(ELECTRONIC MUSIC)
Hello. My name is Susannah Fraser.
I'm white with thick, brown, curly hair in a bun on top of my head.
I’m wearing a blue jumper and I'm sitting in old farmhouse with exposed wooden beams.
I’m here to talk about the TRACTION project.
A project focused on the opera and social inclusion.
The opera has often been seen as an art form reserved specifically for the elite and
Traction hopes to change that by using co-creation methodology
and working with groups at risk of social exclusion in society.
We will be running trial experiments in three different European locations.
The first will take place in a youth prison in Portugal.
The second in rural communities of Ireland,
where people will be accessing the opera with virtual reality headsets.
And the third will be at the opera house in Barcelona,
involving work with the local community of the Raval neighborhood
and immigrants from there.
The short-term goal of the TRACTION project
will be to galvanize and improve relationships between opera professionals
and these local communities,
and revitalize it as an art form.
The long-term goals will really be to act as a catalyst for social change
and transformation in society using art as a tool
to help build cultural identity with these groups.
The consortium comprises 9 different partners from 5 different European countries,
with a combination of academic,
technological and artistic expertise.
We hope to create a society that's more cohesive,
and one in which people feel that they can belong.
Hello. My name is Mar.
I'm white, with short, black, messy hair
and I have a fringe.
Today I would say that I look more or less like Patti Smith
in the cover of her album Horses.
I'm wearing a dark green floral shirt and I'm sitting on my bed.
On the wall, there's a poster of the movie Three Colours: Blue.
I'm starting now my PhD in Translation and Intercultural Studies
at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona.
The dissertation will be built in relation to
the beautiful European project called TRACTION,
which my partner Susie talked about.
In relation to the project, my PhD
will focus on making virtual reality representations accesible,
always applied into the opera context.
The study has Media Accessibility as its heart
and it will benefit not only persons with disabilities but also other groups
such as the elderly, migrants,
foreign language speakers and language minorities.
By making immersive media accessible,
we are getting closer to a society which ensures human rights
and where everybody will be able to participate
in the cultural life of the community.