CAN to Participate in National Grant Program

by Don Ehman and Magaly Roig

The New Jersey State Council on the Arts is partnering with the Wallace Foundation and other key organizations in New Jersey to understand and build cultural participation in our state. Through the Building Participation/New Jersey project, the Council is approaching issues of participation initially at a grassroots, local level. It is partnering in this work with the 21 County Arts Agencies (CAAs), regional folklife centers, ArtPride NJ Foundation, and the NJ Arts Access Cultural Access Network. This program, entitled START, is a plan to broaden, deepen and diversify cultural participation in the communities throughout the state. Together the partners will gather information from the field and analyze the barriers that prevent cultural participation. Together, the partners have created a community of learning regarding the latest research on cultural participation.

The County Arts Agencies have formed local consortia of important community stakeholders to assess current barriers to cultural participation in their region, as have ArtPride NJ Foundation and the Cultural Access Network. These consortia have reviewed existing information to identify barriers that they believe could be addressed positively and have tested assumptions, conducted research, and gathered additional information to select a single cultural participation challenge and developed a project to address it.

The Cultural Access Network received a $50,000 grant from the NJ State Council on the Arts to carry out a project that assists the State’s cultural organizations in making their programs and facilities more accessible to patrons with disabilities. The Cultural Access Network will conduct a series of focus groups and distribute surveys in at least six counties to determine the interests, buying patterns, and perceptions of individuals with disabilities as it pertains to participating in cultural events. As a result of the findings, the Cultural Access Network will develop a marketing plan that can be utilized by the state’s county arts agencies and the state’s arts organizations. “I am excited about the opportunity for Burlington and Mercer Counties to join forces to assist the New Jersey Cultural Access Network with establishing a series of focus groups,” says Jay J. Jones, Coordinator for Burlington County PASP.

Added Brian C. Shomo, Director of the New Jersey Division of the Deaf and Hard of Hearing, “it will help assist in making theatre and the arts across New Jersey more widely accessible to Deaf, Deaf-Blind, Hard of Hearing and Late-Deafened people.”

This project will have benefits on both a state and national level. Paula Terry, Director of Accessibility for the National Endowment of the Arts states, “The Cultural Access Network’s latest project once again proves the foresight that New Jersey has in finding innovative ways to understand the needs of and serve people with disabilities. This project should not only be of great value to the New Jersey arts community, but my office would like to share the project with other states to encourage and assist in replication.”

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The Cultural Access Network is a co-sponsored project of the New Jersey Theatre Alliance and the New Jersey State Council on the Arts / Department of State, a Partner Agency of the National Endowment for the Arts.