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ArtsAbly's Bulletin
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Dear followers, dear friends,
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As we reach the end of 2025, I would like to take the opportunity to wish you Happy Holidays. This year has been incredibly rich for ArtsAbly, and this is thanks to you, supporters, workshop participants, collaborators, partners, readers, and anybody who interacted with us.
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This newsletter starts with an open conversation article about accessibility for singers in choirs. What started as thoughts in a Facebook post became this article, which has been shared widely on social media. A modified version will appear later in the year in Choral Canada's journal, Anacrusis.
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You will also discover five 2025 highlights, and some news about the upcoming Music and Collective Access symposium in February 2026.
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We are already preparing for the new year, with new podcast episodes and a very promising symposium.
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Article: My experience as a disabled singer in vocal ensembles using a wheelchair
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"As I just finished my last concert of 2025 yesterday night, I want to reflect on my experience as a disabled singer in vocal ensembles using a wheelchair.
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If you know me, you know that I love singing. I have been singing with choirs and vocal ensembles for many years. What a great experience it is to sing with others, feeling the energy of the surrounding performers, the singers, the orchestra, the conductor! I am also very grateful and happy to be visible as a performer with disabilities, showing people in the audience (including audience members with disabilities) that “yes, it is possible to be disabled and to perform.” It is possible. Yet, it is complicated.
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The performance world is not built for people with disabilities. I face issues each time I perform at a concert. The groups with which I am singing are helpful, accommodating, kind. They want me to feel as welcome and included as possible, and it works. In rehearsals, once my spot is decided, usually first row just in front of the conductor, things are easy. People get used to me, they know the space my wheelchair needs, they create some room so that I can circulate, go to the washrooms, have access to scores, etc.
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But every time there is a concert, it gets complicated. Venues chosen are deemed accessible, but as usual, accessibility is thought for the audience, not for the performers. I impose to have all information related to accessibility for performers in the venue maximum one week before the concert, which does not always happen. Occasionally, accessibility details are forgotten and I need to figure out last minute, which is quite stressful: the accessible door is locked when I arrive, or the accessible washroom is not really accessible, or the automatic door opener is not activated, or there is a table installed just in front of the foldable stair lift which is never used and nobody knows where the key is. It is not always the case, but when it happens, I lose some autonomy, which is not okay."
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The rest of the article is available on ArtsAbly's website. The direct link is below.
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ArtsAbly 2025 in five highlights
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June 13: 50th episode of ArtsAbly in Conversation
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This special podcast episode celebrated the 50th since ArtsAbly was launched in 2024. It was a live online discussion with artists who have been guests of the podcast in the past. Participants discussed the power of artists with disabilities in the arts industry: visual arts, theatre, music, dance, etc. We will share tips, good practices, and examples of accessible venues. It was an engaging session where talented artists share their insights, inspirations, and creative processes. This event was a unique opportunity to connect with artists from various backgrounds and learn about their artistic journey.
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August 9-10: Music in the Village – FabCollab
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During this two-days festival, the past came to life in the Village at Black Creek on August 9th and 10th, 2025, organized by FabCollab. The upcoming shows illuminated the historic village with live performances all weekend long! Visitors could travel through time and catch all of the acts by a range of all-star artists. ArtsAbly was the accessibility advisor for this event, we were present onsite for the entire festival.
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The collaboration with FabCollab will continue in 2026.
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October 4: City Centre Musical Productions Accessibility Workshop
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ArtsAbly gave a workshop about accessibility in the performing arts to members of City Centre Musical Productions in Mississauga, Ontario, on October 4th, 2025. Great group, great interactions! Thank you to all the participants for attending the workshop.
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We regularly organize workshops in Canada, contact us to know more.
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Contact us for the full list.
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November 6-9: American Musicological Society Conference
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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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November 12: 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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Contact us for more information.
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Music and Collective Access Symposium 2026
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ArtsAbly and UBC are partnering to organize the Music and Collective Access Symposium in February 2026.
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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)
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We shared the Call for Papers, with a deadline on December 15, 2025. We received a wonderful variety of proposed contributions, and we are grateful for the time and effort submitters have taken to respond to our call. We are now entering the abstracts reviewing phase, and will let contributors know of our decision soon. For authors whose presentations we are unable to include in this symposium, we plan to reach out to explore possible ways to collaborate.
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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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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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More information and full program will be posted in 2026.
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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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