puts the user at the centre of the creative process by identifying him or her as a collaborator in his or her own right.

Games :

Another Audiomaze

Another Audiomaze is an experimental, minimalist game with no visuals, in which the entire soundscape is made up of a single sound. Its simplicity makes it easily accessible for a first experience of sound games.

Avoxture

You're wandering through a limbo-inspired soundscape and you need to escape this gloomy place before you get tired... Listen! Birdsong gives you energy and the call of the owl guides you towards the exit.

HSH Go

HSH Go is the result of a collaboration between Ludociels and the HSH Crew artists' collective in France. This interactive and collaborative digital installation is played out with one touch. Explore the darkened set, look for the teleporters and open your eyes.

Vicdor

Vicdor is a very simple, one-touch exploration game. You can use it as an introduction to sound games for blind or amblyopic children, and as visual and auditory stimulation for children with cognitive and/or motor disabilities.

Web :

Voix rêvées

Voix rêvées is a web work that presents the dream worlds of eight blind and partially-sighted people. The Turbine centre asked writer Réjane Bougé and sound artist Chantal Dumas to create portraits of each participant based on their dreams.The two artists met with the people in their living environments to collect a dream while gleaning observations from their daily lives. The bilingual web work that brings together this artistic content was designed to be accessible to blind and partially-sighted people, as well as to the general public. It was produced by the Folklore studio in collaboration with the artists and expert consultants in web accessibility and inclusive design. The project is the brainchild of Yves Amyot and Réjane Bougé, and produced by the Turbine centre.

https://voix-revees.com/

Biographical notes

Dancing in the metaverse

Martin Lemay

Martin Lemay is a professor in the Department of Physical Activity Sciences at UQAM and a researcher at the Centre de réadaptation Marie Enfant at CHU Sainte-Justine. His areas of expertise include motor learning, kinesiology, rehabilitation, adapted dance and virtual reality. Over the past few years, Martin Lemay and his team have developed and evaluated some ten dance programmes (including two teledance programmes) for young people with disabilities. He has also developed expertise in the use of active video games and virtual reality on the motor functions of young people with disabilities.

https://professeurs.uqam.ca/professeur/lemay.martin/

Simon Drouin St-Pierre

Simon Drouin St-Pierre is a strategic partnerships consultant at OVA. He previously co-founded the Montreal-based start-up Replay, which also specialises in immersive technologies. OVA develops tools for training and simulation using virtual and augmented reality. Simon holds a bachelor's degree in Entrepreneurship, Innovation and Creativity from HEC Montréal.

https://www.ova.ai/

Keven Lee

Keven Lee is a researcher and multidisciplinary artist. Trained as a healthcare professional as well as a professional dancer, his doctoral project focused on better understanding the experience of carers and people living with Alzheimer's and related conditions. He was mainly interested in known and improvised movement experiences in relation to care, particularly in the context of the movement exploration group, Moving-with/ Bouger-ensemble, which he designed and investigated. He is currently a postdoctoral researcher at McGill in the Division of Social and Transcultural Psychiatry, a faculty member at the McGill School of Rehabilitation, and research coordinator for the Centre national de danse-thérapie des Grands Ballets canadiens.

Le Centre national de danse-thérapie

The National Dance Therapy Centre (NDTC) is a social and cultural action department of Les Grands Ballets canadiens dedicated to promoting and making accessible the benefits of dance to vulnerable and marginalized communities and populations. In this way, the Centre helps to reinforce the usefulness of dance and art in general as a means of prevention and well-being. The Centre's work is based on three pillars: social and therapeutic interventions using dance, training for those working in the field of dance for well-being, and involvement in research projects on dance as an intervention tool.

https://grandsballets.com/fr/centre-national-de-danse-therapie/a-propos-du-centre/

Le Centre de réadaptation Marie Enfant du CHU Sainte-Justine

The Centre de réadaptation Marie Enfant at CHU Sainte-Justine offers specialized and superspecialized adaptation-rehabilitation, social integration and participation services to newborns, children and adolescents with motor or language impairments.

https://readaptation.chusj.org/fr/Accueil

 

Les pieds en haut

Martine Asselin

Martine Asselin is a filmmaker and documentary maker. A founding member of the Kino video artists' group in Quebec City in 2001, she has contributed to the movement's international influence by taking part in numerous Kino Kabarets - creative events at festivals where short films are made on location in 48 to 72 hours. A committed filmmaker, she was an active member of the feminist artist-run centre Vidéo Femmes from 1997 to 2014. Most of her work deals with social issues. She also campaigns for the positive recognition of all forms of diversity, including able-bodied diversity and neurodiversity.

https://martineasselin.com/

Annick Daigneault

Annick Daigneault is the founding president of Sur le Fil - Foundation for Inclusion. Trained in theatre, communications and philanthropic management, she has a wide range of experience in event management and communications. She has worked with a number of community organisations, most notably as coordinator of the Ma Vie en Premier programme, an initiative inspired by the resilience and leadership approach, implemented in three Montréal-Nord high schools. An activist, author and campaigner, she is socially and politically committed to the positive recognition of neurodivesity and the inclusion of every distinction that enriches humanity.

https://annickdaigneault.com/

Ludociels pour tous

Ludociels pour tous is a Montreal-based social economy company dedicated to promoting digital inclusion. Co-founders Thomas Gaudy (a doctor in computer science) and Stéphanie Akré (a physiotherapist) are interested in all forms of digital projects with a social vocation, as well as the accessibility of video games. The organisation contributes to the creation and promotion of inclusive, participatory and collaborative digital leisure activities and cultural facilities.

https://www.ludocielspourtous.org/

Enrico Sinatra

Enrico Sinatra, co-founder of the company Lalilala.org with Coralie Girard, is a software and user experience (UX) designer with a collaborative, cross-cultural and human-centred approach. He also acts as a coach and creative leader, supporting artists, craftspeople and teams in participatory processes and website prototyping experiments. He is a close collaborator of the co-founders of Ludociels pour tous.

Voix rêvées

Centre Turbine

The Turbine centre carries out projects that introduce contemporary arts to diverse communities by pairing professional artists of all backgrounds and disciplines with art educators. The organisation also contributes to reflection, training and the sharing of experience and knowledge about art and education in communities. Sandrine Côté is the artistic and educational director.

https://centreturbine.org/

Réjane Bougé

Réjane Bougé hosted cultural and literary programmes on Radio-Canada radio for nearly fifteen years. A member of UNEQ, she was cultural advisor for literature and film/video at the Conseil des arts de Montréal (CAM) from 2006 to 2016. She published her first novel in 1992, L’Amour cannibale. Alongside her professional activities, she continues to publish regularly. In all her books, the work of memory is predominant.

Chantal Dumas

Chantal Dumas is a Montreal sound artist trained in rhythmic studies and interactive media. Since 1993, her work has taken the form of narratives, soundscapes, compositions, listening tours and installations. Her work includes a participatory dimension which, depending on the project, takes the form of an immersive experience within a device or active collaboration in the creative process. She asks questions that resonate intimately with everyone.

FICAM – Festival international de cinéma adapté

FICAM is an artistic initiative to bring cinema closer to people with physical, hearing and visual disabilities. As part of the festival, a number of documentaries, dramas, animations, music videos, shorts, medium-length films and feature-length films will be shown based on the experiences of these people.

www.ficamontreal.ca

Miguel Sorto

Miguel Sorto is an independent artist and film-maker from Honduras. Under the name of his artistic identity La bicicletaHe is the driving force behind the FICAM project and director of the festival. A multidisciplinary artist, he has concentrated more on documentary cinema in recent years, making two short and medium-length adapted films: Boccia.qc.ca and 10 km/h. It was during the screening of these films that he became aware of the lack of facilities for screening films for people living with a disability, which was the starting point for the creation of FICAM as a pilot project in 2022. He is now working on his first feature-length documentary.

Emilie Peltier

Originally from Lyon (France), Emilie Peltier moved to New Brunswick in 2012, where she works in the community and cultural sectors. Born deaf, she decided to move to Montreal to get closer to deaf culture. She met inspiring people and discovered a new world that helped her to deconstruct clichés about deafness and build her new identity. Matin Ecchymosecreated in summer 2020, is an experimental project combining poetry and deaf culture.

Sendy-Loo Emmanuel

An artist, entrepreneur, coach, motivator and banker, Sendy-Loo Emmanuel has been involved in art since childhood. Starting with dance and then visual art, she uses it as her main means of communication to inspire those around her. She holds a DEC in computer graphics, a BAC in business administration and an MBA in management consulting. She is the founder and president of WECAN, a non-profit organisation that works with the Afro-descendant artistic entrepreneurial community to support a range of promising artistic and cultural initiatives.

Annie Leclair

Annie Leclair, a well-known Quebec film editor and director, enjoyed remarkable international success with her first film ENRACINÉEselected by UNESCO for its 2023 virtual projection to mark the International Day of Disabled Persons. A passionate self-taught artist committed to her community, Annie has been an editor for film and television for 18 years and has served on the board of directors of the Women in Creative Industries Alliance. Recipient of the Still I Rise Films bursary for female documentary talent, Annie is completing her 2nd film this year, LES EAUX CALMES.