Abstract
People with blindness face numerous barriers in cultural accessibility. Apart from the structural accessibility for which important steps have been made, there are rarely tactile artworks, leaving people with blindness fully excluded from the museum experience. In Greece, cultural accessibility for people with disabilities barely exists. The experience of accessing art and culture through active participation, in a state of repetitive exclusion, is therapeutic. Funded by the Hellenic Ministry of Culture, AMAKA designed and implemented inART -Inclusive Arts- an art therapy-informed project about the enhancement of accessibility in cultural institutions for people with blindness and visual impairments. The project was applied in the Municipal Gallery of Athens - the first accessible art therapy project implemented within the context of the Gallery. InART project is based on the principles of psychosocial inclusion, focusing on healing through art with the use of haptic objects and self-advocacy by art making and being visible in Culture. The project aims both to raise awareness about accessibility and enable the active participation of people with blindness and Visual Impairments in culturep, it included multisensory workshops for children with blindness, haptic multisensory qualities of objects that were created in response to original paintings and a tactile multisensory exhibition “A Journey Through the Senses” in the gallery and customized multisensory guided tours for people with disabilities. The experience and methodology of the inART project, focusing on the links between museum accessibility and the haptic qualities of museum objects and audience engagement is explored.
Details
Presentation Type
Theme
KEYWORDS
HAPTIC,ACCESSIBILITY, AUDIENCE,ENGAGMENT,ADVOCACY,SOCIAL,PRESCRIBING
