Make It Last!

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Make It Last!

Overview
Now that you have invested your efforts in creating a dynamic, successful accessibility program, you want to make sure your program lasts beyond the next funding cycle! Museum-based and other not-for-profit programs may define their success by the duration and attendance of their program, as well as the effect on the community served.  The path to success is not an easy one -- as most not-for-profit programs must contend with budget cuts and staff changes -- but it’s well worth the effort.

• Practical Considerations:
• Step One: Document Your Program
• Step Two: Revisit your Short- and Long-term Goals
• Step Three: Audience Development Basics
• Step Four: Networks and Exchanges
• Step Five: Conferences & Awareness Events
• Sample Agendas
• Checklist
• Troubleshooting Tips
• Funding Strategies! Low Cost. No Cost.

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Practical Considerations: Make It Last!

Step One: Document Your Program

The importance of documentation cannot be overstated!
Types of documentation:

• Photographs of participants in the galleries
• Photocopies of their writing and artwork
• Statistics on attendance
• Written evaluations by participants
• Written reports by staff, etc.
• Copies of publicity materials
• Keep digital and hard copies of this information if you have the filing and storage space.

This documentation serves many functions:

• Provides feedback for you on the progress of your program.
• Creates a detailed record of the program for future staff and volunteers (institutional memory).
• Saves time when repeating program next time: you don’t have to completely recreate press releases, invitations, labels, and other materials.
• Supports public relations, advertising, marketing, and outreach efforts.
• Provides concrete evidence of your successes, which will be invaluable in applying for future funding.
• Creates a high profile for your program within the institutional environment, which helps protect your program from budget cuts and attracts funders.
• A well-documented report, with photographs, sent to the participating institutions also helps them realize their accomplishments and may inspire future funding from their network of contacts.

Who to send documentation and reports to:

• Any collaborating educators, as well as their supervisors or directors
• Director of Education
• Development Department
• Public Relations Department
• Museum Director
• Membership Department: If it has a members’ newsletter or journal, request coverage to make your museums members aware of your accessibility programming, and perhaps elicit some donations earmarked for your program.

Review, evaluate, and make changes! To achieve continued success, it is important to assess and evaluate the results of your hard work, gaining confidence from your successes and identifying areas for strengthening your efforts.

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Practical Considerations: Make It Last!

Step Two: Revisit Short- and Long-term Goals

You have a successful pilot.  Where do you go from here?

In your initial planning with your advisory board you discussed institutional priorities, and set up short- and long-term goals. It’s time to revisit those goals and decide where and how to expand your program.

These goals may have included:

• To provide accessible materials to the public
• To establish a museum tour program
• To implement a docent and staff training program
• To establish a multi-session program with a local school district or community center
• To establish an on-site art-making studio program
• Formation of an Access Coordinator position or docent who will oversee this program
• To host and participate in events and conferences: your blind and visually impaired board members can speak at the events, or be panelists at a conference
• To increase employment and volunteer presence of people who are visually impaired or who have other disabilities

To maintain your accessibility programming, it must be dynamic and flexible, responding to the needs of your newly accessed community of people with visual impairments and other disabilities.

Often the development of the program comes naturally. For instance, people who hear about your program for schools may come and ask you for adult tours or art-making programs for students. Listen to your audience, keep an open mind, and cherish people who come knocking on your door asking for an art class or a tour; they just may become your programming partners, advisors, and volunteers.

Following are examples of the next steps in developing your program. The next steps will depend on the specific goals your institution sets before launching your pilot program.

• Expand the range of your educational offering. If you have a touch tour, think about adding a post-visit art-making class either on your premises or at the school. If you have a verbal description tour, think about enhancing it with tactile diagrams, drama, sound, etc. If you have a group of visually impaired adults and seniors that frequent your tours, you can offer an art history course for adults, or an arts, crafts, and writing workshop.

• Expand your educational offering to other segments of the visually impaired community. Your program may be started small with facilitating a group of blind high school students, and incorporating them in the school programs, but then once the staff and volunteers are comfortable with this audience, you can expand the educational offering to adults and people with visual impairments, as well as other disabilities.

• Partner with community-based agencies. Further developing your program or expanding the offering to other groups, like veterans, seniors, preschoolers, etc., does not necessarily mean higher costs; often it can mean the opposite. Now that your staff and volunteers have some experience with this audience, look for partners in your community to create a joint program.  Partnering with another agency that serves or represents this population, such as the local center for the blind, school or library for the blind, senior center or local chapter of the National Association for Parents of Children with Visual Impairments, may help your institution with marketing and launching the program.

• Provide equal experiences for all participants. You may have a successful pilot program that offers blind visitors a good deal of information about the museum’s collection. But do blind visitors leave with the same or comparable experience as sighted viewers? Do they have an opportunity to understand the scope of your collection? Are they given an opportunity to learn and experience your building and learn about its architecture, or are they offered a “segregated” tour in one of the galleries or at the education department?

• Make your special exhibits accessible. Making your special exhibits accessible can really make a difference for your audience. People with disabilities, their educators, and families will look forward to these experiences, make repeat visits to the museum, and grow to be part of your community. Make sure there is an accessibility line in budget and grant proposals for special exhibits.

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Practical Considerations: Make It Last!

Step Three: Audience Development Basics

Even the most interesting programs are underused at times. This is especially true about programs for people with visual disabilities who may not think of themselves as museum-goers or art lovers. So, developing your audience -- reaching out to blind and visually impaired people, teachers, and families of blind children -- is very important.

Long-term success is ensured by community involvement, which provides the interest, attendance, development, and of course, funding for these programs.  Participants who feel welcome in the museum galleries, who know that their needs and interests are reflected in museum activities, and who feel that have a voice in the growth and development of museum programming will commit time, energy, and money to maintain a specialized program. The community served will feel ownership, and this ownership will, with time, extend to other areas of the museum. 

How does an institution foster community ownership? 

• By creating advisory boards or focus groups that allow different disability groups to voice their interests and concerns;
• By reaching out to the disability community on an ongoing basis, and creating partnership with agencies serving and representing people with disabilities;
• By integrating individuals from different community groups into the museum staff, i.e., employing blind individuals, providing internship and volunteers opportunities for people who are blind; and
• By selecting and training a dedicated group of docents who maintain continuity through education department staff changes and have a direct link to the audience being served.

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Practical Considerations: Make It Last!

Step Four: Networks and Exchanges

The benefits of networking, sharing information, and cross-disciplinary exchange: Research and development into practice and back

• Cross-disciplinary exchange. AEB is working to make the wealth of theoretical research accessible to practitioners, but this is only the beginning. To move the field forward, we need documentation on programs that integrate art education and art making into the curriculum of blind and sighted students alike. Educators can provide researchers with essential, practical data and observations on the effects of art education to the social and cognitive development of students of different ages and with different visual impairments. Researchers in medical, cognitive science, and technology fields are working on sensory-processing issues and could have a mutually-beneficial relationship with educators “on the front lines.” Another needed area of collaboration is between researchers and classroom teachers to develop methods of assessment and evaluation. An effective way to maintain this dynamic between researchers and educators around the country is to have informal meetings during national conferences. As this is an interdisciplinary field, "cross"-participating, i.e., attending national conferences outside of our own field, is crucial.

• Think free materials and how to share them. Do not keep your success to yourself; share your stories, the materials you developed, lesson plans, and teaching tips through Art Beyond Sight listservs, lesson plans databases, and through conference presentations and panels.

• Network and share your materials on the Art Beyond Sight Web site and listservs.  Some of the materials include:

• details on articles, books, reviews, journals
• descriptions of new programs or interesting ideas
• announcements about upcoming events
• availability to speak or present on a given topic
• questions about topics covered by listservs
• FYIs
• exhibition announcements
• calls for entries

• Collaboration between institutions and agencies in the community. Encourage museums, schools, and other community-based agencies to partner. There is much to be gained by sharing materials and expertise, training educators, and making museum collections into resources for school educators.

• Join the Art Beyond Sight Collaborative.

http://www.artbeyondsight.org/sidebar/aboutabs.shtml

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Practical Considerations: Make It Last!

Step 5: Conferences and Awareness Events

An important part of outreach and promoting the longevity of your programming is to raise awareness among professionals about making art accessible to people who are blind. Becoming part of the Art Beyond Sight Collaborative is one way to strengthen and grow the community of professionals involved in art accessibility. This places your program not solely as an effort that your institution is making alone, but as part of a larger, national and international movement.

Another excellent way to do this is to establish a presence for your program at national conferences. There are many ways of doing this; you can use any or a combination of these options. Please use the Art Beyond Sight Collaborative as a context for your programming efforts:

• Arrange a pre- or post-conference. 
• Volunteer to organize a panel for conferences you attend, selecting qualified speakers from diverse fields.
• If possible, arrange for a local museum (or another Art Beyond Sight collaborating institution) to host your panel, pre-conference, or other event.
• Involve local Art Beyond Sight collaborators; museums can offer free exhibition passes, for example, to conference participants.
• Offer to participate as a presenter in a panel about disabilities, arts, or other relevant topics. At the panel, distribute materials about the Art Beyond Sight Collaborative and its activities. 
• Host a poster session for Art Beyond Sight multi-sensory online or print publications.
• Arrange in advance for Art Beyond Sight materials to be included in the conference packet.
• Use Art Beyond Sight standard graphics to create a poster about your pre-conference/session/panel. Hang the poster in the reception areas of the conference.
• Distribute braille/large-print fliers about the Art Beyond Sight Collaborative and its annual Awareness Month. If it is a fall event, include information on the annual Art Beyond Sight Telephone Conference Crash Course (for details on it, email coordinator@artbeyondsight.org).
• Have an Art Beyond Sight exhibit set up in the lobby at the time of the main reception, award ceremony, opening or closing session. The exhibit can be as simple as color posters, and Art Beyond Sight publications and videos, as well as flyer about joining the Art Beyond Sight Collaborative and its ongoing activities. You can also include reproductions of blind children’s artwork and works of art by artists who are blind. Invite your blind and visually impaired advisors to attend this exhibit and answer question.
• Arrange an informal meeting or working group of all Art Beyond Sight collaborators present – this can be done at the conference, i.e., at the last minute. If there are no evening activities planned for the conference, consider meeting over dinner in a nearby restaurant.

Things to keep in mind when organizing a conference event:

• Try to make your presentation, poster session, panel, or exhibit interdisciplinary and/or multisensory. This is a way of establishing that Art Beyond Sight is not just museums offering touch tours, and presenting on the functions or programs of their institutions, but a forum where researchers, blind people, and practitioners meet – and it is that meeting of disciplines that creates progress and momentum.
• Think DIVERSITY. In organizing a panel, make sure that it is diverse geographically, in terms of dis/abilities, in terms of the size and type of institutions, etc.  A museum-goer or who is blind can bring an interesting personal perspective. Representatives of different geographical areas of the country, as well representatives of large and small, rural and urban museums, add to the diversity of the panel.  Include representatives of diverse social and ethnic groups. 
• Before any presentation, or at the beginning of the presentation, you can include a slide with an overview of the Art Beyond Sight Collaborative, showing the range of institutions and disciplines. It should not matter who is the speaker for the Collaborative – all Collaborative members at the event should see their names on the structure of the Collaborative, or in braille brochures handed out at the conference.
• Think REPLICABILITY when you are deciding on the topic of your presentation or choosing speakers for your pre-conference/panel. Consider what information you want your audience to take home after the session is over. Include topics and presenters that speak about pioneering programs that your audience can use to advance the field. Often exciting presentations about a one-time event at an institution with specific financing are of no help to others who are not in the position to replicate it.

Conference follow-up. The follow-up discussion after the conference presentation or panel can be arranged through a telephone conference call. The goal of this conference-call session is to inform the participants about the Art Beyond Sight Collaborative’s activities, its listservs, and discussion groups. Coordinating a conference call is easy. There is no cost involved if you use a free telephone-conference-call service, such as FreeBridge; with this service, each participant is responsible for his or her own long-distance fees.

If hosting a telephone-conference call:

• Make sure the telephone conference is well publicized at the convention.
• Use an Art Beyond Sight template to create a handout about this telephone conference.
• Find a moderator for the conference call, if it is not you.
• Select a topic and qualified speakers to cover the topic or range of topics, such as basic training in the Collaborative’s goals and services, an introduction to research, and current initiatives relevant to the conference you covered.
• Start the telephone conference with an explanation about the Art Beyond Sight Collaborative and its initiatives. Emphasize at the beginning and the end of the telephone conference how to join the Collaborative, and provide information on its listservs and online discussion groups

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Sample Agenda

Where do we stand?  Program evaluation

• Review the results of the program: statistics, attendance, projects completed, participant evaluations, and testimonials.

• Review the development of new tools: tactiles, verbal descriptions, large-print and braille accessible texts. Where do we need to invest more in tools such as tactiles, verbal descriptions, etc.?

• Review response to outreach efforts: how many of the organizations contacted responded to mailings and outreach efforts? How can we involve more people? Do we have the capabilities of handling more participants? In what way?

• Review training efforts.  Evaluate docent response and self-evaluation, as well as suggestions for improvement and training requests.

• Review available resources. Are we using all the available resources, i.e., staff, advisory board, volunteers, interns, community partners? Where else can we improve?

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Checklist

Evaluation process:

1. Design participant and docent evaluations.
2. Compile statistics for programs.
3. Organize documentation: photographs of participants, photocopies of artwork, exhibition materials (invitations, flyers, pamphlets).
4. Compile budget documents to evaluate how much the program costs and where the money went.
5. Write a report, with an overall description of the program and the above information.

Development opportunities for the program:

1. Program content development

• Develop more verbal descriptions.
• Develop an audio guide using new portable audio technologies.
• Enhance verbal description tours with multisensory elements, such as touch objects, tactile diagrams, high-contract reproductions, drama, sound, or scents.
• Develop or expand a touch tour.
• Develop or incorporate your museum’s architecture into the tour.
• Make special exhibitions accessible.
• Add art-making components.

1. Involve additional audiences. Look through the list of audiences in the Community Outreach chapter.
2. Create new partnerships with community organizations that serve different audiences, such as seniors, veterans, or families.

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Troubleshooting Tips: Make It Last!

• Your new supervisor or the new director of education is uncomfortable with the program.  He may be concerned about the condition of artworks being used in a touch tour, blind people bumping into things in the galleries, or he may not be at all familiar with the research and scientific basis of the program.
   
• Introduce your new supervisor to the history of the program and members of your advisory board. 
• Ask for written testimonies from people who have attended your programs and show national statistics on blindness/sight loss, as well as numbers representing your local community. 
• Arrange a conference call with other museums (try get either a well-known museum or one nearby). 
• Explain how the learning tools used in the tour (touch, verbal description, tactile diagrams) work. Invite him to take part in your tour.
• BE PERSISTANT.  It may take time for him to get comfortable with the idea, but if you go about it the right way it will probably happen.

• Making your special exhibits accessible often seems like a financial burden. Things are less expensive if planned in advance.
   
• If this is a traveling exhibit, you could work up an arrangement with other institutions involved to share tools like tactile diagrams or costs for developing an accessible audio guide.
• Sometimes you can use some of the exhibition budget for creating accessible features, most of which can provide a fun and multisensory experience for all audiences.
• Work with curators and exhibition designers to make space and signage accessible.
• Work with your publications department to make accessible brochures for the exhibition.
• An audio guide for the general public can be made accessible to blind people, i.e., include more involved verbal descriptions. Don’t make the verbal descriptions overly long, however, so the audio guide can be used for all audiences.
• Tactile diagrams with recordings of the guidance of the hands or relief models can be placed in the exhibition hall or galleries; all audiences enjoy these tactile experiences.

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Funding Strategies: Low Cost. No Cost. Make It Last!

Tips for creating a budget-cut-proof program
Low cost

• An inexpensive way to give the community a sense of ownership is to employ people who are blind or visually impaired in any capacity. Train them to be docents and give tours, or offer volunteer opportunities, including online volunteering.  Offer museum internships to high school and college student with vision loss. Visitors are likely to come back to an institution where they were greeted by staff members who are blind or visually impaired.
• Make sure there is an accessibility line in budget and grant proposals for new or special exhibitions.

No cost

• Build on the foundation you already have! Adapting established programming materials to different needs has the virtue of efficient use of economic and personnel resources. 
• Create a network of support for your program in your community. Successful programs – those that have life beyond that of a particular individual, be it the program coordinator, director of education, or museum director – have the involvement of the community and directly address the community’s needs. Community support provides the marketing rationale for continual training of staff and docents, and of course, funding.
• Volunteers, docents, and advisors are the pillars of your program. Ensure their interest, continued training, and commitment to this program.
• Share your success with others! Present your program at regional and national conferences.

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