@TyIsI Somewhat short notice (2 weeks?) but I’d love to take you up on your offer of organizing a night at Hack Space and co-host with my partner in crime who’s coming to town mid-Month.
We thought we could offer an open chat / Q&A night re working with the Fire Art Safety Team to bring Fire Art to Burning Man, starting by talking about our own projects and experiences and opening the floor to questions.
Two-second resume: I’ve volunteered with F.A.S.T. since 2012 and am currently part of the team that oversees Flame Effects coming to the event. Carly (my pyro partner) and I brought Open Fire, Flame Effects and Pyro for Mazu: Goddess of the Empty Sea in 2015. Previous to that I worked on Temple 2011, the Pier 2 and was the Burn Lead on Embrace.
Read VHS’ ‘Hosting an Event’ blurb but am keen to chat more about how to host.
The best night for us would be April 16, which I see would be an Open Night from 730 onwards. Perhaps we could lead with our talk? 6 or 7 pm and stick around to chat if there is interest?
Speaking of fire, the Luminescence IV closing is in Burnaby on April 6 at the art gallery and there will be a fire breathing dragon as well a heart set on fire. It’s true! Right off HWY 1 in middle of Burnaby.
My neighbor, Michael, is a pyro technician who was involved with fire safety at Burning Man. A few years ago a stroke took away his speech and left him partially paralyzed. Our building is only a 12 minute walk to VHS, and he’s been keen to check out the space ever since I let him know about it. However, his powered wheelchair can only get in through the back sliding door, and travel paths need to have enough clearance. As a pyro tech, I’d imagine he’d be extremely keen on reconnecting with that community.
pfft… pretty sure Michael doesn’t care; he’d drag an accessible-rated porta-potty behind his chair to the space if that was required for him to once again surround himself with dangerous equipment in a production tech shop. He’s already leveled up his hacker cred by voiding his chair’s warranty with a mod.
But yeah. Not sure what reasonable accommodation could mean for the hack space. As an interim arrangement, could accessible washroom privileges be arranged with nearby businesses? Job sites sometimes make these arrangements for workers at nearby businesses. How accessible from the street are the facilities in the dance studio, east van brewing, uprising bakery? Would someone from Neil Squire be able to assess the viability of that as a solution?
As an accessibility advocate, I cringe at the notion of this kind of kludge solution. But I also weigh it against the practicality and reasonableness of retrofitting legacy infrastructure in anything close to a timely manner. A robust investigation and policy of offering washroom accessibility through nearby businesses will not delay accessibility, and may even provide a better experience for the user than any eventual and difficult retrofitted solution in the VHS space.
We could first explore other options that quickly and feasibly satisfy the users need for accessible washrooms before banging our heads about the solution, budget and timeliness about making VHS washrooms accessible.
And this post now needs crossposting to get to an #accessibility thread…