Making accessibility accessible: maximising the impact of the integrated immersive inclusiveness project

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This follow on funding project builds on an existing collaboration between Red Earth Theatre, a small-scale touring company with an established track record and commitment to research in inclusive integrated communication for young audiences (with a focus on deaf audiences) and an interdisciplinary team of researchers across arts and computer sciences at the University of Nottingham. Red Earth's established 'total communication' approach to making theatre aims to integrate modes of communication - including metaphor, symbol, costume, set, lighting, auditory, signed, oral, written, and music - immersively within the theatrical aesthetics of the performance. British Sign Language and/or Sign Supported English has been successfully embedded within the action through the skilled work of their actors, but the challenge of achieving integrated embedded captions within the stage action to achieve immersiveness rather than the attention splitting caused by the placement of captions whether at the side, above or via phone screens (as with Talking Birds' The Difference Engine) or smart glasses (National Theatre) is expensive and demanding for small- and medium-scale theatre companies. Through a series of iterative workshops and events with key stakeholders from the deaf community and the seven theatre companies that make up the Arts Council funded Ramps on the Moon network, funded by the AHRC/EPSRC's 2018 Research and Partnership Development call - Next Generation of Immersive Experiences, our team has worked to explore the potential for the use of cheap or freely available immersive technologies - using virtual reality tracking and projection - to support further development of integrated inclusiveness for deaf audiences in small scale touring productions. Having successfully developed, trialled and shared prototype approaches in short extracts of performance, we now seek to embed our suggested solutions in the context of a full touring production. This will enable the integration of our immersive captions as a full element of the performance and production from the beginning of the design process, in contrast to the existing practice of captioning that is added at the end of the production process and situated above or to the side of the stage.In autumn 2019, Red Earth will tour Soonchild, based on Russell Hoban's book and incorporating specially commissioned music from the folk ensemble Threaded. Set in the frozen North, Soonchild tells the story of the shaman Sixteen Face John as he undertakes an epic journey to capture the world's songs for his unborn child, who cannot be born until the songs have been found. This production, aimed at children aged 8+ and their families, will enable us to showcase the technologies in action, creatively embedding our previous research with the aim of:- sharing the potential of this innovative technology with audiences. Red Earth planned tour of a minimum of 15 performances in the autumn of 2019 will reach an anticipated audience of up to 1000 young children and family members (the show will be revived in 2020 touring to a planned minimum of 20 medium sized-venues). Feedback from audience members will inform future marketing and information on the system to support venues seeking to engage with often hard to reach audiences in the D/deaf community, ensuring that our integrated immersive inclusive technology has maximum impact with theatre audiences.- proving the stability and robustness of the system, which will be showcased to new communities of theatre venues and production companies via a hands-on technical workshop and supported via specially created video tutorials and how to guides. On completion of the Soonchild tour, the equipment used will be made available for loan to other companies who wish to trial the technologies, ensuring effective and supported pathways to impact for prospective new users of our integrated immersive incusive technology.