Amy talks to dance and accessibility innovator Nathan Geering about what inspired him to develop The Rationale Method
Can you introduce yourself and tell us how you started working in this field?
My name is Nathan Geering, accessibility innovator and theatre maker. I started out as a B-Boy, a hip hop dancer, and I’ve been doing that since I was 21–19 years now. I also began teaching breaking as well, and very early on was teaching in SEN schools for about 10 years. I was the 2017 artistic director of the special Olypmics opening ceremony in GB.
My company finds ways in which we can break new ground with accessibility, with a focus on making it more engaging and more entertaining for people with disabilities. About 9 years ago we started to have a bit more of a focus on visual impairment, and we were looking at how we could utilise the forms of the elements of hip hop in order to make performances more accessible to people with visual impairment. That’s where the Rationale Method came from. Within that, we deliver audio description, I teach people with visual impairment breaking as a means of injury prevention and to improve spatial awareness. I also look at ways to harness technology to improve accessibility for people with disabilities. I run a registered charity that works in hospitals and hospices; we do things like bedside beatboxing, smashing street art, doctor decks and hip hop handplay. These are all designed to enhance people’s experience whilst they are in hospital, and are all designed in an accessible way; just because people can’t get out of bed doesn’t mean they can’t engage in the arts.
A lot of people get involved in disability arts because they have relatives or friends with a disability, or they themselves are living with a disability, but that’s not how I came to it. I’d started teaching in SEN schools from really early on, but never regarded myself as working within disability arts, I was just teaching people; that was it. So it wasn’t until we started doing research and development for the Rationale Method that I fully realised I am working within the realm of disability arts.
What does the term ‘integrated accessibility’ in the performing arts mean to you?
For me, integrated accessibility is ensuring that accessibility isn’t just an add-on. It’s ensuring that it’s considered right from a production’s inception. Accessibility should be in the radar of any kind of making process. The makers or producers should have an accessibility expert on board from the get-go, or if they haven’t they should be taking steps to consider accessibility throughout the production, or even their service, it doesn’t just have to be in the performing arts, it’s beyond that as well. When accessibility is considered from the outset it makes a great end product, that not only enhances accessibility for disabled people, but for non-disabled people as well. Integrated access can take a number of forms, it can also challenge the way that the aesthetics of theatre-making are considered; what is seen as ‘quality’ work. For so many years, this notion of ‘quality’ theatre hasn’t included accessibility, but now we can really challenge this. It’s not about trying to fit within the traditional parameters of what we know to be ‘quality theatre’ — it’s finding a new aesthetic that works for everybody, rather than something that is shoe-horned to fit a non-disabled mainstream audience.
Who do you think is doing great work in this area at the moment?
There are loads of companies that make great work, that are accessible (and I’ve even been fortunate enough to work with some of them, which is amazing). Ill Abilities Crew are an international breaking crew formed of loads of breakers from all over the world who all have various disabilities. They do showcases and performances, and lots of workshops around accessibility. They are phenomenal; they have this saying which is “No limits no excuses” and they put it on wrist bands. The energy and the ethos behind the idea is that if you have a wrist band, you help someone who is down on their luck, or going through something tough. Once they get through it, you give them your wristband, and they then have to find someone to help — to pay it forward. So although the wristband starts with you, it definitely doesn’t end with you. They do incredible work.
The Singapore Reparatory Theatre are really pushing the envelope of theatre out in the far east in terms of striving and pushing to making it accessible in different ways. They are doing a massive push to get knowledge to people of Singapore about accessibility and how to enhance it. Stopgap Dance are a brilliant company, and there are so many others.
Do you think that performances should be marketed as accessible?
What we have to remember is, everybody has different tastes and different needs. And that rings true in terms of what type of theatre, film or music you like. It doesn’t mean one way is more right than the other, it’s just a question of taste. Accessibility has always been treated as a ‘one size fits all’, which is the wrong way to look at it. You have to accept that not everybody will like the form of accessibility that you’re offering, but there are people who will. For example there will be generational differences, class differences, or maybe just what people have experienced in the past. Many different factors will come into play, but the reality is that if you’ve done your research, and you can connect with those audiences that do relate to your work, they’ll become massive fans and they’ll keep coming back to you again and again. For example, the Rationale Method of audio description was created because there were so many people with visual impairment who said that they found conventional methods of audio description boring and unimaginative. That’s just the harsh reality of it. It doesn’t mean that everybody loves the Rationale Method, but we have a strong audience that do. So we can take care of that demographic, whilst another form of audio description takes care of another. And so on. We have to acknowledge that we are just a piece of a puzzle of a bigger picture, rather than looking to solve the problem for everybody, because it doesn’t work like that.
How did you reach your audience? Was it a gradual thing or did you have to push to get people there?
The more research and consultation you do with the more people and organisations, the more potential you have of building an audience. That’s what it comes down to, and I think that’s true for all marketing. Go out there and find your market and cultivate a relationship with them. Once you do that, you can find out what they do and don’t like, they can find out about who you are and gain trust in your product and service, and from there they can either take it or leave it. Even if they don’t like one product, they might like who you are and what you stand for, so they may be more likely to promote your end product to other people who may like it. It’s about going out there and talking to people. Gone are the days when you can sit in your ivory tower and expect results, or pretend you are getting results, it really is about connecting with people and making work that speaks to them.
Art often gets too intellectual and tries to conceptualise stuff way too much. They make stuff so abstract that it doesn’t relate to the audience and the work can be more self-serving. It makes people feel like they are on the outside of an inside joke, and nobody likes to feel like that. It can divide you. We can’t be doing that with accessibility, it defeats the whole object. It’s not about being exclusive, it’s about connecting with people, making work in consultation with people. You have to take into account the audience you are making your work for, it’s really important.
I think for a long time a lot of artists and arts organisations lost their way within that, for the sake of pushing art. What they maybe didn’t realise is that when they were pushing art in a certain direction it was making it inaccessible for so many people. Not just for people with disabilities, but people from different cultural, ethnic and socio-economic backgrounds.