Art Beyond Sight Collaborative
Coordinated by Art Beyond Sight, Inc., Art Beyond Sight Collaborative is dedicated to making the visual arts play a vital role in the lives of people who are blind and visually impaired. The Collaborative includes:
- Community-based groups and local affiliates of national agencies
- Museums and other arts-related organizations
- Elementary and high schools
- Colleges and universities
- National and international advocacy groups
- Blind, visually impaired, and sighted art enthusiasts.
Internationally, the Art Beyond Sight Collaborative provides a forum for ongoing interdisciplinary dialogues among researchers and practitioners who share expertise and materials. On the local level, the collaborative assists museum professionals and educators, parents, artists, and art lovers to create vehicles for lasting change in their communities.
How & Why to Join
Why should you join the Art Beyond Sight Collaborative?
For Institutions: How to Join
For Individuals: How to Join
Why should you join the Art Beyond Sight Collaborative?
Collaborative projects offer many benefits to institutions and individuals.
Benefits for Collaborating Institutions:
- Share resources and materials crucial for launching a new program.
- Share the expenses of costly items, such as software, internet service, technical support, consultants, and programmers.
- Share staff expertise, drawing upon the unique strengths of each collaborating institution.
- Get tools for maintaining a program and developing its scope.
- Find national and international recognition for unique programs and pioneering educators.
- Document programs/accessible exhibits/trainings that are of short duration or did not continue, and make them a permanent online resource.
- Review new programs with colleagues from other institutions.
- Never re-invent the wheel - being part of the collaborative reduces the need to duplicate the work of other educators or cultural institutions.
- Improve chances of receiving larger state and federal grants.
Benefits for Individuals (blind and visually impaired adults, children and their families, educators, artists):
- Provides a one-stop educational resource with all information free of charge.
- Integrates experience of collaborating museums, schools for blind students, and pioneering educators from around the world, including India, Sweden, Finland, UK, Italy, Canada, US and South Africa.
- Facilitates online discussion groups for educators, museum professionals, disability advocates, and researchers about a wide variety of subjects.
- Provides community outreach and networking tools that bring cultural institutions and their audiences together.
- Provides noncompetitive promotion of art contests, art programs, professional development courses, and museum programs
- Helps you find advanced online tools and technical capabilities beyond those that institutions could provide independently - such as a multi-sensory online art encyclopedia and multimedia online tutorials.
- Facilitates a centralized online resource for lesson plans and teaching ideas, as well as a resource for open houses and events.
- Creates a higher profile for arts and accessibility programming.
Please contact us about becoming an Art Beyond Sight Collaborative partner. We welcome any and all institutions that support the mission of creating greater accessibility and diversity at cultural institutions. We add the names of new partners to the list of partners semiannually.
For Individuals: How to Join- Join the Art Beyond Sight Discussion Groups. They're free, unmoderated, and open only to those who join. Seek advice, share expertise, and more!
- Sign up for State and National Listservs. Network with others in your community.