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ArtsAbly's Bulletin
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Dear followers, dear friends,
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November has been a busy month for ArtsAbly. Our activities were presented at the American Musicological Society Conference in Minneapolis, then back in Toronto at OCAD University, and we just launched the Call for Papers for the upcoming Music and Collective Access Symposium in partnership with the University of British Columbia.
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You can find more information and a link to the CfP in this newsletter. Don't hesitate to share with your networks!
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Conference: ArtsAbly at the American Musicological Society Conference in Minneapolis
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The Amercian Musicological Society (AMS) conference is an annual event happening in a city of the United States, usually joint with another music society such as the Society for Ethnomusicology (SEM) or the Society for Music Theory (SMT). This year was an AMS-SMT event. It took place on 6-9 November 2025 in Minneapolis, Minnesota, at the Hyatt Regency Minneapolis. Every year, musicologists, music theorists, graduate students and professors get together to share their knowledge and present their research. Diane Kolin, founder of ArtsAbly and PhD candidate in Musicology at York University in Toronto, delivered a paper about ArtsAbly as a tool for Disability Activism and Disability Culture, invited by the Music and Disability Study Group. This group is a fantastic community of musicologists and music theorists interested in questions related to disability and music. Our session, on the theme “Musicking in Disabled Community: Access Intimacy and Cultural Activism,” was scheduled on November 8 in the afternoon and also featured the musicologist Elizabeth McLain and the composer Molly Joyce.
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Lecture at OCAD University: Accessibility assessments of public art installations
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ArtsAbly regularly assesses public art installations. Diane is a certified Rick Hansen accessibility assessor (RHFAC). Her colleague Roman Romanov teaches at OCAD University, the Ontario College of Art & Design University, in Toronto. He asked Diane to present the accessibility assessments activities and to evaluate the students' end-of-term accessible design projects. It was a fascinating moment of exchange about what it means to create a design accessible to all. Thank you to Roman and his students for this afternoon full of important conversations.
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Call for Papers (CfP): Music and Collective Access Symposium 2026
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ArtsAbly and UBC are delighted to announce the Call for Papers for the Music and Collective Access Symposium.
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Please help us spread the word and share this newsletter or the CfP with your networks. Thank you!
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Link to the Call for Papers:
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Anabel Maler (UBC), Stefan Sunandan Honisch (UBC), Diane Kolin (ArtsAbly)
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- In-Person: St. John’s College, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada
- Online (Zoom)
We are pleased to invite you to the upcoming Music and Collective Access Symposium, which will take place from Friday, February 27 to Saturday, February 28, 2026, in Vancouver BC, Canada, hosted by St. John’s College at the University of British Columbia.
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This hybrid (in-person and online, synchronous) conference is a collaborative undertaking between ArtsAbly, a not-for-profit organization working with performers and schools to make the arts more accessible to all, faculty members at UBC, and Kickstart Disability Arts and Culture, a Vancouver not-for-profit organization.
The symposium will offer performances, workshops and lectures, led by specialists, scholars and performers from across Canada, and will provide a forum for claiming access as a collective responsibility, while thinking through the theoretical, practical, aesthetic, and educational questions that individual access needs present in performance and learning environments. Four workshops will be featured: Braille notation, American Sign Language (ASL), accessible technology and instrument design, and performance and improvisation.
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We gratefully acknowledge that the symposium has been made possible by the support of our host, St. John’s College, UBC, a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Partnership Development Grant, a SSHRC Race, Gender, and Diversity Initiative Grant, and UBC Strategic Equity and Anti-Racism (sTEAR) funding. The UBC Vancouver campus is situated on the traditional, ancestral, and unceded lands of the Musqueam Nation. Elder Larry Grant is a Faculty Fellow of the College.
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- Papers (20 minutes, with 10 minutes for discussion)
- Lecture Recitals (30 minutes, with discussion)
Access Supports for the Symposium:
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The symposium organizers will provide maximum access support to the best of our ability.
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The symposium is in a hybrid format, welcoming both online and in-person synchronous presentations. All symposium sessions will include Sign Language interpretation, and Communication Access Real Time (CART) captioning. In addition, hired students will be available to provide help moving around the University of British Columbia for both days of the symposium. All symposium materials will be available in large print format (24 point, Sans Serif). For participants attending in person, there will be a designated quiet room, and we will provide a scent-free environment. For participants attending online (Zoom), participating in discussion both by speaking and by typing will be available. Symposium organizers will read typed comments and questions aloud for everyone. For online sessions, we will ask participants to avoid using emojis, and to refrain from typing comments during sessions, to avoid access barriers for people using assistive technology.
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If you wish to discuss specific access needs with us at any point, please feel welcome to write to the symposium organizers using the dedicated email address provided below.
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Support us
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Thanks to our generous supporters, our activities work well. Even small donations count. Clicking on the "Support us" menu will lead you to options to support us: buy us a coffee on Ko-fi or make a donation via PayPal. Don't hesitate to share it with others. Thank you!
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