Attitudes to Disability Key to the Arts Agenda The Arts Council has identified changing attitudes to disability as central to the achievement of the arts agenda as a whole - not just the Arts Council's or the wider arts sector's, but to artistic excellence and sustainable economic impact. Speaking on September 25th, in Craigavon Civic Centre at a conference promoting good practice for disabled people in the arts, Rosemary Kelly, the new Chairman of the Arts Council, said: "People with disability make up more than 20 per cent of Northern Ireland's population, the highest in the United Kingdom. This is a population which has traditionally been under-represented within society. "How difficult it can be for people with disabilities to initiate the arts themselves, to access them, to participate in them, to enjoy them fully and without reserve, is a paradigm of the barriers to involvement which still exist within the wider arts infrastructure." Rosemary Kelly joined Maggie Hampton (Arts Disability Wales) and Prof Eithne McLaughlin of Queen's University, Belfast, in addressing the Good, Better, Best conference. It was her first public engagement since her appointment on 1st July. Ms Kelly cited the Arts & Disability Awards Ireland, jointly funded with An Chomhairle Ealaíon, open to artists from all art-forms, and the Widening Access programme, run in association with the Department of Culture Arts and Leisure, as powerful evidence of the creativity of people with disabilities. She added: "No arts organisation can afford to neglect 20 per cent of the population and expect to thrive as a business or with artistic integrity. Being open to all, being inclusive, being active in redressing imbalance and asserting the value of the individual and the responsibility of the collective - these are the core values of the arts themselves. They are also the key to the successful attraction of audiences and the flourishing of artistic business." Rosemary Kelly was welcomed by conference chair, Aidan Shortt (Arts & Disability Forum). |
