In December 2024, Producer Toni Lewis & Associate Director Toni-Dee travelled to Beijing for research towards Canopy, a multi strand global adoption project with 3 central ambitions:
One of Canopy’s artistic outcomes is the ‘Canopy Installation’; a neighbourhood of nationally representative tiny homes telling the story of adoption around the globe. Each tiny home is conceived and brought to life by adult adoptees. The space, material and immaterial is co-created together, the inner and outer spaces animated by and for the purpose of uncovering and sharing the stories of adoption from that place. This research trip looked at design, architecture, family and disability.
This blog was written by Toni D and focuses on thoughts around Canopy and access:
1. Selina Thompson Ltd is a company full of seeds. Some germinating, roots deep and steady. Some still finding their light attempting to bury in fertile soil, and others have surpassed seedling all together, but are trees reaching out into the sun, nourished and growing daily.
Our trip to Beijing last winter was an experiment in access. A chance to ponder how we might bring and enable a team of people, with various intersecting and clashing needs, to and from across China to talk about adoption, access and care. How we might co-create a project with those in China prioritising the same things as us. How good access can become a bridge not a barrier, that carries us across languages, cultures and continents. This was an opportunity to learn about pre-existing care webs for disabled folks in Chinese cities and provinces we don’t know much about. A moment to share practices, exchange terminology, traverse language, cast around for connection, and mutually mourn displeasures. A chance to see what might be easy, what might be too hard. Above all, to challenge our own expectations on what a disabled led team might be able to achieve in a city 10 times the size of our own capital.
2. Selina Thompson Ltd is a company full of ideas. Ideas of doing and those ideas are propelled by the seeds of our lived experience. ‘Disability Led’ and ‘Disability Delivered’ for us means approaching artmaking, partnership, design, and delivery in new and often unusual ways. Our understanding of our practice, the way we approach our vision, conceptualize our aims and how we seek to deliver them is tangled with trying (and its always trying, never a perfect attempt) to do things differently.
This journey was a part of our multi continent, multi year project, Canopy. Right now, Canopy is the beginning of a tree bearing fruit. A project that holds the complexities of adoption, global state systems, and the uniqueness of people all in one trunk. China is an important part of the global adoption story, a living example of how state legislation surrounding family and disability can shape a nation. Challenging perceptions, asking more of our societies, Canopy is a project that needs connection to thrive, and that connection demands care, if we’re to harness the falling fruit from our ideas. It means collaborating. Often this means copious amounts of tea whilst we evaluate our trial and error. Documenting failure, ruminating on success, mindful of the gaps and mulling over which seeds of ideas feel like they might germinate a recipe for more, and better. If we plant Canopy in Beijing, what nutrients would they need to thrive and who are the constant gardeners?
3. Selina Thompson Ltd dreams of more and better, for adoptees, for artists, for disabled folks around the globe.
It is impatient work. It is work that demands integrity, compromise. Soft skills and managed expectations. Surprises and collective commitment. It’s tilling soil to foster the right environment so our seeds can grow. It is labour, to build accessibility into our models – it is a labour of diligence and a labour of love, so all of us, disabled and non-disabled alike can be present.
Disability frameworks are innovation in real time, because we are constantly thinking of new ways to open the door, to relax the space, to dim or brighten the lights, to welcome fidgets and tics, to take the arms off the chairs, to remove our masks (figuratively, not literally) and do our jobs in ways that don’t perpetuate the harm inaccessibility causes.
4. This is slow work. All of our work, including Canopy, is slow work.
The model of exploration on a big topic demands a certain amount of physical, mental, and emotional energy. Slow work is how we look after all of us, not just some. It is understanding that people moving slowly notice things that people moving quickly do not.
With no Arts Council, projects are generated from the fruits of other labour. Body ON & ON our Chinese cultural partners spoke to us of ‘projects of the heart.’ Bountiful harvests leading to projects like the Deaf and Mute Children’s Choir. Inclusive Space in Beijing started life as a social care office, supporting its disabled community with practical needs of finance, housing and medical care. It sprouted new branches and now eight years later supports a 25+ strong touring performance troupe, women’s groups, rehearsal space with accessible facilities, resources, funding and more.
Slow work is work that lets disabled artists thrive, that lets disabled participants be seen and heard, it enables our disabled audience to witness, and our cross-disability solidarity to be rooted.