Thanks for being part of this Fifth Annual Art Beyond Sight
Awareness Month
Art Beyond Sight Awareness Month: October 2007 -- Alert I
TRY ON A NEW HAT
Thank you for being part of this Fifth Annual Art Beyond Sight
Awareness Month.
We made this year’s goal of having more than 150 organizations
participating in this international initiative to bring public
awareness to the need for and benefits of making art and visual
culture accessible to all, particularly children and adults who are
visually impaired. Indeed, we have more than 180 participants!
We want to be sure that you have a copy of this year’s poster
and the brochures. We still have a limited supply of brochures, so
if you need more of them, please request them from Joan Pursley via
email at [email protected].
FINAL CALL FOR CALENDAR ENTRIES
Have you submitted information on any/all public programs you’ll
be sponsoring during Awareness Month? If not, now is the time!.
Send details to [email protected]. Be sure to include
your organization’s name and the event date, time, location, and
contact if pre-registration is required. The calendar is found on
Art Education for the Blind’s Web site: www.artbeyondsight.org. If
you click on “calendar” at the bottom of the site’s home page, you
will access it directly. For more Art Beyond Sight Awareness Month
materials, go to “Change,” and then to ABS Awareness Month.
CONFERENCE
Art Beyond Sight: Multimodal Approaches to Learning, Creativity
and Communication
September 28-30, 2007
This year we kicked-off Art Beyond Sight Awareness Month 2007
with an international conference organized by Art Education for the
Blind and The Metropolitan Museum of Art. The conference took place
The Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Whitney Museum of American
Art.
The conference’s 300 participants from six continents
represented an impressive interdisciplinary mix of the arts and
sciences: neuroscientists, cognitive psychologist, technology
specialists, art educators, museum professionals, art historians
and anthropologists, disability specialists and international
policy makers, architects and designers, and artists working in
every media, and graduate students.
Keynote Speaker, poet and University of Iowa professor of
Creative Writing and Disability Studies, Stephen Kuusisto, inspired
us with excerpts of his poems and writings on the experience of
blindness and visual language. And from there, we were off and
running. Together, we explored how our multi-modal and adaptive
human brains respond to multi-sensory experiences and adapt to the
loss of one sensory input. Technology specialists described the
latest in multi-sensory communication to promote accessibility in
the arts, from tactile computer programs to translating visual
phenomena into sound. Cognitive psychologists, architects,
designers and artists described multi-sensory environments that
promote well-being and learning, and through which art can be
appreciated.
Creativity was described by one speaker as a “heightened sense
of the possible.” It was in this sense that allowed us all to
perceive connections amongst these diverse ideas and left
participants inspired to continue and expand their work in their
fields.
To hear more of these fascinating conversations, join us for
our
Free Telephone Conference Crash Course
MONDAY, OCTOBER 15, 2007
9 am – 6 pm
For the full schedule, visit:
http://www.artbeyondsight.org/change/aw-crashcourse.shtml
spread the word &
Bring art to everyone in your community!
· HAVE THE NAME OF YOUR INSTITUTION printed in Braille, and
apply it to the poster.
· DISPLAY the Awareness Month poster.
· Hand out the Awareness Month brochures – INSERT a flyer
listing your own programs during the month!
· JOIN ART BEYOND SIGHT ONLINE COMMUNITY’s Discussion Groups --
share your experiences and talk to experts. We have five different
discipline-based groups: Museums, Educators, Learning Tools,
Community and Advocacy, and Theory and Research.
STATISTICS, PLEASE
It would benefit all of us to have records of successful
programs hosted during Art Beyond Sight Awareness Month. Thus we
ask that each of you keep records of attendance at your special
October events, and at the end of the month, to email the following
to [email protected]:
· A brief description of your program
· The number of people who attended it
· If you/your staff felt it was a successful event – and the
things that made it a success, or why you believe it failed, i.e.,
please share your tips for success or your list of
pitfalls-to-avoid.
We’d like to know not just about programs that were open to the
public, but also school programs, staff trainings, etc. New
organizations involved in Art Beyond Sight Awareness Month are
hungry for good ideas of ways to celebrate. Help us provide them by
taking just a few minutes at the end of October document what you
did. You’ll find it valuable to have on hand, too, not only when
planning future Awareness Month activities, but also when writing
year-end reports or approaching your boards for new funding for
access programs.
A 2006 AWARENESS MONTH SUCCESS
In celebration of last year’s Art Beyond Sight Awareness Month,
the St. Augustine Art Association hosted a Tactile Art Show in its
South Gallery. The exhibit featured work by area artists and by
students at the Florida School for the Deaf and Blind (FSDB). All
artworks could be touched, and all had Braille information labels,
created by FSDB students. The art included sculpture, pottery,
weaving, wall hangings and other artwork in relief.
Although the Tactile Art Show has been a St. Augustine tradition
each year for the past five years, this is the first year it has
been officially sponsored by the St. Augustine Art Association.
Established in 1924, the Association is a not-for-profit
organization that strives to serve artists in all disciplines and
to provide a cultural center for the entire community. The
Association hosts a series of juried and non-juried exhibits each
year, and offers art classes to both children and adults.
Students from the Florida School for the Blind and Deaf are
shown here exploring artwork at the St. Augustine Art Association’s
Tactile Art Show.
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