This past August, I attended the Leadership Exchange in Arts & Disability (LEAD) conference organized by the Kennedy Center for the Performing Art’s Office of VSA & Accessibility. This yearly gathering is a collaborative setting for the exchange of ideas among professionals in the field of accessibility in the cultural arts. Over August 7-11, colleagues from visual, cultural, and performing arts centers from around the county gathered in Atlanta, Georgia to connect with peers, discuss best practices, explore the latest technological advances, dive into legal issues, engage in capacity building workshops and strategize about how to reach, welcome, and engage patrons and visitors of all abilities.
The conference kicked off with a spirited welcome from the passionate Betty Siegel, Director of VSA and Accessibility at the Kennedy Center. Siegel was our keynote speaker for the Art of Access symposium in July 2017, and for those of you who attended, you know what a zealous advocate Betty is for accessibility and inclusion! Next came an inspirational keynote from Mickey Rowe, the first “autistic actor to play Christopher Boone in the Tony Award winning play The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time and one of the first autistic actors to get to play any autistic character.”[1] During the talk, Rowe shared his personal thoughts on his early life, career, and this theatrical milestone. Following the keynote speakers were rapid-fire snapshot sessions: 15-minute informal, round-table presentations given to groups of 10-15 participants at a time. These short and sweet talks are great ways to collect small tastes of topics and tidbits of information in quick succession. The remainder of the conference was broken into 80-minute sessions that ranged in topics and approaches from accessibility services and programs, the built environment, customer service and staff training, outreach and community engagement, legal requirements, organizational buy-in and strategic planning, program evaluation and research, technology and Universal Design. Here were some of my favorite sessions:
- Evaluating Accessibility: Hosting a Needs Assessment Workshop. As part of an Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) Museums Empowered grant, Ford’s Theatre hosted a two-day workshop with leaders in the field of museum accessibility to evaluate site needs and brainstorm solutions. In this session, they shared their strategy for the two days, what they learned and how it helped them develop a roadmap of solutions to implement in the future. We heard from the Ford’s team, and access advisers who participated in the workshop, about their experience and how we could use this model to assess our own needs.
- Consumer Choice: A Guiding Principle of Accessibility Practices. In this session we explored the ideas of choice and preferences expressed by people with disabilities in order to create an accessible foundation and to look at specific programming through a wide lens. A brief panel presentation was followed by small group discussions and problem solving, which were then shared and discussed.
- Aging Without Walls: Wellness Delivered to Your Door. The Art Institute of Chicago, Well Connected, and Stagebridge shared perspectives on making creative aging accessible for a diverse population of older adults with age-related disabilities. They discussed how from analog to digital, pounding the pavement to streaming on the web, novel approaches to arts-based community programs can promote an environment of intellectual and social stimulation, good mental and physical health, and therapeutic wellness for our traditionally marginalized aging population.
The LEAD conference provided both practical information and experiential opportunities, and not to mention a fantastic opportunity to connect with colleagues from around the country who are passionate about promoting access and inclusion at their institutions! I would highly recommend this conference to anyone at any stage in their career who is working in the cultural arts field. And luckily, those of us in Colorado don’t have to go very far to take part in the next LEAD conference—it was just announced that the site for the 2019 LEAD Conference is none other than here in Denver! The Art of Access team will be working over this next year to support the LEAD conference, and the Colorado-based cultural art centers, in any way that we can. We are thrilled to have this important conference in our backyard!
Stay tuned for more information on artofaccessdenver.com and through the LEAD website.
[1] Biography from LEAD 2018 conference