ATELIER NWANDO

MISSION STATEMENT

Introducing Atelier Nwando, a new visionary creative studio dedicated to creating healing spaces for Disabled and Neurodivergent individuals from the Global Majority, while making a positive impact on society as a whole. Led by a diverse team, we place inclusivity and care at the forefront of our work—a profound and political statement for those whose needs are often overlooked.
Inspired by Neurodivergent-led and Lo-Tek indigenous design, we create and cultivate communities, be it at the local, national, international, or temporary level, fostering lasting connections. Our approach to creation is holistic and slow, effectively serving as a pathway to healing.

Through direct engagement with Deaf, disabled, and non-disabled audiences, AN actively seeks dialogue, helping everyone better understand each other's access needs. Moreover, through collaborations with other organizations, Atelier Nwando guides them in comprehending the often conflicting access needs of audiences, empowering them to incorporate accessibility into their processes from the very start.
Atelier Nwando is not just a creative studio; it represents a transformative force that not only includes marginalized communities but also elevates and celebrates their diverse perspectives. With our groundbreaking work, we set the example for a more inclusive and empathetic society.

CURRENT PROJECTS

Fall and then Rise on a Soft Winter’s morning
The Colour Factory, London 15th November 2023

Fall and then Rise on a Soft Winter’s morning is a multi-sensory immersive orchestral/live art experience. It is a sonic, tactile and visual poem. 

It is part of Atelier Nwando’s approach in creating Accessibility as Innovative Creativity and dismantling and inverting entrenched structural prejudices. 

Nwando Ebizie creates neurodivergent-led designed spaces, inspired by sensory spaces and indeed the failings within them. She aims to create art as space for potential healing of self and community whilst understanding that she will constantly fail. Designing for contradiction (as people’s accessibility needs invariably clash), the important thing is to priortise those in society who are normally not prioritised.

The piece is a one hour experience set within a multi-sensory installation. Commissioned by London Sinfonietta (LS), it features an ensemble of their musicians playing Harp, Double Bass, Percussion, Clarinet and Sound Design. The sound design element is a system of vibrating decks for d/Deaf people (and others) to feel the vibrations of the music. The space is designed by Nat Sharp, ensuring that there is an analogous visual and tactile experience connected to the music. It features Deaf performer Chisato Minamimura who dances live and in projection mapped visuals, a movement piece that correlates directly with the music - giving the emotional sensations within the narrative of the music.

The inception of the idea arose when Nwando played a gig at a disabled Arts festival. This ritual live-art gig included me inviting the audience to hug balloons and whisper their fears into them. Afterwards, a group of Deaf people approached Nwando and thanked her for this element. They pointed out that the piece worked well for them - not only because it was so visual, but the use of balloons was something they used at school. Some could hear their own voices by using them, and for others, it meant they could feel the vibrations of the music. 


The piece is in 3 movements:

Fall 1

In Love

A romantic prelude, the sensation of falling in love - a doomed love, a painful love. The feeling of hanging on the edge of a precipice.

Fall 2

Teeth

The horror of teeth falling out

Transformation - a dream about transformation

Piece by piece, falling apart, from your mouth

This turns into falling, full body falling and then

Can’t get up - Stuck - incubus on chest, sleep paralysis

Fall 4

Rise of the Clowns

Inspired by a section of Angela Carter’s Nights at the Circus

A crazed clown klezmer dance. Being whipped up into the clouds

A psychedelic magic


Music

Sonically, the music uses extended techniques and focuses on sounds that create a vibrationary experience or are very physical to create an interesting visual experience. 

The percussionist sometimes uses balloons as instruments - beating them like a drum or rubbing them with wet fingers - this connects to the musical ideas - creating feelings of discomfort, trepidation, fear

So the visual elements are not just props or stage design, they are part of the meaning. Balloons - the blowing up of a ballon giving a sense of anticipation. The balloons around you reminding you both of play and childhood, but their ginormous size giving a sense of the uncanny

The space is designed to allow for a ‘relaxed’ experience. People can move, be closer to the musicians, they can feel the vibrations of the music. They can hug human-sized balloons, they can starfish out on huge cushions. The self can be warm, heavy, held.

Filled with balloons of all sizes, the space is designed by Art Director Natalie Sharp and includes projection mapping of the BSL-inspired movement by Chisato Minamimura and the narrative poem.

Nwando will be performing the poem part BSL, part spoken word.

HILDEGARD: VISIONS

A day-long immersive mystery opera. A multisensory numinous experience. This piece is about Hildegard’s life as an experiential constellation viewed from my particular perspective as a Neurodivergent Afrofabulist. Hildegard von Bingen (1098-1179)‚ Benedictine abbess, composer, visual artist, writer and mystic; not only a visionary, but also, uniquely for the time, a woman whose visions were recorded and preserved in musical scores, writings and illuminated manuscripts‚ lives again in new form. Each visitor is invited to look back at her in wonder and forwards in awe.

The audience are visitors. They begin together but take different journeys, led by the Guides, through the rich tapestry of Hildegard’s life mirrored through the lens of the Anchorite ritual which she would have undertaken before being interred in a monastery. Thus visitors are immersed in Hildegard and rebirthed through this ritual. She lights the way.

Through Hildegard: Visions, we find our inner Hildegard and leave with the same curiosity that propelled her forward to discover, connect with, make and savour life to its fullest.


THE WORK

Collaborations and consultations with arts organisations 

  • Accessibility as Innovative Creativity

  • Dismantling and inverting entrenched structural prejudices

  • Nothing about us without us


Neurodivergent-led ‘Lo-Tek indigenous’ inspired sensory design

  • Collaborating with innovative sustainablity start-ups

  • Using Biophilia as a guiding principle, with an emphasis on regenerative circular design and profound respect for nature

  • Creating Sensory Spaces

Slow, small residencies for BIPOC, disabled and neurodivergent artists

  • Centering Care

  • Time to be in nature

  • Supporting creatives to work in slow, responsive ways







MANIFESTO

*Potentialities* - A class of behaviours or processes that have latent possibilities that could come to fruition if only understood




  1. Societal and environmental collapse is imminent

  2. Neurodiversity is evolution’s gift to problem solving. Diversity of our species - in ways of perceiving, problem solving and experiencing - can give solutions only if those who are divergent are given space, acceptance, acknowledgement and support in order to bring forth what has been suppressed.

  3. Equally, indigenous technologies have been maligned, buried, dismissed, appropriated in favour of a Post Enlightenment Western hierarchy of what progress and technology means.

  4. These two suppressed potentialities could save the world

  5. The framing of Neurodivergency as super power can only be true if the individual is allowed really and fully to tap into the entirety of their being. One issue is that Neurotypicals want a pick and mix of neurodivergency. E.g. They want an idiot savant without the non-verbal communication. 


There is a lack of understanding about the brain, its complexity and how the facets of one’s character, personality and psychology are intertwined with their divergent brain. To take an anecdotal example of somebody I know: A brain belonging to a massively impulsive person might also be the brain that can shoot out hundreds of ideas in a minute. One of those ideas might be amazing. Much of what they say and do in that minute might seem manic, impulsive, rude, disorganized. But you can not slice off the part of the brain that you want. Rather I would recommend you create the environment in which the person can safely function.

  1. The mythologies and ritual practices contained in these cultures are an inherent part of the technologies. They hold maps, plans, frameworks for understanding, histories, scientific theories, farming principles, ecological principles, extremely local understandings of plant, soil, taxonomies, forgotten mathematics, design principles (colour, pattern etc), sustainable practices.

  2. And so I propose a NEURODIVERGENT CENTRED,  indigenous-futuristic mythology to supersede the Western-centric, Capitalistic mythology of techno-progress

  3. A natural philosophy of design at the intersection of neurodiversity, indigenous technologies, ecology and innovation to solve the most pressing problems of our time.

  4. Western Science with its evidence based methodologies is a process for discovery and  a gift to humanity.

  • There are other gifts. Buried processes for discovery.

  • Both can be used to explore, define, capture, observe, understand and build.

  1. We must honour both the neurodivergent and indigenous technologies as potentialities. We must not seek to control, colonise or appropriate them.

  2. Indigenous communities bear the brunt of climate change.

  3. Neurodivergent people are at high risk of mental illnesses, they have lower life prospects.

  4. We kill both groups with our active, self-serving complacence.