Latest / Arts Unscripted with Monica Holt / CI to Eye | Authenticity in Action

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CI to Eye | Authenticity in Action · Arts Unscripted with Monica Holt

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Hi everyone, Dan here. So just like many other industries,
0:53
the arts sector is on an ongoing quest to improve D-E-I-B-A.
0:57
That's diversity, equity, inclusion, belonging, and access.
1:01
But what truly sets successful initiatives apart? It's not about checking boxes,
1:06
it's about prioritizing authenticity and thoughtfulness.
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Some of the most impactful work we've seen begins with arts organizations
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fostering genuine community partnerships and engaging audiences in meaningful
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ways. In today's episode,
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we'll discuss inspiring examples of how embracing these principles can lead to
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profound, positive changes in our organizations. First,
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I'll sit down with Consultant Selia Aponte to talk about reaching new audiences
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with bilingual ads: how to use them, when they work best,
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and how to ensure a smooth audience journey for ESL attendees.
1:40
Then CI's President Priya Iyer Doshi will chat with John Orr,
1:44
Executive Director of Art-Reach in Philadelphia.
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They'll discuss how we can make the arts a more inclusive space for disabled and
1:51
chronically ill audiences and ensure the full spectrum of society is served
1:55
through our programming. Not only do we have those two great interviews,
1:59
but we also have an exciting new segment debuting today.
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Stick around until the end of the episode for a lightning round of our favorite
2:05
arts stories in the news. Who knows? Maybe your organization will be featured.
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Alright, everyone, let's dive in, shall we?
2:17
I'm so excited to chat with consultant Selia Aponte about the benefits of
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running bilingual campaigns. Selia, welcome to your first CI to Eye interview.
2:26
Hi, Dan. Thanks for having me.
2:28
Absolutely. It does seem like bilingual campaigns are a huge,
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often overlooked opportunity to reach new audiences, right?
2:36
Definitely.
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So running bilingual campaigns for an upcoming exhibition or a show is a
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great way to engage with audiences who may be new to your organization,
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and to extend your organization's existing efforts around diversity, equity,
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inclusion, belonging, and access, otherwise referred to as D-I-E-B-A,
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we know that a lot of our audiences come from a variety of different
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backgrounds,
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and some patrons may feel more comfortable using a language other than English.
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Yeah,
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I think I read recently 42 million Americans have Spanish
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as a first language,
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and another 15 million Americans can speak it as a second language.
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So it's a huge audience, 42 million out of, what is it,
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350 million people in the USA?
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Yeah, absolutely.
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It's a huge untapped market and there really aren't many arts organizations who
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are running bilingual campaigns.
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So it's a great opportunity to distinguish yourself as an organization that is a
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space that is welcoming to patrons in a way that feels genuine and authentic to
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them.
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Keep in mind that this type of approach likely won't make sense for every single
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show or exhibition,
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but we do recommend testing bilingual ads if and when it makes sense with the
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programming that you have and with your particular audience goals.
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And these bilingual ads, are they relatively easy to set up?
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How do we get going on these?
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Yeah, they're pretty easy to set up.
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So we can use in-platform language preferences in Meta and Google to serve
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different versions of the same ad to different audiences. So for example,
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if you select Spanish as your preferred language at the audience level in a
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campaign,
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then your ads are going to be served to users who have set Spanish as their
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preferred computer language. In the case of Google,
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or if we're talking about Meta, it's their preferred app language,
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and it's important to note that you will need to create two different versions
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of your ads if you're running a campaign like this.
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So you'll need one version that's in English and another version in another
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language. So there is a bit of an extra creative lift,
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but once you are done creating those two versions,
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the process of setting up a bilingual campaign is pretty straightforward.
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It actually surprises me that there isn't an automatic button for that.
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With the advances of AI recently and how good it is at translating and
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understanding the meaning of words,
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and using that in different languages-it actually surprised me there isn't just
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a "create ad in Spanish.".
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Right, like an automatic translate kind of feature.
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And I'm sure it's coming down the pipeline.
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There are so many AI driven tools within the Meta platform specifically,
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and also in Google,
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there's a feature right now where you write in your ad copy and it will give you
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variations, right?
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So I'm sure there is a version that's coming where it's like you enter your ad
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copy in English and there's a button that says,
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would you like to translate this into French? I'm sure that's coming.
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Have you run bilingual campaigns with CI clients before?
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Yes, I have.
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So we recently worked with Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art on a
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fully bilingual campaign strategy for their exhibition, Diego Rivera's America.
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So we served English and Spanish versions of the same ad content to both new
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and existing audiences with the goal of building awareness for this exhibit,
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and of course to drive ticket sales as well.
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And this was really the perfect use case for a bilingual approach for two
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reasons. So one,
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Diego Rivera is a very prominent famous Mexican painter whose work
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and his life story are really steeped in the Spanish language.
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So this just felt like a natural exhibition to do this for.
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And then the second thing is that these campaigns were part of a multilayered
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ongoing D-I-E-B-A strategy at Crystal Bridges.
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So the museum has really made a conscious effort over the past couple years to
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create an inclusive, bilingual, accessible space for all patrons,
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and that includes both onsite and through their digital presence.
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So I think that really allowed us to make these campaigns possible,
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and it was really a goal for Crystal Bridges.
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So these bilingual campaigns,
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they're just one facet of a larger D-E-I-B-A effort, right?
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So how did these campaigns perform?
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Really well. So our Meta campaign drove 551 purchases,
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and of those 59 purchases,
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about 11% were driven by our Spanish language ads,
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and 12 of those purchases were transactions from acquisition audiences,
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meaning that these were completely new patrons who had never
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visited Crystal Bridges before, which was really exciting to see.
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Wow, that's incredible performance.
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Did you also see a lift in engagement as well? Did you see more key page views?
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Yeah, we did.
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So our ads drove over 4,000 visits to the Spanish translated version of the
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Diego Rivera landing page and over 20,000 page views to the English version of
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the page.
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And what was really exciting was that capturing these views allowed us to
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further build Crystal Bridges' remarketing pools so that they can then engage
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these visitors again in future bilingual campaigns.
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Yeah, it's opening up a whole, almost like, new audience, right?
7:39
Absolutely.
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As we mentioned before,
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those 42 million Americans who are Spanish speaking first,
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I should imagine-you probably don't have the exact data on this because we
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didn't run a like-for-like experiment-but the conversion rate's likely going to
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be higher if you see something in your first language, right?
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Absolutely. And I think we see this just with campaigns in general,
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that the more often you run ads, the stronger your results are going to be.
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So I would expect that we would see the same thing here if we were to run
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another bilingual campaign in the future,
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that we would see better and better performance from those Spanish audiences.
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Is that just because the Meta platform is kind of learning who that new audience
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is so they can get the ads to the right people in the right combinations?
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Yeah, it's absolutely that.
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And I would also say just thinking about the user journey,
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most of us need more than one touch point sometimes before we decide to
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press play and buy the thing.
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I know I have to see at least three ads for a pair of jeans before I'm finally
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like, okay, fine, lemme go to the website and buy these jeans.
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So I think it's multiple touch points as well.
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I just bought my dog a new harness. He's a growing puppy,
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eight months old at the moment,
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and it's been in my tab-my many,
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many emotional support tabs as I call them. They're sort of...
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A long consideration period.
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Where I'm just like, I need to be reminded a few times.
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And then finally one Instagram ad got me, so I was like, okay.
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Sort of tips you over the edge.
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Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So the results you just talked about, they're from Meta,
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but you also ran ads on Google as well, right?
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Yeah, we did. So we saw similar results on Google as well,
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and we ran ads on display and YouTube for context.
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So those ads drove a total of 433 purchases.
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And of those 113, so that's about 26%,
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a little over a quarter were from our Spanish language ads,
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so even stronger than the results we were seeing on Meta.
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And these ads also drove over 104,000 visits to the Spanish translated landing
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page, which again was just really awesome performance.
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And you didn't run search ads,
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but I should imagine the process for setting up search ads is reasonably similar
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as well.
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You would basically need to have your list of keywords in English,
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a list of keywords in Spanish,
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and then again one version of the ads that would be in English,
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and then another version of the ads that would be in Spanish.
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And you would set your language settings appropriately,
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like we talked about before. So very similar process for search.
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So why do you think these ads were so successful?
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Yeah, I think it goes back to something that I mentioned before,
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which was that these campaigns didn't run in a vacuum, they weren't one-off,
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like "Let's try this and see how it goes" kind of random flippant decision.
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They were really part of a larger,
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very authentic D-I-E-B-A effort that extends beyond Crystal Bridges digital
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efforts to the actual onsite experience at the museum.
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So when you arrive for a visit to Crystal Bridges,
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you are going to see bilingual signage for restrooms, parking,
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directions to the various galleries...
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There are printed brochures that are in multiple languages, including Spanish.
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There are audio and guided tours offered in Spanish and other languages as well.
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And then finally, I think this is sort of the coolest feature,
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is that those little labels that are next to a piece of art in a museum?
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Crystal Bridges actually has those in English and Spanish for every single piece
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of art in their museum,
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which is an incredible feat and something that took them a while to do,
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but really impressive and a really cool feature.
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So they thought, even offline,
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they thought deeply and authentically about the entire process for both an
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English speaker and a Spanish speaker.
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They want the experience to be as like-for-like as possible.
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Absolutely.
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Yeah. And online as well.
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Online as well. That was where we started with our ads.
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So they have made a concerted effort to translate several key pages of their
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website into Spanish.
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I believe there are plans to translate into other languages as well,
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but they're starting with Spanish.
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So all of their exhibition pages are currently translatable,
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including the Diego Rivera landing page.
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But all of their exhibitions that they've had since then are also,
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there's an option to view the page in Spanish,
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which is great because in this case,
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having a Spanish version of the Diego Rivera landing page allowed us to create a
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really seamless digital experience.
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So we weren't showing someone an ad in Spanish and then having them click
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through that ad to an English landing page sort of breaking up that experience.
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It was really just sort of a seamless transition from the ad to the website to
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the actual museum.
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And that can be quite a complex process. I know from SEO,
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like in the search landscape,
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there is certain tags you need to add if you have two
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different versions of a page in different languages. Like hreflang tags,
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to get super nerdy SEO, which I can do very easily, unfortunately.
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I do think it's interesting. And can I ask on behalf of our users, so Dan,
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if I were going to make a Spanish translated version of a landing page,
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would you recommend that I make that a separate page,
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or should it be this one page with two versions? Can you talk about that?
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Yeah, there's multiple ways you can do it.
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The most important thing is to create what's called the hreflang tag.
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It basically says to Google, "Hey Google, this is the link for a Spanish page.
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This is the link for an English page." And you also have where the
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language originates as well.
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So it's different for UK English versus US English and
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US Spanish versus Spanish Spanish.
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So there's a lot that goes into it.
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Does that mean if I have the word bathroom on my page,
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it will translate to "loo," or what is that?
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Yes. Otherwise I won't understand what on earth you're talking about.
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Okay, great. Good.
13:17
Yeah. So yeah, there's a lot of work that goes into it.
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Usually there is ways of doing this with coding in terms of
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a developer can usually sort out an easy way to do this as well,
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so you don't have to go through each one. But yeah,
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they would need essentially two different pages.
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But I think just because there's a lot of work that goes into it,
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that shouldn't dissuade you from making this change and wading
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into bilingual campaigns. Right?
13:48
Yeah, absolutely. And I will say, we talked about,
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I just gave you a whole laundry list of things that Crystal Bridges has done
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both onsite and online to kind of make this a seamless experience.
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But one thing we didn't talk about is the actual ticketing purchase path.
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So we were showing these Spanish ads,
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which took someone to a Spanish landing page.
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Once they clicked on the 'buy tickets' button of that landing page,
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they were then taken to an English version of the purchase path.
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So the entire online journey wasn't completely translated. But again,
14:17
to your point,
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I don't think anyone should let that stop them from attempting a
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bilingual campaign. I think start small,
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work with the resources that you have, do what you can,
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and go from there.
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I think this is something that you can continue to iterate on,
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but to your point, I wouldn't let one tiny,
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tiny piece of this puzzle stop you from starting at all.
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Yeah. There's no such thing as a perfect campaign,
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so you can't really let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
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Exactly.
14:46
I think as you've laid out earlier,
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what it comes down to is in your outreach.
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When you do this authentically,
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it's a great way to reach new audiences and further your D-E-I-B-A
15:00
efforts, right?
15:02
Yeah.
15:02
So thank you so much for walking us through this and for being on the pod.
15:06
Thank you so much, Dan. This was so much fun.
15:17
Hi, John. Welcome to CI to Eye.
15:20
Yeah, thanks for having me. This is great.
15:21
Of course. So you are the executive director of Art-Reach,
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and I am really excited to talk more about the organization and just give the
15:30
organization more light here on CI to Eye. But before we do that,
15:34
I do just want to spend a little bit of time talking about you personally.
15:38
So tell me a little bit about your connection to the arts.
15:42
Why did you choose to pursue a career in the arts?
15:46
Yeah,
15:47
so I was 17 and my sister worked at the
15:51
Franklin Institute Science Museum, and she just got me a job.
15:55
But once I got in there, I kind of fell in love with it,
15:59
and I felt like I had found my people.
16:04
So, I'm neurodivergent,
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and what that means is that sometimes I don't really learn in a classroom or in
16:11
a formal setting the way that other people do. So growing up as a kid,
16:16
I needed informal spaces to learn.
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And so these informal spaces were always just,
16:22
they're just important to me and they're what make sort of the world available
16:27
to me. And so when I got to a museum and I was like, wait, I can work here?
16:30
This is amazing.
16:33
It felt really comfortable and it was a place I was familiar with.
16:36
Those early days,
16:38
working at the admission desk of a major museum in Philadelphia really kind
16:43
of shaped how I would approach my work later on,
16:46
and it just sort of grew from there.
16:48
Yeah. Yeah. I love that.
16:50
And I also am just going to take this opportunity to talk a little bit about
16:55
your neurodivergence.
16:56
Do you feel like you always had a vocabulary to describe what you were
17:00
experiencing in that? I feel like that word even is not,
17:03
it feels newer in the space,
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but I'm just curious to hear more about when you felt like you could describe
17:10
what was happening.
17:12
Yeah, so that's a great question. How much time do we have?
17:15
I know. I know. I went off script already.
17:18
No, you're good. So
17:21
disability language is just such a funny thing.
17:24
So many different people that identify in different ways.
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And so it's always hard to say what I'm about to say because I don't want to
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disparage the way other people feel about it.
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I actually don't really like the word neurodivergence because
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divergence to me is always something starting at the same point and kind of
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going in opposite directions.
17:45
And I don't approach my life as if I'm walking on this divergent path than
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everyone else.
17:51
I'm just looking for accommodations to kind of bring our paths together so that
17:55
we can have more of a convergent experience as we go through life. So the word,
18:00
even for me, it's a word that I'm still getting used to myself, to be honest.
18:04
Yeah. Yeah.
18:05
I think being younger, I was undiagnosed for so long,
18:10
so I didn't even have the language. I didn't know what was happening.
18:13
I wasn't aware that I was processing
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information in a way that was different than everybody else.
18:21
I do remember being in school really young, about nine years old,
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and it was the first time I really thought to myself like, oh my gosh,
18:29
I'm the dumbest kid in this class. I don't get it.
18:35
I don't understand what we're talking about.
18:38
And I remember just being confused and thinking, we all have the same books,
18:42
we have the same teachers, we have the same school days.
18:45
Why do other people get this and I am so bad?
18:49
So at nine years old,
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I cut school the way at 9-year-old cuts school.
18:55
I just faked a stomachache every single day.
18:59
Oh my gosh.
19:01
But the thing that got me going back to school was they offered piano lessons
19:05
after school the second half of the year.
19:07
And what I found was that when I played music, I felt different.
19:12
I never learned how to read music. I couldn't ever figure that out.
19:15
But playing music did something different to my brain.
19:20
And I used to call it tricking my brain.
19:23
That was my official disability language, I guess.
19:27
Yeah. Wow.
19:27
And it's an accommodation that I still use today.
19:31
I have instruments everywhere in my workplace, at my house,
19:35
and whenever I'm stuck writing a grant or stuck developing a plan,
19:40
I have an instrument and I think of a song,
19:43
and then I figure out how to play it by ear until it's there.
19:47
And then it might take a while,
19:48
but once I can put that puzzle together in my head,
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it's like I've got a baseline to go back, sit down with my work,
19:56
and put a coherent grant application together or a coherent business plan
19:59
together.
20:00
And it's funny because we talk about at Art-Reach "the power of the
20:05
arts," and we have never really defined that,
20:08
but in some ways I've been using the arts as an accommodation just to get where
20:13
I am and figure out what I need to do since fourth grade.
20:18
Wow. Talk about the importance of the arts,
20:21
and also I love that you still do that today.
20:25
I love that when you feel stuck, you know what you can do,
20:28
and you surround yourself with music. Wow, I'm glad I went off script.
20:32
That is a beautiful story. Yeah, I'm glad.
20:37
I know from having talked to you before and having had previous conversations
20:40
with you that there is an intentionality to you leading art reach in particular.
20:45
And you just talked about your own neurodivergence and your childhood.
20:49
Can you share with our listeners a little bit more about your journey
20:54
to and your connection to the mission and sort of what drives you
20:59
in that work?
21:01
Yeah, so as I mentioned, I started off at admission desks at pretty big museums.
21:05
And one of the things you see immediately in a city like Philadelphia where the
21:10
poverty rate is really high, the disability rate is really high,
21:12
you see families who come in with their kids and they're getting this,
21:16
they're getting that.
21:17
And then you see other families that are coming in that are not.
21:21
Their kids are really excited,
21:23
but their parents are worried because they don't maybe have the money to go into
21:27
the site or they can't buy the exhibit upgrade or whatever's happening.
21:33
And I think that sat with me for a while,
21:36
and I remember working at the Franklin,
21:38
then I moved over to the 'dinosaur museum' --
21:40
the Academy of Natural Sciences across the street --
21:42
and was working there for a while. And when I was there,
21:45
I learned about what a board of directors was. And at that time I was the museum
21:50
services manager. And I was like, well, who's that group of people?
21:54
And someone in the section, the security guard Dave, he was like, oh,
21:58
that's the board of directors. And I was like, what do they do?
22:04
And he just was like, oh, they run the place, they're in charge. And I thought,
22:09
they can't run. I've never seen them, they've never talked to my team,
22:13
they never talked to the people on the floor.
22:16
How do they know what they're doing? I don't get it.
22:19
And I just sort of thought to myself, if I ever run my own organization,
22:23
I want to run it differently. I want it to be community built. I want it to be
22:28
of the community. And when the opportunity came for Art-Reach,
22:33
it was an organization that I had sort of seen, I knew of,
22:37
there was so much opportunity to bring the community to the forefront
22:43
while leveraging relationships with arts organizations in the city.
22:47
And so I went for it and for whatever reason, they hired me.
22:51
And nine and a half years later, here I am.
22:53
Yeah. Yeah.
22:56
There's so much that you've done over the past nine and a half years,
22:59
and I feel like the organization has really shifted and evolved.
23:03
Can you talk a little bit about that,
23:04
talk about the evolution with your leadership and what programs you all offer
23:09
today?
23:10
Yeah, so I think when I started, we had the arts up on this pedestal,
23:14
and when I came in, I was just like, well,
23:17
how are we going to hold the sector accountable and change it if they're on that
23:22
pedestal? And so when I came in,
23:25
I made my vision pretty clear that I was going to take the sector off that
23:28
pedestal and put the community there,
23:30
and we were going to work more closely aligned with community members who were
23:34
disabled.
23:35
And then we were going to leverage our partnership to create this sort of
23:38
community pressure that would result in social change in the arts in
23:43
Philadelphia. And then when the arts felt that pressure,
23:47
they would turn to Art-Reach to relieve it. And I mean,
23:50
there were a lot of people who didn't agree with the approach.
23:53
They thought it was too big of a reboot for the organization to sort of go
23:57
through and maintain the audience that it had built up. At that point,
24:02
we were serving about 13 to 15,000 people per year.
24:08
And then in my first year at Art-Reach,
24:12
41,000 people used the program.
24:15
Incredible.
24:16
And since then, over the last nine years,
24:19
it's been about 1.4 million people that have gone through our programs
24:24
and it's just exploded into this completely different realm
24:29
where we're not just building audiences anymore.
24:32
We're not just doing discount access for people with disabilities and people
24:36
experiencing poverty. We're led by the community.
24:40
Most of my staff is disabled.
24:42
Every single staff member identifies with disability,
24:47
either personally or through a direct family member.
24:51
And it's just changed the conversation.
24:54
Right. Yeah.
24:56
We went from this very,
24:57
very white non-disabled organization to
25:02
an organization that looks like Philadelphia and is also chronically ill
25:07
and physically disabled and quadriplegic and single-sided deaf and
25:11
neurodivergent and autistic. And it works.
25:15
And the community trusts us because we're like,
25:18
we are the community and the community is us.
25:22
And the depth of perspective that then informs the strategy and the work that
25:26
you all are doing comes directly from who you're trying to serve,
25:30
which is huge.
25:32
And it's been a game changer. I mean, it's just,
25:34
now every year we have over 200,000 people experience the arts
25:39
in accessible wayd through an Art-Reach program.
25:41
Each year we want to course correct what happened with the
25:46
arts. If people were left out, is visual art,
25:51
is the visual art that we know,
25:53
the full spectrum of what the visual arts could have been if everyone was
25:57
included from the start? Is music,
26:01
have we experienced the full spectrum of that or are we missing something
26:05
because other people were left out of that equation for so long? So let's
26:11
find out and see what happens.
26:12
Yeah. And that's such an inspiring driving force in the work,
26:17
is really figuring out the answer to that question for all art forms.
26:22
What would this look like if the art form had evolved including everyone as
26:27
opposed to excluding?
26:31
We know that the disability community in particular has been historically
26:35
excluded from participating in the arts.
26:37
So why do you think that has been the case?
26:40
Why do you think that art has evolved,
26:43
has in some ways excluded that community in particular?
26:47
Yeah. I think, well, it's like a nuanced part of the conversation.
26:51
So I think even decades ago,
26:53
I think people were just nervous or scared or hesitant,
26:56
or they didn't know how to, so they didn't worry about it.
26:59
And it's just so disheartening to think that because you couldn't figure it out
27:04
right away,
27:05
how to engage a person with disabilities in the arts,
27:10
that you just didn't bother to try. That's what we're actually trying to change.
27:15
We're not necessarily trying to convince people who aren't disabled to
27:21
come up with a solution, right?
27:23
Right.
27:24
The community probably knows what the solution is,
27:26
and they have ways that they can engage in the arts,
27:30
just like I have ways that I can engage in the arts that work for me,
27:34
and we just need to transfer that power to the community so that
27:39
A,
27:39
there's authentic representation and there's representation in a way that the
27:44
community feels comfortable being represented.
27:46
So we're not trying to be anyone's inspiration.
27:50
I don't want to be like, oh, look at John. He learned a song on a guitar.
27:54
Good for him and his neurodivergent brain. How sweet.
27:58
I don't give a shit at all. I don't care about that.
28:02
I'm not here to inspire anybody.
28:05
I do that because it works for me and it helps me navigate my life
28:10
and it feels good and it makes me happy. And all of those things don't --
28:14
everyone's going to find their own path in that way,
28:17
but the community has to define that path,
28:20
and I think that's where the exclusion will start to end.
28:25
Yeah,
28:28
I love that idea of the transfer of power and what that ultimately empowers
28:32
us to do as an industry in the space. So that's great.
28:36
I think so many people or so many organizations will ask a
28:41
community what they want and then they take that information and they shoehorn
28:46
it into whatever that organization really wants to do anyway.
28:51
And it doesn't build trust.
28:53
It puts this sort of emotional labor on the community and it puts this
28:57
expectation that something could change, but really it's not going to.
29:03
Whereas what we do, we're just like, what do you want to do?
29:06
And people tell us and we're just like, let's go do that. That sounds great.
29:09
Super fun. Come on, let's go.
29:11
And it's so much more authentic when it happens in that kind of way.
29:16
We're kind of restoring this trust between arts organizations in
29:21
Philly and the disability community, which is just huge in the city.
29:25
And that trust, when they see their idea kind of come to life,
29:29
it creates the environment where people feel a little bit more safe,
29:34
they feel heard, they feel seen,
29:36
and they are willing to probably go back and engage with that organization
29:40
again. So it's this little bit of a restorative process that has to be rooted
29:46
in trust at the base.
29:47
I feel like there are a lot of arts organizations now who are
29:52
really working on their accessible,
29:55
sensory-friendly experiences.
29:59
And I'm curious to hear your perspective on that approach with arts
30:03
organizations,
30:04
and I should say there's some arts organizations who haven't yet started on that
30:08
work.
30:08
So being able to approach specific experiences accessibly and through
30:13
sensory-friendly programming, that's certainly a step forward.
30:17
Versus this idea of producing universally designed
30:22
experiences that include all, to use some of your earlier language.
30:28
Give me your thoughts.
30:29
Yeah, so it's great when organizations take a first step. I think still,
30:33
if a theater wants to do sensory-friendly theater performances,
30:37
I think it's really great.
30:38
And there's definitely a lot of people who benefit from that. In fact,
30:42
I think sensory-friendly or relaxed performances are the closest we've
30:47
gotten so far to universal design. I think it's a more... like,
30:49
a relaxed theater performance is lovely.
30:51
I don't know if you've ever been to one.
30:53
It's really nice to be able to get up and move around and do it.
30:55
Yes, it's great.
30:56
It's great on everybody.
30:59
I do worry that sometimes when places anchor down in one type
31:04
of accessible programming though,
31:05
that they start to think about disability in segregated ways. And
31:12
there is this idea of universal design. I've never really seen it
31:19
fully embraced.
31:20
I think the closest example I've literally ever seen was in the movie
31:24
Zootopia, which came out --
31:26
Such a good movie.
31:28
Such a good movie.
31:29
There was one scene where all these animals were getting off the train and I was
31:33
just like, oh, look, they're all getting off of different size doors.
31:36
That's universal design! But no, universal design,
31:41
it's a cool idea.
31:42
How can you create a space that's accessible to the most amount of people most
31:47
of the time? It's just, it's challenging.
31:50
And I think there are ways to do it and there's ways that we've done it in the
31:54
past, but it's hard to maintain that all the time.
31:58
I think the way that we work with organizations now is we want them to
32:02
understand the community that they work in.
32:05
And so when we work with an organization to help them plan out their
32:09
accessibility practice, we're kind of like, alright,
32:12
so you need to make everything accessible, period. Number one.
32:17
But we realized that just giving you that advice is not necessarily feasible.
32:22
You might not have the capacity to do so. So let's step back.
32:25
And we examine their surrounding community to see what the prevalence of
32:30
disability by disability type is around their site. And we're like,
32:34
we want you to prioritize accessibility as an organizational
32:40
value, but within that,
32:42
maybe you want to start with programming for people who have cognitive
32:47
disabilities and people who have physical disabilities,
32:51
because you have the highest number of community members among those types of
32:55
disability in your neighborhood.
32:57
And we're not telling you to ignore the other stuff.
32:59
We're just saying invest here first, build up quicker.
33:03
And the other ones can be a little bit of a slower burn with a caveat that if
33:08
somebody asks for something,
33:09
you are obligated by law no matter how old you are as an
33:14
organization to make it accessible in some way.
33:19
But I like the data informed approach and also the acknowledgement
33:23
that we are all human beings with a finite amount of time, energy,
33:28
resources to dedicate to anything.
33:30
So why not focus on the place where you can see will have the greatest
33:34
impact first, which doesn't mean that the other things on the list fall off.
33:39
It just means that you prioritize your list accordingly. So when we talked,
33:44
you had shared some really interesting museum examples with me of
33:48
ways that you've seen various museums creating more accessible spaces.
33:53
Can you just talk about a couple of those? I found them pretty inspiring,
33:56
so I would love to share those with our listeners too.
33:59
Yeah, I mean,
34:01
it's wild to think of the spectrum on which some of our programming exists.
34:06
I always use the example,
34:07
we do everything from going to Eastern State Penitentiary here in Philadelphia,
34:12
which is a historic ruins site of an old prison.
34:17
And we were trying to make that accessible to people who were blind.
34:20
And there's this funny wagon wheel design that they always talk about,
34:25
and you're in the central hub.
34:26
And we decided to take a projection of their map and just using hot
34:31
glue,
34:32
we traced it out onto a board and it created this raised tactile map that
34:37
people could use to kind of understand the layout of the prison as they were
34:40
going through their tour. And that's a $4 accommodation.
34:44
So it's like we always use that as that's the baseline.
34:48
And then we also did this thing with Opera Philadelphia where we
34:53
were making the opera accessible to people who were deaf by partnering with
34:58
Music Not Impossible,
34:59
who has this fiber textile haptic suit that translates music into
35:04
vibration so that people can experience sound through their skin as opposed
35:09
to their ears. And it's such a wide spectrum.
35:14
I think some of the things we were talking about were in art museums, and again,
35:18
it scales on the easier side of the equation where if
35:23
you're looking at a painting or you're looking at a 2D piece of art,
35:29
we were using cotton balls with scented oils in Ziploc baggies to
35:33
replicate the smells that were represented in the paintings that you're seeing.
35:37
If it was still life fruit,
35:39
you could create this tactile experience,
35:42
scents that we're also within that environment.
35:45
So little things that add on
35:48
to the experience,
35:52
just make it kind of better,
35:54
and I remember going through on that particular tour,
35:57
I think that was the Barnes Foundation, we were doing that,
36:00
and there were other visitors who were kind of like, can we do it?
36:04
And we were just like, I mean, sure if you want, it's not that hard.
36:09
So that's when it gets kind of fun when accessible design
36:14
improves an overall experience for the venue.
36:17
It just makes the whole experience a little bit more immersive and tactile.
36:22
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. When you first told me about that cotton ball example,
36:26
I had the exact same thought.
36:28
I want to smell the cotton balls too as a part of my experience.
36:32
It just is a deeper experience that I then get to have and I get to
36:37
use other senses, and that's incredible. I love that.
36:41
And it's funny because when we hear,
36:43
so there's this narrative for creating buy-in with leadership at
36:48
organizations, it's like, well,
36:50
we have to use the argument that accessible design is actually good for
36:55
everybody. And while, sure, that can be true,
36:59
what we also need to say is, look. Accessible design is not for everybody.
37:04
It is specifically for the community who has been excluded.
37:08
And the buy-in should start with:
37:13
art is a human right, access to it is a human right.
37:18
So let that be our buy-in.
37:21
Not necessarily being convinced because a bunch of non-disabled people think
37:24
that this program is cool as well.
37:26
And it's fun to watch that perspective shift when we
37:31
do have to talk to organizations and we are helping them prep programs,
37:35
or it's just like this light bulb where they're like, oh, right, no,
37:39
I do believe in human rights. And we're like, yeah, you sure do.
37:42
You posted all that on your Instagram for so many special holidays.
37:46
Human rights, woo! So yeah, it's just like,
37:49
how can we start the conversation there?
37:52
Yeah.
37:53
And how can we use the drive to remove barriers that currently are in place
37:57
to 'art as a human right' as the main driving factor
38:02
in the work? I am curious,
38:05
perhaps this is connected and perhaps it isn't,
38:08
but I know that Art-Reach puts out a ton of resources for the field exploring
38:13
accessibility in the arts.
38:14
Can you highlight a couple of those resources and where somebody who maybe has
38:19
never had exposure to Art-Reach,
38:21
what resources they should start with and maybe your most popular or the ones
38:25
that you think are most impactful?
38:27
So on our website, we have a page for community learning,
38:30
and it's all workshops we've done in the past with different folks who have
38:35
different programming or different panels that are just talking about different
38:40
programs that they've tried. Some of them are just sort of, again,
38:43
that transfer of power to the community to say,
38:45
what do you want to talk about accessibility wise and how can art be a tool that
38:50
helps facilitate whatever it is that you need?
38:54
But some of the more formal things that we have are,
38:57
we have a big nine month cohort that people can join where they're learning
39:02
best practices on everything from your baseline
39:07
disability justice overview to how you're serving different communities,
39:12
how you can serve them in overlapping ways. We have a really,
39:16
really cheap conference for the arts. In fact,
39:19
we might even make it free this year. I think last year,
39:23
43% of attendees team for free.
39:26
So we spend most of our time just getting scholarship funds to cover the
39:31
costs for everybody.
39:33
But what's really unique about our conferences and our cohort is that they're
39:37
all led --
39:38
all of the sessions are led by people with lived experience and disability.
39:42
So there's this different, there's this,
39:44
there's leveling of lived experience being on par with
39:49
professional experience and educational experience that I think is one of the
39:54
most important challenges that we're trying to break open.
39:57
And then I think we're about to launch two new podcasts, I think.
40:01
Oh, wow. Nice.
40:03
They're just exploring topics.
40:05
We want to talk to a number of people with disabilities serving on boards and
40:08
what that experience has been like. What were the barriers?
40:13
Let's just talk about it openly to change the way that maybe boards operate and
40:17
increase representation. So there's a ton of stuff out there. And then,
40:22
there's a bunch of other great books.
40:26
Emily Liddell's book "Demystifying Disability" -- Amazing.
40:31
Everyone should just read it. It's incredible.
40:36
Yeah. I'll add that one to my list. Yeah. That's great.
40:40
So we've come to the end.
40:41
So we have one final question which we ask all of
40:46
our guests, which is our CI to Eye moment.
40:50
So if you could broadcast one message to executive
40:54
directors, leadership teams,
40:56
staff and boards of thousands of arts organizations,
40:59
what would it be?
41:03
You have to be accessible and you should ask your community that's around you
41:09
how to do it. I think there's
41:12
a lot of people out there who think, oh, my site is older. We predate the ADA.
41:17
It doesn't apply to us. We're grandfathered in. Number one,
41:21
nobody is grandfathered into violating a civil rights law.
41:25
And that's what it is. It's a civil rights law that guarantees a human right.
41:30
If you want to be accessible, talk to your community. Let them lead.
41:34
Let them be not just a part of that conversation.
41:37
Let them drive that conversation,
41:40
because otherwise you're not going to get as far as you could.
41:44
Yeah. Beautifully said. John, thank you so much for your time.
41:48
Thank you for being here. It's been so lovely.
41:51
Yeah, this was great. I'll come back anytime. This was wonderful.
41:56
Thank you.
41:57
Yeah. Thank you.
42:05
And now it's time for CI-lebrity Sightings. You get it?
42:08
It's like our name in "celebrity sightings." Anytime we can torture a pun,
42:12
we love to.
42:14
Here are some of our favorite news stories featuring CI clients in 60 seconds or
42:18
less. Start the timer. Round of applause for the High Museum of Art in Atlanta,
42:22
which was featured in the New York Times for increasing its proportion of BIPOC
42:26
attendees from 15% in 2015 to 57% in 2022
42:31
and 2023.
42:32
Read all about it in the article titled "At Museums A Revolution Gains
42:36
Momentum." And snaps to Atlanta's Alliance Theater and Chicago's Goodman Theater
42:41
for being featured in American Theater Magazine's article, "They Will Survive:
42:45
Theaters That Are Beating The Odds." And finally cheers the New York City Ballet
42:49
for their coverage in the Associated Press about their changing audience
42:52
demographics. In 2023,
42:55
53% of ticket buyers were under the age of 50,
42:58
compared to 41% of ticket buyers in 2018.
43:02
We're so proud of these clients for their unprecedented audience growth and
43:05
commitment to engaging new audiences. Got a story that deserves a shout out?
43:10
Well, tag us on social and let us know. Who knows?
43:13
You might be featured in the next episode of CI-lebrity Sightings! CI.
43:19
Capacity Interactive. 'Lebrity Sightings. CI-lebrity. The pun works!
43:32
Thank you for listening to CI to Eye.
43:33
This episode was edited and produced by Karen McConarty and co-written by Karen
43:38
McConarty and myself, Dan Titmuss.
43:40
Stephanie Medina and Jess Berube are CI to Eye's designers and video editors and
43:45
all work together to create CI's digital content. Our music is by whoisuzo.
43:50
If you enjoyed today's episode,
43:52
please take a moment to rate us or leave a review.
43:55
A nice comment goes a long way in helping other people discover CI to Eye and
43:59
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44:03
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44:23
Until next time, stay nerdy.