Supported space

The Copenhagen Interpretation is designed to be particularly accessible for neurodiverse audiences, and especially for people with ADHD.
It aims to be space in which we can honestly be who we are, masked or not masked or whatever, or just stopping for a cup of tea because it’s all too much.
All of the methods in Copenhagen are about creating and sustaining an environment that allows participants to feel comfortable enough to self-support, and to choose how to get involved with the story/world, and to what extent.
Where traditional theatre buildings must overcome their inherent barriers in order to provide access, we try to build an accessible and supportive environment from the foundation of the work: not just in the physical spaces and platforms we use, but also in the methods we enable for getting involved in the work we make.
In choosing to see access and support as the creation of a supported environment, rather than a focus on supporting the individual's access requirements, we aim to:

• facilitate more specific bespoke individual support
• support, or at least avoid hindering, people's own methods of self-comfort as much as possible
• engender an atmosphere of access and support in which all participants share
• empower collective and collaborative access and support
• make a comfortable environment be portable for any involvement with our work

To give an example: at a live event where a person uses British Sign Language, our intention is to provide them with two personal BSL interpreters to accompany them throughout - from booking through to any post-event responses. We will also try to use some sign language - and some audio description - in every live event space as standard practice, so BSL is present in the environment for all of us. We're all comfortable with the presence of it, and maybe we all become able to use a little of it too.
The people who hold space in our environments will have an equal need for access and support. Everyone should feel comfortable, and free to do what they need to maintain that environment for themselves, and also for others.

Once you're comfy...

Getting involved in a story/world can offer an opportunity to do some personal exploration, and we try to help that happen in an accompanied way.
This isn't professional support: it's not psychotherapy, or counselling, or life coaching. We're not qualified or equipped to offer those things, or concerned with providing them.
But for those who are interested and comfortable enough, it might a place for some personal exploration, in the company of others exploring in the same sort of ways.

I created 'Copenhagen' because I wanted to explore those moments in life when there’s a choice, and I am looking around for cues from the people I’m with as to what choice I should make because I have ADHD and anxiety, and no clue most of the time.
The Broad Cloth, and other such projects, are actually about exploring one specific moment, and all the possible choices in that moment that different people might make. It is about exploring "The Copenhagen Interpretation" of that single moment, of that dilemma.
No single moment happens in a vacuum, and we need those different views in the moment. So we build a world, and inhabit it, in order to seed and nurture the characters whose different experiences will lead them to respond differently to that one ultimate moment.
As we go along, we examine things and discuss them, make observations, support each other so we can take risks where we feel comfortable to do so.
In essence, I am building myself a lab within which to safely experiment with being alive in all its possible forms, again and again and again. And it's a lot nicer, and more effective, to do that in the kind company of likeminded explorers.

— Jenifer Toksvig, creator of The Copenhagen Interpretation

The Access Accord

"To come to an accord..."
Supported Space
Open Space Technology
Permissions
Specific Access Needs
Comfortable
Blog post: comfortable, uncomfortable

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How to join us
The Copenhagen Interpretation

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This is still (always) in development, but we intend to provide this information in other accessible formats

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This is The Copenhagen Interpretation of an Access Accord v5. This draft is dated 17th April 2022, developed for ADHD-inclusive digital platform usage for The Broad Cloth R&D 2022, supported using public funding by the National Lottery through Arts Council England.
The contents of this draft have been shaped by Jenifer Toksvig for The Copenhagen Interpretation with support from the ADHD Hive (Marie Moran, Claire Stewart, Ross Watt), Ellen Armstrong, David Bellwood, Martyn Blunt, Chloe Coleman, Diana Miranda, Flo O’Mahoney, Wendy O’Mahoney, Chloe Mashiter, Laurie Ogden, Erika O’Reilly, Teatro Vivo (Kas Darley, Mark Stevenson), Zoo Co, and pets, as well as those who came to play with us on Zoom and Discord during the 2022 R&D, in particular Mark Aspinall, Solomon Foster, Rachel Hebert, Lorena Hodgson, Amy Ledin, Sue Lee, Beatrix Livesey-Stephens, and Jennifer Lunn. Some of this process has been inspired by, or directly uses processes from, other people including Harrison Owen's Open Space Technology, and Kit Whitfield Thomas's observation that, when you have ADHD and you speak while someone else is speaking, you're not interrupting them, you're harmonising with them. Others who have inspired these things include FFRPG writers Debra Phillips, Kate Sinclair, and Jamison Yager, and theatre makers Phelim McDermott and Lee Simpson of Improbable, and Alan Lane of Slung Low.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Everyone is free to share (copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format), and/or adapt (remix, transform, and build upon the material) for any purpose, even commercially. If you use it and can let us know, you will be supporting our future fundraising work – thank you.