Art Beyond Sight Awareness Month
Art Galleries and Museums Promote Art for the Visually Impaired
Art Beyond Sight Awareness Month is an opportunity for schools, museums, libraries and agencies for the blind, and individuals, to join together to raise public awareness about making art and culture a part of life for children and adults affected by vision loss.
Art Beyond Sight October Program
Art Beyond Sight Awareness Month is an international initiative to promote art by and for people who are visually impaired and have other disabilities and to encourage multimodal approaches to art education and creativity. It is organized by Art Education for the Blind (AEB) and its more than 200 Art Beyond Sight Collaborative partners around the world.
Art Beyond Sight Educational Tools
Art education and exposure to the arts are crucial for the advancement of key issues in the education and rehabilitation of people who have lost their vision. According to AEB, art making fosters sensory awareness, manual dexterity, self confidence, and self-awareness. For people who are blind, art education also helps to develop Braille-reading skills, mobility and map-reading and tactile-exploration.skills. All of these contribute significantly to a person's academic and professional success. In addition, being versed in and contributing to visual culture helps blind people break through the social barriers and enhances their full participation in the world.
Art Beyond Sight Community Participation
The 200 participating organizations focus on familiarizing parents, educators, and school and museum administrators with the benefits of art activities and museum visits for adults and children with vision loss and how art can be used to foster braille literacy. Another is to enable community institutions to create and maintain programming for people with visual impairments through a variety of learning tools. Blind people are invited to participate in educational and art activities, and museums and schools lacking art programs for blind and visually impaired patrons and students.
Art Organizational Showcases
Museums, libraries, schools and other community institutions and even individuals, are given an opportunity to showcase the work they are doing to promote art education for people who are blind or visually impaired, as well as to raise public awareness.
An example is the nonprofit Tohono Chul Park Art Gallery and Exhibit Hall in Tucson, Arizona which is featuring a "Touch and Feel" exhibit throughout the month of October. The art work on display has been created by both sighted and visually impaired artists from all over the United States. Students from the School for the Deaf and Blind and veterans from the local Veterans Hospital Blind Clinic are escorted by specially trained art docents around the exhibits as well as having braille descriptions available. The sighted public is also invited to the exhibit and encouraged to "touch and feel" the art work to share the experience of those without or diminished sight.
All lives are enriched by art and Art Beyond Sight Awareness Month provides an opportunity for those with visual impairments, adults and children, to participate in the art gallery and museum experience.
For more information about Art Beyond Sight Awareness Month, special events near you, accessible museums and multi-sensory programs for blind and sighted students and adults, see www.artbeyondsight.org
Touch and Feel Exhibit
|
What do you think about this article?
More in Visual & Performing Arts
Latest Articles