Who needs community opera? Part One: ‘Let’s take over a whole town!’ Jonathan Dove Jonathan Dove, In Search of Angels, 1995 © Richard Davies courtesy of Glyndebourne Productions Ltd. ‘Let’s take over a whole town!’ I suggested to Glyndebourne in 1988. ‘Everyone can be in an opera.’ I have been writing community operas for thirty years. At first, it was co-creation, shared with hundreds and hundreds of people. Eventually it led to an ambitious attempt at a networked performance of a community opera on three continents. [...]

TRACTION at Cornell Tech, New York (Image source: pixabay.com) The XR Access Initiative kicked off in Summer 2019 with the first XR Access Symposium. Over 120 technologists, advocates, researchers, and industry leaders joined us for talks, demos, and working group sessions that generated actionable plans for making XR more accessible. At the 2020 XR Access Symposium on July 20th, the community progress over the past year will be reviewed, highlight the latest advancements in XR accessibility research and implementation, and lay out concrete steps we can [...]

NEM SUMMIT 2020 Virtual Conference. 30th June - 2nd July 2020 Dr. Mikel Zorrilla, Director of Digital Media at Vicomtech, has presented his paper “A Novel production Workflow and Toolset for Opera Co-creation Towards Enhanced Societal Inclusion of People” The NEM Summit is an international conference and exhibition focused on Media, Content and Creativity fields, which has been held since 2008. Over the years, the NEM Summit has grown to become a relevant annual event, providing attendees with a key opportunity to meet and network [...]

IEEE IWCMC Conference (International conference on Wireless Communications & Mobile Computing) Virtual Conference. June 15th-16th, 2020 Anderson Smiscuka of Dublin City University, has presented his paper “Performance Evaluation of a Multi-User Virtual Reality Platform”, at the IEEE IWCMC Conference Online. (Image source ddd.uab.cat) This year marked the 16th anniversary of The Annual International Conference on Wireless Communications & Mobile Computing (IWCMC 2020) under the theme of “Internet of Everything“. In recent years, it has attracted the technical community from all around the world, sealing [...]

Searching for Play-Doh James Bingham, Irish National Opera (Image source: pixabay.com)Back in the 1950s, the future for Kutol Products was looking pretty bleak. Their flagship product of wallpaper cleaner was becoming redundant as the usage of coal in households fell rapidly, thereby removing the issue of soot build-up on walls. Remarkably, the company turned around its fortune through the help of Kay Zufall, a nursery school teacher and relative of an employee at Kutol, who read an article about how wallpaper cleaner can be used in modelling. Its [...]

International Conference “From So Far to So Close. Addressing the Refugee Phenomenon: History, Sociology, Technology” TRACTION will be presented by Project Leader Mikel Zorrilla at the international online conference “From So Far to So Close”, addressing the Refugee Phenomenon: History, Sociology, Technology” (SO-CLOSE project logo) The conference was due to be held face-to-face in Barcelona and will now take place in an online format on June 15th and 16th. It will be led by Javier Rodrigo (UAB), leader of the European project Enhancing Social Cohesion [...]

TRACTION quoted as “Born Accessible” in a Policy Paper written for the European Parliament Dr Pilar Orero of UAB has given Traction as an example of ´Born Accessible´ in a policy paper written for the European Parliament which has been endorsed by the European Disability Forum. Doctor Pilar Orero, senior researcher at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona and project partner to several European H2020 projects has referred to TRACTION as an example of a "Born Accessible" project in her European Disability Forum endorsed Policy Paper [...]

TransMedia Catalonia present TRACTION for Global Accessibility Awareness Day 2020 The Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD) is an event that takes place every year all around the world and aims at raising awareness about the importance of digital accessibility for a more inclusive society. The 9th Annual Global Accessibility Awareness Day will take place as scheduled on the third Thursday of May, May 21st, 2020. TransMedia Catalonia is an interdisciplinary research group created by Dr Pilar Orero at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB), one of [...]

Remote participation in the 5th Comunicación y Pensamiento conference, (Sevilla, Spain) (Photo from: https://comunicacionypensamiento.org/inicio/) The V Congreso Internacional Comunicación y Pensamiento was organised by the Spanish R&D Project “JUVEN-TV: Nuevos consumos frente a viejos estereotipos: Análisis de la recepción por parte de la juventud española de sus representaciones televisivas actuales” (CSO2017-85483-R), with researchers from the Universities of Málaga, Sevilla and Granada (Spain). The conference was organised for April 1-3rd but due to the circumstances regarding COVID-19, it has become an online conference. The UAB team lead [...]

Traction in the European Parliament Born Accessible Day POSTPONED DUE TO COVID-19 Due to the outbreak and spread of the viral disease COVID-19, non-core events involving outside visitors or attendees to Parliament’s premises have been cancelled until further notice. One of the future policy priorities for the Union is a Fair Europe, which centers on social inclusion, health, rule of law and fundamental rights. Accessibility is a core component of social inclusion to secure full democratic participation of all people living in [...]