IDEALab (Inclusion, Design, Education and Art) is a project promoted by the MediaLab at the University of Oviedo that creates a space for experimentation, learning, and collaborative creation around inclusive art. It brings together students and emerging creators working in visual arts, design, illustration, performing arts, and other contemporary disciplines to explore how digital tools can expand the ways in which artistic works are created, shared, and experienced. Through 3D scanning, 3D printing, virtual reality, digital editing, sound, image, and sensory interaction, IDEA Lab seeks to establish new connections between contemporary artistic practice, cultural accessibility, and local communities.
The project's first line of work is developed in collaboration with MACEAS in Langreo, a contemporary art exhibition featuring works by secondary school and upper secondary school students. This phase focuses on reviewing, improving, and expanding the exhibition to make it more inclusive, ensuring that everyone, regardless of their abilities or ways of perceiving the world, can experience it in a meaningful way. Rather than simply adapting existing content, the project rethinks how an exhibition can be seen, heard, touched, explored, and understood.
The second line of work positions IDEA Lab as a creative laboratory. During this phase, participants develop their own artistic proposals based on a shared reflection on the body: what it can be, how it changes, the memories it holds, how it relates to other bodies, and what makes it feel included or excluded. Accessibility is incorporated from the very beginning of the creative process and guides the design of a future inclusive exhibition intended to travel throughout rural areas of Asturias.
At present, this second line of work is taking shape through several projects developed by the participants:
The value of IDEA Lab lies in the coexistence of these different perspectives. Oral memories interact with sound installations; illustration expands into digital design; theatre becomes a multisensory experience; and graphic design reflects on technology as an extension of care.
From Asturias and for its rural communities, IDEALab proposes an accessible, inclusive form of contemporary artistic practice that is deeply connected to its territory, understanding art as a means of generating sensitive knowledge, strengthening communities, and exploring new forms of cultural participation.
```Listado de residentes vinculados a este proyecto.
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