Freedoms

We use the principles of a process you can read about in the Open Space section. Essentially, do what you need to do to be comfortable getting involved.

Let's just keep swimming.

— story navigator Rachel Hebert

On any of the platforms we use, whether analogue, digital, or real life, we welcome all forms and extents of involvement.

Times and actions

You can:

• begin and end when it suits you
• just watch, or participate, and change your mind any time
• on video and digital platforms: stay camera off, mic off, and/or use a text chat function, or stay out of character the whole time and just chat to us
• in person: join in with any activity you like, or sit back and bear witness, and change your mind about this at any point

Breaks and distractions

We welcome distraction. You can:

• take a break whenever you need it
• fidget, craft, move around: whatever helps you focus / engage / enjoy, even if it slows down the interaction
• multitask / deal with responsibilities that make demands on your time

Impulse and emotion

We understand about impulse control, and embrace things like:

• overlapping talk, which we like to think of less as interrupting and more as harmonising with each other
• getting excited about something: this makes us happy
• unexpected emotional responses: we can always take a break, and/or consider and discuss

Sounds and commotion

We embrace the sounds of our community. We welcome:

• OOC exclamations
• background sounds and sight of your children / pets / partners
• physical / vocal tics and stimming

Collaboration

We welcome collaboration. You can:

• play a character from the existing set text
• play a character you have invented from the world of the story
• play a character you've invented from another story entirely

Hesitation

There's no rush. You can:

• ask for some time with the other participants, or one-on-one with a navigator or companion, to help you get up to speed to join in - whatever that means to you, including chats about character/s, or even to have a quieter moment of engagement
• ask us to catch you up if you didn't follow some of the action but want to; other people might be grateful for the recap, and we have plenty of time
• ask for a pause to catch up on something you missed that your character would not have missed, or that you didn't understand but your character would have understood

Creative Commons

This page is part of The Copenhagen Interpretation of an Access Accord v6. This draft is dated 14th December 2023. The Access Accord 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, with acknowledgement wherever possible that this was the original source. If you use it and can let us know, you will be supporting our future fundraising work – thank you.

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