ACCESS TO THE ARTS

The Maine Arts Commission will receive a well-deserved award Saturday for its work on making the arts more accessible to people with disabilities, older adults, veterans and people living in institutions. The award from the National Endowment for the Arts reflects well on the commission’s valuable work and on the state generally for connecting more people to the arts.

According to the NEA, Maine is the 2006 recipient of the National Accessibility Leadership Award because several of its accessibility programs have become national models and Maine has made long-term improvements in accessibility. For example, the commission got the state thinking about the topic through 27 forums titled “Art Knows No Boundaries: What is Accessibility?” And it established a panel on the topic, where more than half its members are people with disabilities, to improve access to the arts.

Besides helping to make buildings more accessible, the commission developed assistance for local arts organizations to meet the standards of the Americans with Disabilities Act. During the past three years, its Web site, MaineArts.com, has become 100 percent ADA compliant. Coming up are an April program called Careers Forum in the Arts for People with Disabilities and, long-term, a plan to develop programs dealing with the arts and health care and aging.

The accessibility work by the commission fits well with one of the commission’s primary goals – to give people of all ages the opportunity to come in contact with artists and art-making. This opportunity may be heightened by noticing the pervasiveness of the arts in anyone’s life – from the design of everyday objects to the opera on the radio – but not everyone can participate in the arts the same way and, more so, not everyone can attend symphonies, museums and galleries unless physical spaces have been properly designed.

That isn’t a hard concept, but with all the demands on any government agency, to take the time to ensure all residents have a chance to benefit is unusual. According to arts commission director Alden Wilson, the $30,000 that comes with the award will be used to further expand accessibility in the arts here. “We are enormously pleased to be the only state in the country selected to receive this commendation for our work,” he said.

Maine should be pleased too – the commission is bringing the arts to more people than ever before.