Access Note

Welcome to Casco’s access note, where you can find more information about our accessibility. We will periodically update this access note as we learn more and deepen our understanding. The last update was on 26 April 2021.

Participate in Casco’s events

With financial support from Gemeente Utrecht in 2021, we provide Nederlandse Gebarentaal (NGT) and/or American Sign Language (ASL) interpretation to D/deaf and hard of hearing communities from home and abroad for all of our relatively large live stream events. We also include live captioning, transcripts, and translation for our audiovisual productions to create different entry points with regards to various developmental abilities and neurodivergence, learning and attention styles, and first/second languages. These accommodations do not need to be requested beforehand, as we have asked in the past. Yet it is not common practice, and we hope those reading this will support us in promoting accessibility across arts and culture on a large scale, through promotion and by implementing these tools in a variety of practices. We are convinced that more and more will follow this direction and this is the only way forward.

  • Casco Art Institute strives to livestream as many of our events as possible.
  • Our information material is available in both English and Dutch, and our events are generally spoken in English, unless otherwise stated.
  • We provide image descriptions in our media as well as audio descriptions where possible.
  • Any events or material of ours for which financial compensation is requested are calculated on a sliding scale, as it is not possible for everyone to pay the same amount. Learn more about this here: The Sliding Scale: A Tool of Economic Justice.
 

Visit Casco in Utrecht

For those visiting the headquarters of Casco in Utrecht for the first time in Utrecht, we are located within Abraham Dolehof in the museum quarter of Utrecht’s historic city center. From Utrecht Centraal station, you can come by foot, bike, or by Bus 2, which takes between 10-20 minutes.

Due to the steps leading up to the entrance and the building’s internal staircases, Casco is not currently wheelchair accessible. We are working towards making Casco an accessible space for wheelchair users in the future. However, we often hold events in our wheelchair accessible courtyard when the weather is nice, and our hotel neighbor has agreed that our guests can use their wheelchair accessible restroom.

  • The bathroom in our office is gender neutral and a (small) single stall. There is a somewhat larger, gender neutral single stall bathroom on the first floor.
  • In consideration of our visitors with multiple chemical sensitivities and autoimmune illnesses, we kindly ask that you do not wear a fragrance during your visit.
  • We welcome small children and babies to our space. We have a diaper changing cushion.
 

Work (together) with Casco

Casco Art Institute consists of a small team of various ages and cultural backgrounds. This extends to our dynamic ecosystem of relationships. When working with us, you contribute to a warm, generous community that is respectful of everyone’s experience, background, identifications and communities they are part of. For any form of violence, we have a zero-tolerance policy. In situations of conflict, we will work together with the people involved to find the appropriate solutions using a transformative justice approach. Please contact staci@casco.dietweetest.nl if you feel unsafe.

The fees for the artists with whom Casco works are in accordance with the Fair Practice Code, a code of conduct for entrepreneurship and working in art, culture, and the creative industry. We seek to find low CO2 footprint and sustainable forms of production and transportation.

As part of our Artist Agreements, we include the discussed description and condition for working together. We also welcome artists to include information of their “access rider” for a better collaboration.

”There are always going to be crips. There are always going to be people in pain – that’s just the nature of being in a body. But the social body, we can change!” – Patty Berne, Sins Invalid

Our views on access

Collectivity is made possible through relationships, and these relationships, both human and nonhuman, are the essence of life. We learn from biodiversity that difference helps life thrive through a system of interdependent relationships. Yet many institutions check, exclude, and break rules when people don’t fit neatly into a box. Extreme inequalities are exacerbated by economic differences in prosperity. Not everyone has access to art and culture from the same level, and art and culture is different for everyone. The value of difference is central to our work with art and the commons, as the commons can be a useful answer to more equal access to shared resources, not just for everyone, but for every form of life.

It is therefore very important that our accessibility policy is more than just a series of theoretical reflections, and is carried out in practice by the team and in collaboration with Casco’s various audience groups. Casco is a meeting place that embraces mixed-ability, skills, and insights. We welcome feedback and to join us as we improve our accessibility.

The corona virus showed that working online is possible. For many sick people and people with disabilities it’s hard to see how quickly this adjustment was made now that there was a higher demand for it. This phenomenon, also called the “inaccessibility cycle” is something we have also been guilty of and are now being vigilant and wanting to break through. Casco no longer wants to take accessibility as an afterthought, but make it visible and institutionalized.

Contact and more


Please contact Staci through email at staci@casco.dietweetest.nl if you have questions or need some extra help, and we can assist you to visit our exhibitions and attend the many events in our multifarious program. 
If you are interested in supporting and being part of this process, either by sharing your knowledge and experience, or by making a financial contribution, please reach out.

Lastly, we would like to share the article Access Intimacy: The Missing Link by Disability activist and community organizer Mia Mingus, whose work is inspiring us in our investigation into making Casco accessible “on the ground” while broadening our perception of limitations and abilities. Likewise, we take inspiration from the 10 Principles of Disability Justice, which was stewarded by Sins Invalid with cross movement leadership of Disabled people of color and of queer and gender non-conforming disabled people.

This site complies with:

  • Recent versions of popular screen readers
  • Operating system screen magnifiers
  • Speech recognition software
  • Operating system speech packages