As a person without any known disability, I’m definitely not the most qualified person to speak on accessibility in the arts. But growing up with both a parent and sibling who have disabilities, accessibility and inclusion is ever-present in my mind. As I fell in love with performing arts throughout my childhood both as an audience member and a practitioner, it bothered me when arts education and arts experience were not accessible to them. It still bothers me.
So when I am asked why I am attracted to accessibility work in the arts, my answer is simple: I advocate for accessibility and inclusion because the arts are for everyone. Art and culture are inherently meant to bring people together to explore, discover, express, and illuminate the parts of our shared humanity that words cannot. It is an act of community that is meant for anyone and everyone to share in. So, as artists and administrators, it is our responsibility to ensure that everyone is able to participate and feels welcome.
When I was in high school, I realized that many of my friends and classmates either had a disability themselves or had a close friend or family member who did. And this is not surprising considering how many Americans have or will have a disability in their lifetime. During these early years, I joined a group called Pathways for Exceptional Children that focused on friendship opportunities for people with autism. The group trained neurotypical young people with a crash course on autism basics and then paired them with a person with autism around the same age. These buddies would then do homework, play sports, watch movies, and generally hang out as buddies do. In college, being the theater lover I am, I started a group called Harmony that was a musical theater workshop for children with disabilities taught by trained college student volunteers.
Now, several years later after working in professional theater in New York City and currently working towards my Masters of Fine Arts at Yale School of Drama, I am disappointed in the slow progress of accessibility in the arts. In the past few years, equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) have become deep topics of conversation throughout the arts field for good reason. With artistic leadership transitions, representation on stage, and the #MeToo movement, EDI work is more important than ever. And while I welcome and celebrate the appointment of women and people of color to artistic leadership positions, clear and transparent policies to prevent sexual misconduct, and increased representation on stage and in the media, accessibility seems to be lagging behind.
Over the past two years as I’ve been studying and practicing theater management at the School of Drama, I’ve been having big questions about inclusion.
- How can we be more proactive rather than reactive about accessibility accommodations?
- Is making performances accessible to audiences truly inclusive?
- How can we incorporate accessibility into the artistic process from the beginning?
- What barriers exist for artists with disabilities, and how can we remove them?
- How can we increase representation of disability on stage and in the media?
So when I had the opportunity to spend a semester working with performing arts organizations tackling some of these big questions, I headed to Colorado to work with Lone Tree Arts Center and Phamaly Theatre Company. These organizations introduced me to the Denver Art of Access Alliance. It has been educational and fulfilling to discuss these topics with other artists in other disciplines. It is a group where we discuss some of the philosophical questions but also share resources and do something!
Since coming to Denver just two months ago, I’ve discovered a multitude of small changes I can do for free right now in my daily work that makes an impact on accessibility and inclusion. I look forward to what I will continue to discover with this collective over the next few weeks and am excited to share what I’ve learned with my classmates and carry these lessons with me into the field.
– written by Lucia Bacque