We design from beneficiary need outward:
“Most accessible cultural events start with a mainstream experience and modify it — quieter sessions, reduced capacity, calmer lighting. The experience is designed for neurotypical audiences first, then adjusted for neurodivergent visitors. The adjustment is welcome, but the message underneath it is clear: this space was not made for you. We have made room for you within it.
We do not do this.
Our installations are designed from neurodivergent sensory and cognitive experience outward. The baseline is the needs, rhythms, and responses of our primary communities. The environment expects the full range of how their children and family members actually are — the movement, the sounds, the non-linear engagement, the need for calm, the need for intensity on their own terms. None of this is a problem to manage. It is the design specification.”
Installations are modular. Each is built as a set of self-contained modules — interactive stepping stones, presence-detection layers, tactile surface stations, resonant-breathing modulation layers, somatic resonance benches, projection units, bioluminescent structures — each running its own controller, its own audio, and its own light response. There is no central brain coordinating them. The only connection between modules is compositional: a harmonic framework chosen per installation holds every audio response in the same key. The architectural commitment is to open-source, hackable platforms chosen so the system remains durable, modifiable, and free of corporate lock-in.
Within each module, MIDI is the universal control language. The detection inputs are physical — pressure sensors register weight and touch, presence detection registers when someone enters or moves through a zone, gesture and breath inputs register bodily action. These feed MIDI signals into Pure Data patches running on small open-source controllers, Raspberry Pi by default. A single visitor trigger maps to coordinated audio and light responses simultaneously, tightly synchronised in real time, without delay.
Responsive AI is being developed alongside this sensor stack to extend the system’s ability to read and respond to people in real time — moving beyond discrete trigger-response toward continuous adaptation. Where conventional sensors register that an event has happened, AI extends the system’s capacity to interpret the pattern of events: how a visitor is moving, the tempo they are operating at, whether the group is settling or escalating. The installation then adjusts its own behaviour in real time accordingly.
This sensor-and-AI stack is the technical mechanism for the two ends the company exists to serve. Co-creation: every visitor is shaping the audio-visual environment around them through their bodily presence, movement or physical interaction. Multiple inputs generate shared multisensory output that everyone in the space shapes together — the result is a living system, not a show. Accessibility: the installation meets each nervous system where it is, adapting to the visitor rather than requiring the visitor to adapt to it. The same mechanism delivers both: detection of bodily presence becomes the creative input, and continuous adaptation becomes the accessibility floor.
“For a nonverbal autistic child, this changes everything. They are not being talked at or around. They are not waiting for the experience to be translated into something they can access. Their way of interacting with the world — their sensory responses, their movement, their presence — is the creative material. When a neurotypical child responds to the same sensory cues, the interaction happens through the art itself. They are creating together in real time, through a shared language that does not require words.”
We work with the venue, not against it:
“Our installations are designed to reveal and complement a setting rather than override it — the installation sits inside the place; the place remains itself.”
Where attending a public installation is not practical, we deliver adapted experiences directly into the settings where our beneficiaries already are — SEN schools, children’s and adults’ respite services, and care homes. Outreach is not an add-on; it is the delivery mechanism for the audiences who face the greatest barriers to public attendance.
Every commercial commission carries a community access provision:
“Every commercial commission accepted by Interwoven Arts includes a community access provision as a standard contract term.
The client must accommodate neurodivergent and sensory-sensitive audiences as part of how the commissioned work is presented to the public. The form of this accommodation is agreed jointly during project planning — it might be dedicated calm sessions, sensory accommodations, public communication explicitly inviting neurodivergent families, or consultancy on integrating accessibility into the broader visitor experience. The principle is non-negotiable; the implementation is flexible.
This turns every commission into a second layer of mission delivery. The CIC delivers the work, takes the fee, and funds its core mission through the revenue. But it also leaves every host site with infrastructure or commitments that benefit our primary communities at that venue. The reach compounds over time.”
The structural CIC argument for commercial work:
“The CIC’s primary purpose is community benefit for neurodivergent audiences. Its activity is the design and delivery of immersive sensory environments. Some of that activity directly serves the primary communities. Some of it generates revenue that funds the work with those communities. Both are legitimate expressions of the CIC’s purpose.
The CIC structure is designed for this. Government guidance gives the example of a cafe whose profits fund a community purpose — the cafe itself does not have to be the community benefit; the use of its profits is. A heritage garden commission that brings money into the CIC, which then funds the core work with neurodivergent communities, is textbook CIC operation.
The decision rule for any commission: does the surplus from this work flow back into serving the primary communities? If yes, the work is mission-aligned regardless of who the immediate audience is. If no, the work should be declined or restructured. Commercial work is not a distraction from the mission. It is the infrastructure that protects the mission.”
Research and delivery are the same loop:
“Our R&D follows a cycle: acquire, test, deploy, measure, adjust, publish. Every research cycle feeds directly into the next installation, and every installation generates data that feeds the next cycle. We do not research in isolation from delivery — they are the same loop.”