In the latest installment of our Let’s Talk podcast series, Natalie Larsen and Lauren Miller discuss DEAI in the arts from the perspectives of their research: Digital Placemaking and Linguistic Accessibility. They discuss how progress on both fronts might include, uplift, and bridge currently underserved communities.

If you want to read more, check out the following articles by our podcast hosts:

Natalie Larsen:

• The Connection Of Digital Placemaking And Inequity

• Digital Inequity's Impact On Arts Participation Pt. I

• Digital Inequity’s Impact on Arts Participation Pt. II

Lauren Miller:

• The Current State Of Linguistic Representation And Accessibility In The Artistic Sector

• Multilingual Technology For Global Entertainment: A Case Study Of Netflix

• Linguistic Diversity In Opera Via Technology: A Case Study Of Opera Australia

• A Case Study Of Deaf West’s “Spring Awakening”

Trailer:

Lauren Miller: The National Endowment for the Arts has explained and it's something that I've really come to see as a guiding principle in my own research and work is that the arts matter because they help us understand how we matter. And language is something that's very obviously key to identity. So when these questions of linguistic diversity are not asked, it then becomes impossible for those who do not fit into kind of this cookie-cutter picture of the arts in or as English to understand culture, heritage or worth.

 

Natalie Larsen 

Welcome to another let's talk episode of Tech in the Arts, a podcast series on the Arts Management and Technology Laboratory. The goal of our Let's Talk series is to exchange ideas, bring awareness and stay on top of the trends. My name is Natalie Larsen. I'm the staff writer and lead researcher for AMT Lab. And today I'm joined by Lauren Miller, we're going to be talking about diversity, equity, accessibility and inclusion, or DEAI in the arts and why it's particularly important for digital placemaking and linguistic representation.

 

Natalie Larsen 

So Lauren, since this is your first time on the Let's Talk podcast, I was wondering if you could just introduce yourself to our listeners, and tell us a little bit about what you've been researching.

 

Lauren Miller 

Of course. So my name is Lauren Miller. I'm currently a first year Master of Arts Management student at Carnegie Mellon, same as you. And I have a background in linguistics and theater. And so what that has led me to is a real interest and fascination in kind of the intersection of linguistic and socio-linguistic equity and how that intersects with the arts. And I think that all these these discussions of diversity, equity, accessibility and inclusion have become super super in the forefront of arts conversations, especially in the wake of the 2020 murder of George Floyd and the onset of COVID-19. And one topic that has become part of these conversations thinking about you and your research is digital placemaking. And I was wondering if you could explain to me exactly what that is. Yeah, absolutely.

 

Natalie Larsen 

So digital placemaking is basically the use of technology in the creative placemaking process. So that's where it stems from. And like in creative placemaking The goal is to create meaning in a space. This is achieved by combining digital elements with the physical assets that already exists. And that can include social media, AR, VR or XR, digital displays, through screens and projections, that those sorts of things, they're implemented to encourage the use of physical space. In the arts and culture sector, it's most commonly been used in cultural heritage, and cultural tourism efforts where there's been some type of development of, let's say, an arts district or something like that, in a city. Some examples that come to mind are Pokemon Go, or piano stairs, which again, really encouraging the use of the physical space that already exists. And in order for that to be successful, like in creative placemaking efforts, partnerships are critical with residents in an area as well as local government, private entities and nonprofits. And so while I was researching this topic, I saw some criticisms particularly from a researcher named Marcus Foss, who wrote this paper called some thoughts on digital placemaking, where he talked about a particular timeline of placemaking, which he called accelerated placemaking, which basically perpetuates gentrification in the pursuit of economic growth and ignores the cultural benefits that more inclusive placemaking practices can offer.

 

Lauren Miller 

That sounds really interesting, while you were mentioning kind of how placemaking can branch off of these pre existing relationships and structures in the society, and it kind of goes over into cultural heritage, and also how it can be exploited to an extent I was reminded in my own research topic, which I mentioned is linguistic equity and diversity. Just to explain a little bit in the most basic sense, linguistic diversity is kind of exactly what it sounds like. Linguistics itself is the study of language. So linguistic diversity encapsulates language diversity on a local, national, global and cultural scale. And kind of where this intersects with the arts is that there's currently a massive under representation of either non-indo European or just plain non-English language in these sectors. When in the United States alone between 1980 and 2019, there was a 194% increase and the amount of multilingual individuals in the nation and to exemplify this gap even further to kind of put it into scale. One in five United States residents speaks a language other than English. But once again in the arts works are disproportionately presented or, more importantly, I think canonized in English. And that creates a sense of inaccessibility kind of relating to what you had mentioned with digital placemaking. And kind of the perpetuation of gentrification.

 

Lauren Miller 

The National Endowment for the Arts has explained, and it's something that I've really come to see as a guiding principle in my own research and work is that the arts matter, because they help us understand how we matter. And language is something that's very obviously key to identity. So when these questions of linguistic diversity are not asked, it then becomes impossible for those who do not fit into kind of this cookie cutter picture of the arts in or as English, to understand their own culture, heritage or worth. So it's very interesting. I think that we both have topics that are quite different, but conceptually both fit into cultural identity and place within the larger.

 

Natalie Larsen 

Yeah, absolutely. Especially since the onset of the pandemic, I think DEAI issues in the arts have become much more prominent and pronounced in digital placemaking. In particular, I was kind of exploring the idea of it being an inherently discriminatory practice, because not everyone in the United States has the ability to engage with these types of technologies. That's where the topic of digital equity became really interesting to me. And I've been really just exploring it and diving into it since then, and how it impacts the arts and culture sector. And it's really interesting how our areas of study intersect in that way.

 

Lauren Miller 

Absolutely. I appreciate that both of our topics involve branches of the arts and cultural sectors that are inherently discriminatory, especially what you were saying about how COVID has impacted these relationships. I've engaged with a lot of research that has to do with identity, especially in the digital form. And Mary Bucholtz is a researcher who I really enjoy her work. And in particular, she speaks to how language is socially structured, which basically means that language is used in order to project or craft identities on individual and larger social levels. So online, in particular, there's many different forums and places that people are able to craft these unique identities for themselves in different online communities. And especially during the pandemic, these communities kind of became where we did most of our social interaction, and most of our social structure was by necessity coming from, and when accessibility to these communities lacks linguistic diversity, or, for example, it's kind of the norm or once again, canonized to only occur in English, we reach this kind of really severe misrepresentation of cultures and people that can really do a massive extent harm concepts of their own identity.

 

Natalie Larsen 

Yeah, I've noticed some similar shortcomings in the digital placemaking field, which hasn't really addressed digital equity, at least not in anything that I found in digital placemaking. There's kind of a higher risk of gentrification, and what's called Digital redlining, because the digital inequity that exists in the US. So as we mentioned before, COVID really shined a light on dai issues in the arts.

 

Natalie Larsen 

But it also really exposed the issue of digital equity and the digital divide, because it really showed us like how important it is for us as a society to have access to high speed internet, and devices like computers and laptops, and to just have the digital literacy skills to function in the world. Since so much of it is moving to a digital format. According to study by Microsoft, as of 2019 42 million Americans don't have access to broadband, and roughly 157 million are living with slow or unreliable internet service.

 

Natalie Larsen 

 And as always, looking into this further, I found that the top three barriers that are contributing to the digital divide, are lack of affordability, lack of accessibility and lack of digital literacy and skills and the training that builds those skills in an individual's So to go back to Marcus Foth's article, where he talks about the risk of gentrifying communities by assuming inclusion, just because access is provided and focusing on smaller clusters of neighborhoods in the city rather than the city as a whole. So all this to say digital placemaking efforts can either help or harm a community depending on how they're structured. And it just really depends on whether or not existing digital inequities are addressed.

 

Lauren Miller 

I find that super fascinating and it's really so it's right there in our society. But it's something that's not discussed as much. There's your observation that there can be harm or this digital divide as you worded it costs through the assumption that inclusion occurs solely because access is provided. So I it's a connection to my research, believe it or not, another researcher who I really appreciate his work and he particular has been looking into how interactions online bringing you back to COVID. And increased communication through digital means. Multilingual encounters have grown as individuals are able to connect with otherwise unreachable networks, which kind of lends itself naturally to the not inherently harmful assumption that because inclusion is provided it is helping those communities with an actuality, identity, in the ability to assert one's own identity is deeply tied to their ability to gain attention and relevancy. So what that means to me is that even if these opportunities are being provided, if there aren't networks in place to support those interactions, or kind of push the the existence of these languages and cultures into a wider point of visibility, it harms identity. So while there has been the increased use of local languages, among different communities online, there's still the required necessity of them being able to be seen and understood.

 

Lauren Miller 

I think all this is particularly interesting, because we may not always see the digital in the arts as being connected or the same, but there's a very deep similarity between them. Because there's, there's a continuing pattern in digital and arts of communities not being heard, and even if they are being heard, not being seen or understood or supported. And in terms of language, this can also result in languages not really being given a sense of credibility. And when they're not represented in the arts, people may not be able to understand that their own language and their own identity is credible. So it's kind of a constant state of almost performing support, even if there's good intentions, while it simultaneously is actually an almost backwards nature, still harming the identities of these languages and individuals.

 

Natalie Larsen 

Yeah, and in the arts, of course, we've seen throughout time that when historically underrepresented groups aren't given the platform, especially in this day and age, as the world is becoming more digitized, they're just being left out of the conversation.

 

Lauren Miller 

Yeah, and I mean, we see that in the field of linguistics, languages are disappearing every day. And linguists work hard, it's it's kind of the main job of linguists to an extent to make sure that these languages are recorded and protected and transcribed, both for wider society and for the individuals and cultures that they belong to. But at the end of the day, these languages will often still just end up in the hands of linguists if the language isn't valued or able to be used culturally or socially for those for whom it may be native.

 

Lauren Miller 

And so if practices aren't put into place to make sure that the languages are not only taught, but they're able to be represented in different cultures, and even more than that, be able to be representative of the cultures they represent, it becomes really hard to justify these more abstract representations both in placemaking and linguistic representation.

 

Natalie Larsen 

Yeah, and it's interesting I found in digital placemaking efforts, like I said before, a lot of it has to do with cultural tourism. So the focus on bringing in outside individuals into a community, really just for the purpose of economically benefiting the area. There's kind of this inherent goal of making a place more attractive, so that more people will come visit and spend money and then the city can economically benefit.

 

Lauren Miller 

That makes a ton of sense. A lot of conversations in the arts now that I feel like we're connecting to very prominently in our research topics is tokenization. In my research, specifically, maybe that refers to a theater putting on a show by a bipoc playwright or a play that is presented partially in a non English language. But the show won't do anything beyond that to advance their mission for equity or linguistic protection or the identity of the playwright themselves.

 

Lauren Miller 

So it's, in a sense, using culture as a token, rather than a means through which you can support the people that you're alleging, which of course is a strong word, those that you are alleging to support. And that's the intersection that I don't think I would have really expected to find between digital placemaking and linguistic equity as well as the art sector as a whole. So kind of branching off of that we seem to have a lot of similar issues that we've noticed in both of our research topics. I'm interested to hear, in your opinion, what are some potential steps that organizations can take to address digital inequities?

 

Natalie Larsen 

Yeah, great question. So right now, there isn't a whole lot of research, at least not that nothing that I have found on general best practices for arts organizations, who typically don't play a huge role in digital placemaking. And it's not really their job. But they do play some part of it, or at least they can. There are a lot of case studies out there. And there's kind of an ongoing accumulation of articles and academic papers on different strategies and frameworks for digital placemaking. And that includes building those partnerships with local community entities. But the three kind of necessary steps I would say towards digital equity that any organization can take is grantmaking, Fostering partnerships and relationships and conducting research and collecting data on their local communities. arts organizations have kind of a long standing history of getting creative when it comes to addressing various social issues, whether that's just raising awareness for some type of issue, or raising money, having some kind of fundraiser for a specific cause. And I think, especially as we move into a, quote, post pandemic world, if that's what you can, if you can call it that, arts organizations and artists have kind of recognized the importance of partnerships with other nonprofits with govern, with government, with private businesses really just for the sake of survival.

 

Natalie Larsen 

And there's one story I wanted to bring up kind of a success story about the Miami underline. So in Miami Dade County in Florida, over 30% of households don't have internet access. So there's huge digital inequity in this area. And this project that I'm bringing up, used community centered technology to work towards bridging the digital divide. It was a collaboration between a nonprofit called Friends of the underline local government and various other private entities. So to answer your question, what arts organizations can do is to just keep fostering these relationships with local governments, with private businesses, with funders and local artists just to try to get creative.

 

Natalie Larsen 

And I'm going to turn that question around to you. What about in the field of linguistic diversity? What have you come across? As far as best practices?

 

Lauren Miller 

I wanted to first thank you for sharing all of that. That's super, super interesting. So in my research, I have found that because the art sector is so broad, obviously, kind of the best thing for me to do to understand the scope of what can be done for linguistic equity is to look at best practices and various organizations. I've looked particularly at Netflix as a proponent of a real champion of protecting language and language accessibility and new programming in various languages. Of course, you can see with the success of squid game just a couple of years ago, as well as opera Australia, who I'm not going to go deep into them, but I did want to share that. In 2019, they had a national tour of mountain butterfly, and 94% of surveyed attendees said that they enjoyed that the opera was performed in its original language and a mirrored 94% claim that they would attend to performance in the future.

 

Lauren Miller 

So I think that's super interesting, but the one that I want to highlight and the show and the practices that I've been advocating for for a very long time, is the case of Deaf West Theatre and Deaf West Spring Awakening. Deaf West Theatre is an organization whose mission is to serve as in their words, the artistic bridge between deaf and hearing worlds. And so essentially what they want to do is present either revivals or new productions simultaneously in spoken English and American Sign Language. The World Federation for the Deaf says that there are over 70 million deaf individuals in the global population. However, 98% of deaf individuals do not receive any education in ASL in the United States. And so bringing that into adult life once again in the United States, the ASL using adult population disproportionately faces a significant job based discrimination.

 

Lauren Miller 

And so these conversations are relevant not only in the arts but society as a whole, as Deaf culture and deaf individuals are highly underrepresented. And it's a very, very prominent case of language and equity and language under representation in a language that I feel like a bunch of individuals know about the existence of and they recognize it as a language, but they're still still these cases of very prominent discrimination.

 

Lauren Miller 

So in 2015, Deaf West Theatre launched a revival of Spring Awakening, which I would like to note is based off of a German playwrights play, that was written in the 1890s, and then further developed into a kind of rock punk musical in the early 2000s. The story is that of developing sexuality and oppressive educational systems in Germany for youth. And so what Deaf West did was they took this original play, which was once again then adopted into a musical, and they relaunched it in both ASL and English. What I find particularly interesting, and what really championed them, as a case of best practices, was that they made some of the characters in the play canonically deaf. So these characters would have two counterparts, one would be the deaf actor, or the hard of hearing actor, and one would be hearing. And so essentially, the hearing actor would be the character's inner voice. And then the deaf actor would be the character themselves.

 

Lauren Miller 

So this story, as I mentioned, is one of oppression and poor education and just kind of repression in every sense of the world word. So actors physically relying on somebody else to be their voice and expressing what was going on in their head added a whole new level of complexity to the story. And you take all this in addition to the historical contexts at the time, of the place, original creation, where those who used signed languages were basically deemed failures or inferior.

 

Lauren Miller 

So I think what we can learn from this story is that language and linguistic equity are not only something that is necessary for the identities and cultures of individuals, both in performance in the art itself and those receiving it those viewing it those paying to engage with it. It's also a question of how language and linguistic identity and diversity can then advance and strengthen storytelling itself. So what we've said before and what I think we're going to continue to come back to in the arts is that this is a topic that what Deaf West Theatre did easily could have been something that was viewed as a token, but rather, it was a tool, it was a tool to make the story stronger, and it was a tool to advance linguistic equity and representation.

 

Lauren Miller 

And so what this also shows us is that audiences want to see these linguistically diverse and accessible stories, the revival was incredibly successful. They raised a significant amount of money to be able to perform at the Tonio word awards, it was all crowd funded. And so what I've learned from this, and what I would tell arts organizations is that they need to not only see language as something that they need to integrate just because they need to represent people. But because it's something that can actually strengthen their stories and be able to really engage with their audiences, what you'll find is a mission of most arts organizations. I love that example. I just think it's it's wonderful. And it it shows how arts organizations can develop in linguistic equity and also in themselves at the same time.

 

Natalie Larsen 

Yeah, thank you for sharing that. I love the example of Deaf was theater. We've talked about it a little bit off. Off mic before and and yeah, I just really love hearing about them. So thank you again for, for sharing that example. It's, it's really kind of hopeful to me to see organizations taking steps toward being more inclusive and equitable in practices like the one you mentioned, and it's really kind of hopeful to see arts organizations taking these kinds of steps toward being more inclusive and equitable. In like in some of the examples you mentioned, and in some of the things that I've seen in bridging the digital divide,

 

Lauren Miller 

absolutely. It seems like even just in this brief conversation, and what we're individually engaging with, there's a lot of issues that we've discussed. But these issues are not necessarily universal in conversations of dai yet, well, that doesn't make them any less central important. So it almost becomes a call to action for arts organizations to be very consciously aware of these questions of the digital divide and linguistic equity, alongside all of the other wonderful work that they're doing. And really integrating these questions can help them move forward and realize that digital placemaking and linguistic diversity genuinely belong in these conversations for once again, reasons of supporting their audiences and their communities, but also furthering their own missions and growing in themselves as a truly amazing organization.

 

Natalie Larsen 

Absolutely. And just the importance of recognizing the identities, the various identities that exist in your communities, and just making sure that they are there, they're being represented in the work that you present, I think is incredibly important, which is why I think we just need to keep having these types of conversations, and continuing to do the research and staying on top of these issues. So Lauren, we're just about out of time, but I really enjoyed hearing about your research. So thank you so much for taking the time to come on here and share your work with us.

 

Lauren Miller 

Of course, thank you for sharing yours. I always love hearing what you're up to and hearing about what's going on in the arts.

 

Natalie Larsen 

Thank you for listening to Tech in the Arts. Be on the lookout for new episodes coming to you very soon. If you found this episode, informative, educational or inspirational, be sure to send it to another arts or technology aficionado in your life. You can let us know what you think of this podcast by visiting our website, amp lab dot o RG that's AMT-Lab.org or you can email us at amtlabcmu@gmail.com. You can follow us on Instagram at Tech in the Arts, or Facebook or LinkedIn at Arts Management and Technology Lab. We'll see for the next episode.