Dr. Julia Heath Reynolds is part of the music faculty at Belmont University.  The link to the recording of Dr. Heath Reynolds' webinar “Inclusivity with Intention" can be found under Webinar Recordings.

Rehabilitation Act - Section 504

★ Rights
• Attend 504 Plan team meeting
• Receive a copy of the 504 Plan
• If you disagree with the 504 Plan:
          - Express view at a meeting & suggest alternatives
          - Refuse to sign the plan
          - Contact your union rep if you believe the plan alters your terms and conditions of employment

To Matti Hammett, Accessibility Programs Manager at the Houston Museum of Natural Science (HMNS), “accessibility means working towards opening doors for audiences that may not have been historically focused on or prioritized.” Earlier this year, HMNS achieved recognition as a Certified Autism Center by theInternational Board of Credentialing and Continuing Education Standards (IBCCES), demonstrating their commitment to creating accessible and inclusive experiences.

Co-founder of Arts Access for All, Sherry Shirek is a passionate advocate and accessibility consultant in the Fargo-Moorhead area that straddles the border of North Dakota and Minnesota. Shirek recently produced “Artist First,” an accessible, multimedia arts exhibition featuring artists who identify as having a disability. 

According to recent statistics from the US Census, there are currently over 20 million veterans and active duty service members in the United States. Although arts play an important role in healing, the veteran community is often overlooked in programming. New Mexico Arts (NMA), a state arts agency, and Art Spark Texas, a nonprofit focused on inclusive arts, are two organizations emphasizing and creating programming for veterans and military families. 

Discovering the Gap

“In 2009, we realized there were a lot of veterans in our community and people who we were going to war and coming back, but not identifying as people with disabilities, which is the population we work with,” says Art Spark’s ArtWorks Director, April Sullivan. “The terminology didn’t relate to them.” 

Laurie Baskin is the Director of Research, Policy & Collective Action at Theatre Communications Group (TCG), a national organization that supports and promotes nonprofit theatre through networking, knowledge building, and leadership. In 2012, TCG partnered with Blue Star Families to launch Blue Star Theatres, an initiative intended to build stronger connections between the theatre community and military families through accessible admissions. Blue Star Families has also partnered with other organizations, including the National Endowment for the Arts for the Blue Star Museums initiative, to increase cultural access across the sector.  In our Q&A, Baskin shares about the partnership and the difficulties and successes of the program. 

Q: How did the partnership between TCG and Blue Star Families begin?
A: Through a contact at Signature Theatre in Virginia, our executive director was introduced to somebody at the Pentagon. They had a conversation about active duty and veteran programming, and the connection was made to Blue Star Families, an organization dedicated to supporting active-duty military families.

United Kingdom (UK) theater company Mind the Gap envisions an arts sector where there are equal opportunities for performers with learning disabilities*, and where artists with learning disabilities are recognized as leaders in their fields. Mind the Gap’s new leadership program, called Staging Change, aims to increase the visibility of artists with learning disabilities in the wider arts community and offer them skills development and advocacy opportunities.

Staging Change is based around three-way partnerships between Mind the Gap (MTG), six arts venues across the UK, and artists with learning disabilities. According to MTG Associate Producer Deborah Dickinson, the program has five objectives: to grow talent among artists with learning disabilities (LD); to increase participation in LD-led arts; to increase representation of LD people in high quality work; to nurture new leaders to advance LD-led work; and to accumulate better evidence to support the value and impact of LD-led arts practice. They plan to accomplish these goals through three strands of the project: active partnerships with their six venue partners; training and leadership development for artists with LD; and collaboration and knowledge exchange events that bring venues and artists with LD together.

Vanessa Jones is the first person to hold the position of Access Programs Specialist at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Portrait Gallery. Although she has been a paraplegic wheelchair user since the age of 18, Jones’ diverse career in the arts didn’t begin with an eye towards accessibility. 

“My story is a bit interesting because it defies assumptions or expectations that people who are not in the disability community might have,” Jones shares. “People see me in the role as advocating for arts and access now, but that hasn't always been the case.” Jones developed a love of culture from a young age, finding herself drawn to foreign languages and humanities in high school. “In my own journey, when I became disabled I didn't feel like I had to be defined by that and I continued to pursue the same career goals and interests I always had. I felt I could advocate just in the way I lived my life, in expecting to participate.”

At Leadership Exchange in Arts and Disability (LEAD®) we are able to share resources and knowledge, develop best practices and foster collaborative relationships to create communal success for cultural organizations. Often when we return to our hometowns, it can feel like the successes of fellow organizations are in direct conflict with our own. In the case of accessibility, knowledge networks around the country are proving this wrong. 

If you were in attendance at LEAD, you might have seen the session “Partners and Rivals: Championing Access Across a Community.” At first look, the panelists didn’t come across as rivals or even colleagues, but friends. All five panelists hailed from Pittsburgh and have been working together for inclusion and accessibility in the arts community. Organizations in Pittsburgh have banded together, becoming a national model for how different kinds of organizations can foster a community-wide collaboration that effectively bridges knowledge and experience gaps around accessibility, aiming to fully connect people with disabilities to the arts community.

Being able to keep many balls in the air is one of Sarah Aziz’s strengths as Director of Festival Management at the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust. Aziz programs the Dollar Bank Three Rivers Arts Festival, a free music and art festival that draws over 500,000 people to Pittsburgh’s Point State Park over the course of 10 days, as well as Highmark First Night Pittsburgh, a family-friendly New Year’s celebration that takes place in Pittsburgh’s Cultural District.

Meet Me at the MoMA, a program developed for patrons with dementia by the Museum of Modern Art in New York, New York, has influenced museums both nationally and internationally. None have had such expansive and wide-ranging success, both in terms of geographic area and diversity of organizations, as SPARK!

SPARK! Ignites

With the mission of making Wisconsin a leader in addressing challenges posed by Alzheimer’s, the Helen Bader Foundation (now Bader Philanthropies Inc.) sent out a request for proposals to every museum in Wisconsin. Taking cues from Meet Me at the MoMA, the Foundation aimed to bring similar opportunities to their home state.