<![CDATA[Access in the Making Lab]]>https://accessmaking.substack.comhttps://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!AgKt!,w_256,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fcbabedfc-79f2-4bf1-b82d-bf1192f201dc_1271x1271.jpegAccess in the Making Labhttps://accessmaking.substack.comSubstackFri, 19 Jun 2026 01:49:44 GMT<![CDATA[2025 In-The-Making: An AIM Lab Year Recap]]>https://accessmaking.substack.com/p/2025-in-the-making-an-aim-lab-yearhttps://accessmaking.substack.com/p/2025-in-the-making-an-aim-lab-yearTue, 20 Jan 2026 21:16:30 GMT
An image reads “2025” in big numbers and underneath it “in-the-making” with the logo of the AIM LAB in the top left corner.

Members’ Spotlight


Roï Saade

Huge congratulations to Roï, who has been busy since launching the Huwawa publishing house, with lots of exciting projects already underway.

Roï recently published Landing, a photobook by Maen Hammad exploring the lives of Palestinian skateboarders in the occupied West Bank as they navigate the layered realities of Israeli settler-colonial domination. The book offers a thesis on skateboarding as a form of resistance to a headspace of violence. Documented between 2015 and 2022, it captures the fleeting moments of escape and the indomitable spirit of skateboarding. Check it out here.

He also launched the Bound Narratives Photobook Festival in Tunis, co-organized with photographer Tamara Abdul Hadi. Bound Narratives is a nomadic exhibition that brings together a curated selection of photobooks conceived from and about the Middle East and North Africa by a diverse range of artists and photographers. Evolving from previous editions in Beirut, Florence, Montreal, and Sarajevo, the Tunis edition expanded into a full festival with exhibitions, workshops, talks, and concerts across venues including B7L9 Art Centre, 32bis, and Mouhit. More details at the Kamel Lazaar Foundation site.

A rendered image of a red book with black and yellow scratches on the cover. Red cloth band holds the spine.
Photobook cover for Landing
An image of a gallery with a blue table and benches. On the table, a collection of photography books are being browsed by people. Some are reading the books, one is staking a photograph of a spread. In the background, more people are checking the rest of the exhibition.
Festival installation view from Bound Narratives Tunis

Kim Fernandes

We’re sad to lose Kim Fernandes, who recently wrapped up a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Toronto, but thrilled to celebrate a huge milestone: Kim has started a new role as Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Brown University! At Brown, they’re also affiliated with the Data Science Institute, the Institute at Brown for Environment and Society, the Population Studies Center, the Program in Science, Technology and Society, and the Center for Technological Responsibility, Reimagination and Redesign, what a lineup!

This year has also brought several major recognitions: they were elected to the Board of the Society for Disability Studies (SDS), serving a two-year term on the Events and Conference Committee; selected for the Ann Johnson Institute’s 2025 Book Manuscript Workshop; and their dissertation received an Honorable Mention for the 2025 Council on Anthropology and Education Frederick Erickson Outstanding Dissertation Award.

We’re so proud of Kim, deeply grateful for their contributions to AIM Lab, and excited to cheer them on from afar.

A brown person with black hair falling past their shoulders looks at the camera, beginning to smile. They wear a black blazer over a white shirt.
A brown person with black hair falling past their shoulders looks at the camera, beginning to smile. They wear a black blazer over a white shirt.

Jessie Stainton

This June, Jessie took part in the SIM Residency Program in Reykjavík, Iceland alongside artist Francis Ouellette. The duo gathered material for Spaces of Wonder, a multimedia project exploring climate degradation, tourism politics, and the romanticization of place. Their work included fabric dyes made from invasive lupins, 3D scans, field recordings, and video experiments, culminating in a residency showcase at Korpúlfsstaðir and a performance at White Wall Studio in Montreal. Jessie also performed at the Making Time Festival in Montreal on September 27th, blending field recordings with ambient and experimental sound. She’s teaching Visual Culture this fall in Concordia’s Communication Studies Department and continues to host her monthly radio show on n10.as (first Saturdays, 3–5 pm).

3D scan of the residency expo:https://my.matterport.com/show/?m=LKhmcQAnLB5

1-Jessie performing at Making Time Festival on September 27. 2-Still from Drones No Drones, a short film created during the SIM residency. 3- Jessie separating lupins for natural dye in her SIM Studio overlooking the sea. Lupins are an invasive species that produce yellow, green, and blue pigments.

Rachel Rozanski

This spring, Rachel spent two months at the Doris McCarthy Residency collecting, documenting, sampling and drawing for her ongoing research. Over the summer, she joined the FEELers Summer Camp hosted by the FEELed Lab and Astrida Neimanis in the Okanagan, where participants explored embodied and land-based approaches to environmental research and care. This fall, she’s continuing her research at the ArtsIceland Residency in the Westfjords, developing a new film and multimedia exhibition.

1–2. Stills from Rachel’s Iceland film. 3–4. Research photographs from the Leslie Spit and Doris McCarthy Residency.

Meesh Sara Fradkin

AIM is also happy to welcome Meesh to the team. Meesh Sara Fradkin is a writer and artist working with sound, text and media. She is a PhD candidate at McGill University.

On September 20, 2025, her first full-length album, ‘Bunny’s apartment, the beach’ was released by Interzone Editions. Each cassette includes graphic score transcriptions by Phoenix Reign Herring, housed in 4.25” × 5.25” glassine envelopes. The cassette and digital versions can be found at interzoneeditions.bandcamp.com.

Last winter, Syllabus Project published her syllabus/text ‘Deny, defend, depose, detain’. It can be found here: https://syllabusproject.org/deny-defend-depose-detain/.

In December 2024, Meesh also published their text Deny, Defend, Depose, Detain through the Syllabus Project, available here.

1-Image of Meesh with Jessie at a performance. 2- Photo Album cover for Bunny’s apartment, the beach showing graphic score transcriptions by Phoenix Reign Herring. 3-4 The first image in this post is the graphic score transcription for the track “Issue project bathroom”. Granular halos with little snowflakes, rain, teardrops, and puddles are overwhelmed by bigger snowflakes----similar to the snowstorm that we experienced over the last day.

Communication Board

As an ongoing project at AIM Lab, we started a monthly communication board project where members can install a quote and use the wall to curate a message. For the first round, AIM Lab Member Nicholas wrote his quote “RADICAL CARE HEMS THE EDGES OF ACCESS.” Grounded in his research on young carers and the Lab’s values, the quote frames care and access as everyday, collective work shaped by young carers’ lived realities.

In this dimly lit photo, warmed by soft yellow hues, a communication board with white squares and black lettering reads in all caps: RADICAL CARE HEMS THE EDGES OF ACCESS. In between the lettering is assorted beige-white clothing that twists and drapes between the spaces of the letters. Below the letters, there are 3 bright lights that cast shadows of the wooden pegs and clothing that the letters rest on.

Thank you for reading

Thanks for reading and for supporting AIM Lab throughout 2025. We’re proud of everything our members have been working on, and we’re excited to continue sharing updates, projects, and events with you in the new year.

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]]><![CDATA[Welcome to Access in the Making ]]>https://accessmaking.substack.com/p/welcome-to-access-in-the-making-822https://accessmaking.substack.com/p/welcome-to-access-in-the-making-822Tue, 11 Mar 2025 22:01:14 GMT
A timeline graphic illustrating key events participated in by AIM Lab. The timeline is shaped like a piece of curled thread, starting with the letter 'A,' leading into 'I,' and ending with 'M,' forming the acronym AIM. Key events are listed along the timeline: February 2, 2024, Access and Aesthetic conversation; March 4, 2024, a meeting with Elizabeth Ellcessor; March 4, 2024, 'Two Days of Access in Contemporary Art'; and September 24-27, 2024, Ecologies of Access: Disability and Arts in the Anthropocene (Sept 24-25). The word 'Lab' is positioned at the bottom right of the graphic. The background features a soft, muted pinky-grey with purple lettering and pink highlights in a typical AIM style.
A timeline graphic spelling "AIM" with key events in 2024, featuring roundtables and workshops, on a pinky-grey background.

Welcome to Access-In-the-Making (AIM) Lab’s first newsletter!

New to AIM? We’re a passionate collective of researchers, artists, makers and storytellers working together to critically engage with disability, access, the environment and care. We’ve worked on a wide range of projects—from exhibitions to knitting circles, to book clubs and research papers.

Our Substack will reflect our unique approach: expect creative and experimental blog posts, photo essays, and other dynamic content that challenges the limits of academic communication. We’re thrilled to launch this space as a hub for exciting lab updates, member spotlights and reflections, collaborative projects and community events, and new research in critical disability studies, environmental humanities, arts and activism.

For our very first edition, we want to trace a timeline of Access-in-the-making in 2024, and give a sneak peek at the exciting projects and events coming up. We hope this gets you excited to follow us into 2025 and gives you a better sense of what AIM is all about.

In 2024, the AIM Lab welcomed new residents, including Kim Fernandes, who explored the bureaucratic challenges disabled people face when applying for disability certificates in urban India, and Aimee Louw, who offered an early glimpse into her latest short fiction project and creative process.

We warmly welcome artists, researchers, and activists working in the disability space to join us for collaborative discussions, casual conversations, and shared research opportunities. Recent highlights include a presentation by Pamela Block and Nadia Meinerz talking about the Disability Portraits from Brazil project as Anti-Eugenics, as well as Accessibility & Aesthetics, an event co-hosted by AIM, and  Janna van Grunsven from TU Delft and Ashley Shew from Virginia Tech. As well, A paper, informed in part by discussions from our ethics workshop with Michele Friedner, who visited AIM from the University of Chicago, was published in December 2024. You can read it here.

Our collective Skill-share workshops are a flexible initiative focused on knowledge exchange, fostering collaboration, and creating small pockets of resistance to the siloed, competitive nature of academia and art through shared learning and action. Recent sessions have included crochet with Sabrina, public speaking with Nick, and photo-books with Roi, offering diverse opportunities for participants to develop new skills and connect through creative practice. 

Our exhibitions and events explore themes like disability, accessibility, decolonization, and the climate crisis, featuring workshops and art installations that examine how environmental harm intersects with disability and creative practices. As part of this, Reading for Palestine continues throughout 2024, bringing together readers from AIM, their kin, and invited guests to share their voices for Palestine through recorded readings of selected texts and media, available on the AIM website.

Other event highlights include:

Six event posters are presented in a row, all designed by Roi Saade. The first poster is for the Air River Sea Soil exhibition. The design features stills of the participating artists' works aligned along a map, with a focus on artists from the SWANA region. The second poster is for Reading for Palestine. The background is a deep forest green, with splotches of violet interrupting the text that reads 'Reading for Palestine.' The flowers, the Iris haynei ( Palestine’s national flower) look like holograms, are in black and white. The next two posters are for the Two Days of Access in Contemporary Art event. These posters are designed in soft violet tones, showcasing the works of featured artists. The fifth poster is for the Ecologies of Access event, with bold neon green and purple colors. AIM Lab's logo is in bright neon red, and the poster includes the name and photography of featured artists. The final poster is for a film screening of Vibrations in Gaza and Canada Park. A still from Vibrations in Gaza features a young girl with her arms raised and palms pointed toward the camera. Her eyes are not visible, just her mouth and shoulders, and she appears at the forefront of the poster.
Six event posters designed by Roi Saade, from left to right: Air River Sea, Reading for Palestine, Two Days of Access (2 variations), Ecologies of Access, and for the screening of Vibrations in Gaza and Canada Park.

Moving forward, AIM has a range of upcoming events, including a presentation by Affiliate member Sawsan AlSaraf, who will showcase I Leave My Little Heart in My Mother’s Closet and her artist book, Kitab Al-Ruh (The Book of the Soul), scheduled for Spring 2025.

Thanks for reading our very first newsletter. We hope you subscribe and share our Substack with your networks for more updates from the AIM Lab. See you soon!

Subscribe now

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