Pallas Projects/Studios are pleased to present Chronic Collective, an initiative by artists Áine O'Hara and Tara Carroll who have developed a landmark series of events around art, illness, and disability for Pallas Projects in July and August 2022. These events are by and for sick and disabled artists as well as anyone who wants to create with accessibility in mind, or participate in an accessible art project. Artists can drop-in to workshops or attend multiple to develop a performance with the support of Chronic Collective.

The events themselves are active sites of learning and best practice. The flexible times, length and frequency of events are laid out by Chronic Collective with accessibility inherent providing comfortable seating, transport, food and snacks, a slow-paced, masked and ventilated environment, and quiet spaces available for breaks. Talks and workshops will be free, live-streamed, captioned and ISL interpreters provided in order to remove barriers to participation.

Through these programmatic actions, participants provide expert feedback about their needs, and what arts organisations can do to assist continued, sustainable involvement in the arts for arts workers and participants. We also invite the wider artist-run network to attend an accessibility focused workshop as a training opportunity for the sector. A guidebook will be produced to share the findings of the project, which will be made freely accessible to arts organisations. We see this as a vital process for the arts sector to develop inclusion capabilities, gathering research directly from artists through activity based research. This important project has been made possible by the Capacity Building Award 2022 with thanks to the Arts Council for their support.