This phase creates more accessible arts events in the Halifax Regional Municipality.
Our team is working to create an informal auditing process for arts events and venues. The auditing process will focus on creating greater accessibility for persons with disabilities.
About this project
Phase One of this program focused on assessing the need for accessibility in the arts. It uncovered accessibility gaps for many groups of disadvantaged people in the Halifax Region.
Phase Two saw the creation of an accessibility resource hub. The hub helps arts venues, patrons, artists, and event planners integrate access measures.
The hub includes resources that help create accessibility in:
the built environment
the online world
temporary event spaces
Now, in Phase Three, we are creating a basic auditing template and scorecard for venue locations, arts organizations and festivals to learn from. These tools allow our team to assess the accessibility of spaces for their basic features and the ability to provide accessible exhibiting and performance spaces for booking to the public.
Our goal is to inform our stakeholders on both strengths and areas for improvement for these spaces. This scorecard will also be used to inform advertising and promotion of the level of accessibility of a venue and what features for an inclusive event are being offered. Our goal is to facilitate and provide learnings to arts organizations and venues who are working together to improve access to art and live performances in our region.
Our auditing process:
Our team will create the audit system framework and methodology.
The team will start the audit process. We will perform on-site audits at venues.
We will provide the venues and events with the results of their audits.
We will include recommendations on how they can improve accessibility.
These audits will help venues with:
marketing and attracting rentals
creating transparency
Benefits for patrons and artists include:
the ability to plan your visit
not needing to self-identify with a particular disability in order to gain accommodation for any particular needs
Events and renting organizations benefit from:
being better able to communicate with guests
being able to plan ahead of time
ensuring needs are met
Our partners
We are partnering with Nocturne and Halifax Fringe and will be piloting our audit system in preparation for their 2024 festivals. We will audit several locations for each event.
Nocturne
We are excited to partner with Nocturne for Phase 3 of our Accessibility Project. Here is a quote from Nocturne:
“Founded in 2008, Nocturne Art at Night Society (Nocturne) is a non-profit organization based in Kjipuktuk (Halifax) that gives voice and agency to the local arts community by facilitating collaborations and exhibition opportunities. Nocturne’s mandate is to present critical and relevant art events of a high artistic and professional standard that focuses on the strengths of the local art community and features regional, national, and international representation.Our values include taking an Artist-Centered Approach, centring Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion, and facilitating Empowerment through arts.
It is because of these values and commitment to providing opportunities that uplift artists and the community, that Nocturne became interested in participating in Eastern Front Theatre’s Accessibility Project. Our board and staff are continuously learning about ways to make the festival and year-round programming not only more welcoming, but more accessible and accommodating for all. When it comes to accessibility in the arts, we now know that there is no one-size-fits-all approach to making a project accessible, and there are many, many factors that go into providing and communicating accessibility to our attendees and artists.
Our main goal in participating in these audits is to be able to better assess some of our key site-specific projects for accessibility criteria, especially criteria that is often overlooked such as sensory triggers, which often go hand-in-hand with night festivals. Working closely with Nocturne artists and the EFT team, we will find ways to tailor individual projects to be more inclusive, without compromising artistic integrity. Through this process, we hope to find ways to make accessibility an integral part of our programming and to reassess what it means to be an ‘Art at Night Festival’ in 2024.”
Halifax Fringe
We are also excited to partner with the Fringe for Phase 3 of our Accessibility Project.
Meet the team
The Phase Three team was specially selected for their unique experience and skills. As a team of individuals living with disabilities, we are proud to bring our lived experiences to our work.
Hannah Wood, Project Lead
Hannah Wood is a disabled accessibility consultant and advocate. She is a specialist in the accessibility of the built environment and in public and business policy for persons with disabilities.
She has served on the Built Environment Standards Committee for the Accessibility Directorate of Nova Scotia and currently serves on the Standards Committee for Accessibility of Goods and Services. Her company Fulcrum Accessibility Consulting was founded in 2017.
Visit Fulcrum Accessibility Consulting at https://www.facebook.com/Fulcrumaccess
Tara Parsons, Administration
Tara has a lifetime's worth of disability advocacy and lived experience with Spina Bifida under their belt. She is an administrator, passionate about social issues, live theatre and the arts and spends her spare time reading, cross-stitching, and gaming.
She is a Hobbit at heart, and they dream of living in a Hobbit House and going to New Zealand one day. They share their current home with her parents, a dog named Pocket and a cat named Gemma.
Amy-Lynn Denham, Communications Specialist
Amy-Lynn Denham is an online marketing professional. Her work focuses on helping brands use honest, helpful marketing strategies to build long-term relationships with their audiences. She is the host of the Best Life Business Marketing podcast, where she explores how to use marketing, mindset, and organizational strategies to create a business that supports the lifestyle you need.
She is also a part-time acrylic and charcoal artist. Half of her artwork is focused on creating serenity and a feeling of escape. The other half is focused on raising consciousness around topics of self-love, acceptance, disability, and body positivity.
As an artist with a disability, Amy is no stranger to the barriers faced by artists and patrons, alike. She is excited to be part of this team because it allows her to bring together her loves of business, communication, and art into a space where real change can be made.
Amy would like to use this opportunity to call attention to the Ehlers Danlos Society: https://www.ehlers-danlos.com
Visit Amy at www.denhammarketing.ca
Follow Amy on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/amylynndenham
Meghan Sivani
A staple of Tiohtià:ke's (Montreal's) experimental, indie and punk scenes, multi-instrumentalist, producer, sound engineer and community advocate Meghan Sivani has since relocated back to her hometown of Kjipuktuk (Halifax), and returned to performance after a few years of hiatus spent rehabilitating from an injury.
After 15+ years as a touring musician, she is currently enjoying the freedom of home studio experimentation with the co-cultivation of community care, collaboration and disability justice at the forefront of her music practice.
Leona Burkey
Leona Burkey is a contemporary roots singer-songwriter, troubadour, host and community educator from Halifax/Cape Breton and an ECMA + MusicNS nominated recording artist.
Outside of performing and music making, she is currently a proud member of Eastern Front Theatre's Accessibility Project Team which folds her broad experience in disability advocacy and personal interest in inclusive practices in live events nicely together with real-life impact. Inclusion is good for everyone, you know?
Leona's other projects include: WomenFolk (radio, live events, community), Host, “Rising Tide” accessible/inclusive concert series at The Stage at Saint Andrews (2024-25), Prospects Music Club (founder/facilitator community-based music program for young adults). Leona is a mother of two, long time non-profiteer & tub-thumper for accessibility, inclusion, neurodiversity and womenfolk community causes - life’s a joyful catastrophe inspiring music and community work that is relatable, authentic and brimming with undeterred optimism.
Leona would like to use this opportunity to call attention to Autism Nova Scotia https://www.autismnovascotia.ca
Visit Leona at www.leonaburkey.com
seeley quest
seeley quest (sie/hir) is a trans disabled environmentalist in Canada since 2017, working in literary and body-based arts and education for equity, who presented in the San Francisco Bay Area 2001-14, with Sins Invalid 2007-2015.
Hir play “Crooked” is in At the Intersection of Disability and Drama; and first game narrative debuted for Canada’s National AccessAbility Week 2020. Sie inaugurated a 2021 Quebec Writers’ Federation disabled writers’ workshop, has led "Poetry, Prose, and Dramatic Writing From the Body-Mind" for Toronto’s Workman Arts, and "Solarpunk: Writing Futures With Resiliency" for the Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia. More’s coming soon at https://questletters.net. Sie’s very glad for EFT’s initiative on this project, and the opportunity to be with the team supporting it.
sign up for news at https://questletters.net
Lux Gow-Habrich
Lux Gow-Habrich (星尘) is a multidisciplinary visual artist, facilitator and support worker of mixed, second-generation Chinese and German heritage, practicing in Kjipuktuk (Halifax, NS), Mi'kma'ki, the traditional and unceded territory of the L’nu.
They work primarily in movement, craft and creative community practices to redefine our understanding of art and cultural praxis as sacred remedial forces that can deeply transform and mend. By redirecting discourses around disability away from that of personal failings and acknowledging instead the long-standing structural forces that contribute to the harm faced and embodied by those on the margins, she shapes instances to collectively hold compassion for the diversity within our experiences. Committed to developing inclusive creative platforms, and reimagining cultural futures outside of the parameters of colonialism, Orientalism and white-supremacy – Lux’s intuitive and commemorative practice is an expression rooted in relational and access dreaming.
Visit Lux at https://www.luxgowhabrich.com
Follow Lux on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/lux.sparkledust
The work has only just begun
We recognize that accessibility is about a lot more than creating physically accessible spaces. Access disadvantages affect more than just the disabled population.
We recognize that there are many reasons people may have difficulty accessing the arts in our community. We also recognize the intersectionality of disability, gender, and race, among other considerations.
The team at Eastern Front Theatre looks forward to creating a more robust auditing process in the future that includes: cultural, language, and gender representation and accessibility.
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