ArtsAbly and UBC: Music and Collective Access Symposium

We are delighted to announce the Call for Papers for the Music and Collective Access Symposium, which will occur in February 2026 in Vancouver.

Music and Collective Access Symposium

Link to the published CfP: https://www.artsably.com/call-for-papers-cfp-music-and-collective-access-symposium-2026/

Organizers:

Anabel Maler (UBC), Stefan Sunandan Honisch (UBC), Diane Kolin (ArtsAbly)

When:

February 27 & 28, 2026

Where:

In-Person: St. John’s College, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada
Online (Zoom)

Call for Papers:

Dear all,

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.

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.

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.

Categories:

• Papers (20 minutes, with 10 minutes for discussion)
• Lecture Recitals (30 minutes, with discussion)

Access Supports for the Symposium:

The symposium organizers will provide maximum access support to the best of our ability.

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.

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.

Submission deadline: 

Please submit a 250-word (maximum) abstract to musiccollectiveaccess@gmail.com by Monday December 15th, 2025.

If you have any questions or concerns, please email musiccollectiveaccess@gmail.com.