Overview
The Smartwear Revolution project includes opportunities for artists, performers, and designers to respond creatively to the development of our smartwear. These opportunities include an artist-in-residence program and a series of open calls for exhibitions, live performances, dress events, and community engagement initiatives. These activities will culminate in a series of public-facing art events and Art & Technology festivals.
2028 Support Festival
We are seeking artists, designers and performers to submit works for an art & technology festival in 2028 on the theme of SUPPORT.
Open call for works
Through an open call for artworks, fashion designs and performances, our goal is to assemble a collection of creative work to be featured in the SUPPORT Festival that speculates on, imagines, and re-envisions the role of technologies such as smartwear in everyday life. Through this process, we aim to contribute to the development of assistive technologies that are more inclusive, sustainable, and responsive to the needs of diverse users. A key objective of the festivals is to foster critical dialogue by engaging artists whose practices center disability justice. Their work will help interrogate how assistive technologies such as our new smartwear may inadvertently reinforce ableist structures, while also celebrating the ingenuity of artists who creatively hack, adapt, and repurpose technologies to meet their own needs. The image featured above is from Inclincations by co-PI Danielle Peers and Alice Sheppard.
Open Call for Artworks
Artist-in-residence
Co-Designing a Smartwear Revolution project is inviting two visual artists to take part in a Spring 2027 residency, engaging directly with our research team ahead of the 2028 SUPPORT festival where works created during or as a result of the residency will be showcased. There are opportunities for both in-person and virtual residencies.
Artist-in-Residence
McMullen Gallery Exhibition | October 5–25, 2026
How might an assistive technological fabric hold and support the body while attending to the extraordinary complexities of embodiment with care? Core Concerns, Care Embodiments is the first public presentation of artistic work created in connection with Co-designing a Smartwear Revolution, an interdisciplinary research project led by the University of Alberta, developing “smart” garments that can respond to the body and provide support when needed. The exhibition features new work by current students and recent graduates from the University of Alberta Department of Art and Design alongside collaborators on the Smartwear Revolution project. From the intimate to the systemic and the relational to the responsive, the artworks in Core Concerns, Care Embodiments tend to the complexities, multiplicities, and potential choreographies of embodiment, assistive technologies, and care networks. Together, they take up the poetics of one of the project’s core scientific and technical research concerns: what can (trunk) support do? Core Concerns, Care Embodiments is curated by Smartwear Revolution PhD student researcher and curator Ginger Carlson.
A series of public programs will bring the artists and the exhibition’s concerns into conversation with organizations and initiatives that support and resource disability arts networks. The exhibition coincides with the launch of a Call for Expressions of Interest open to artists, designers, performers, and other creatives interested in presenting and producing artistic projects in dialogue with the Smartwear Revolution. The Smartwear Revolution project is funded by the Government of Canada’s New Frontiers in Research Fund (NFRF).
Art & Design eSymposiums
Ahead of launching the open call for artworks and artist residencies in October 2026, the Smartwear Art & Design Working Group team researched disability arts organisations and accessibility practices. Their initial sharing of this work and community engagement was through a series of eSymposia in June 2026, with Artists & Accessibility was on 10th June, Ecologies of Care on 15th June, and Cripping Collaboration on 17th June. Each session included presentations by the research team and guest speakers, followed by discussions.
Literature Review
Since Fall 2025, research assistants Maria Rosati, Ginger Carlson and Aynaz Raoufian have been working on a literature review. Maria Rosati did an extensive survey of artists who work across themes of disability justice, smart technologies and challenging notions of the ‘normal’ body. Ginger Carlson researched the work of local, national and international disability arts organisations and Aynaz Raoufian did a deep dive into accessibility best practices, with a particular focus on accessibility riders and open calls.
In addition to informing how we conceptualise the festivals and prepare to invite artists and makers into the project, this research has also led to presentations, publications and online resources which are available on the Art & Design Resources page.
Meet the Team
Researchers
The Art & Design Working Group consists of artists, designers, and performing artists.
