Consulting
At Circle O, we work with organizations and foundations offering analysis, strategy, and implementation of custom-built Disability Arts programming and intersectional access practices.
Our goals go far beyond the 101 (aka ‘access as a list you need to check off’) approach. Instead, we engage with collaborators who wish to deeply integrate the art & process of access as a foundational and transformational model.
We listen, revere, and center the specific needs of members of (y)our communities, finding tangible & interdependent ways to build trust, opportunity, and cultural abundance.
Our Consulting Options
Overview
In this 1-3 hour one-off, we offer an overall review of some of the ways we’ve found to center the access needs of BIPOC Disabled and other multiply marginalized creatives. We give examples of programming and practices we’ve seen successfully implemented in the past and engage with any questions or concerns you might have.
Overview & Strategy
In this 1-3 month process, we review aspects of the existing programming and structure of an organization and its constituents’ emergent needs. We then offer integrated analysis, with recommendations for access centered practices and programming.
Overview, Strategy & Implementation
In this year-long, or multi-year process, we offer all that is mentioned above in addition to supervising / producing / implementing our recommended programming. This in-depth engagement gives us a chance to not only cover the what, but also the how, when, and with whom. If all is aligned, your organization will finish this collaboration with a robust Disability Arts program / intersectional access practices.
"Kayla is a talented consultant. She is incredibly smart, thorough, and methodical in her approach to both teaching and implementing Disability Justice and accessibility practices in a variety of settings. Kayla doesn’t allow anyone to cut corners, and she has sharpened my approach to my own work because of it."
INDIA HARVILLE
Founder and Executive Director, Embraced Body
Examples of our past work
With the support of The Mellon Foundation, Circle O began building a Disability Dance Portfolio which includes co-founding and implementing programming that enables Disabled artists to exist and co-create in a variety of ways across a variety of spaces.
Access. Movement. Play (A.M.P.) Residency at Movement Research
This residency provides funding, free studio time, a showing opportunity and professional documentation to multiply marginalized Disabled dance artists. Inviting artists to dive into a process-based approach both individually and collectively, this program has been able to support the work of 12 Disabled artists / cultural workers and facilitate community spaces that were defined by one of the artists as “deeply generous and rare.”
Creating a national network for disabled dance artists
Most artists were Black, queer and/or trans and located across distinct geographical locations (New York, Seattle, North Carolina, and the Bay Area). Centering the work of BIPOC and/or LGBTQIA+ and/or women disabled artists, introducing structures of support into areas of the country with scarce opportunities, and creating connections between different disabled artists across geographies are all part of the larger transformational model Circle O attempts to implement through our consultancy work.
Interdisciplinary Disability Education and Access (IDEA) pilot program with Dance/NYC
With the understanding that any integration of disabled cultural workers into the dance field will necessitate a shift in perspective and practice for non-disabled accomplices, we founded an educational series created by disabled Dance educators but geared towards our non-disabled colleagues. This educational series consists of 14 two-hour sessions, each taught by two Disabled facilitators on topics ranging from: terminologies/definitions, Disability Justice, political education, access as artistry, and disability arts history. Participants also receive studio time with access workers in order to practice and integrate some of their learnings, go on a field trip to visit disabled practitioners to experience the integration of access in real time, and receive funding to integrate their learnings and collaborate with disabled arts & access practitioners for their upcoming projects.
Summer Disability Dance Experience with Embraced Body
Spanning over 2 virtual weekends and a 10 day in-person experience, this summer intensive will be a first convening for and by disabled dance artists across the country, with production, facilitation, and design all meticulously curated for and by us. We hope this holistic, caring, and invigorating space will allow people to come together and envision more expansive futures for each of their practices and Disability dance as a whole.
UCLA Dancing Disability Lab
Kayla Hamilton joined the UCLA Dancing Disability Lab as an Artist/Educational consultant in 2023. The Lab was designed to offer experienced and emerging disabled dance artists from across the world an immersive engagement in disability studies scholarship alongside movement exploration and choreographic inquiry. Participants share ideas and experiences that invite one another to consider how we represent, look at, transform, and challenge ideas about the body, and personhood. At the center of this uniquely designed process is the notion that aesthetic production (dance) can serve as a change agent for the continued progress of Disability Justice.
Let’s Talk NOW
In this 60 minute on-demand consultation we can chat about a variety of topics such as:
Accessibility in the arts
Teaching practices & pedagogy
Audio Description
Disability culture & Disability Justice
Building communities
Imagining programming & strategies
Dance & choreography
Upon booking, you’ll be asked a few questions so that we can be best prepared for our conversation.
Past clients
