English 
French To celebrate our 50th episode, ArtsAbly invited 12 past guests for a live online discussion about the power of artists with disabilities in the arts industry: visual arts, theatre, music, etc. Our guests shared tips, good practices, and examples of accessible venues.
This post presents the resources mentioned during the conversation.
Guests included:
- Alex Bulmer, Playwright and theatre artist.
- Emily Schooley, Actor and filmmaker.
- Kemal Gorey, Media Composer, RAMPD Secretary.
- Malicious Sheep, Multidisciplinary artist.
- A. Laura Brody, Curator, Founder of Opulent Mobility.
- Rory McLeod, Artistic Director of Xenia Concerts.
- Stefan Sunandan Honisch, Musician, Sessional Lecturer, Theatre Studies.
- Andrew Dell’Antonio, Musicologist, Professor.
- Elizabeth McLain, Musicologist, Assistant Professor.
- Robin Hahn, Soprano, opera singer.
- Deshaymond, Singer, songwriter, producer.
- Heather Feather, Children’s performer.
The episode was hosted by Diane Kolin, Musicologist and singer, founder and director of ArtsAbly.
You can find below the links to the episodes and resource pages for each guest, along with other relevant content discussed during the roundtable.
Host:
Diane Kolin, Musicologist and singer, founder and director of ArtsAbly.
Creative Connector and RAMPD Prop member.
Guests:
Alex Bulmer, Playwright and theatre artist
Creative Connector member.
Alex Bulmer’s episode: Episode 14
About Alex Bulmer
Named one of the most influential disabled artists by UK’s Power Magazine, Alex Bulmer has over thirty professional years’ experience across theatre, film, radio and education. She is fuelled by a curiosity of the improbable, dedicated to collaborative practice, and deeply informed by her experience of becoming blind.
Being Heumann
We shared an article on social media a few days ago about this movie.
BAFTA nominee Ruth Madeley will star as disability rights activist Judy Heumann in Academy Award winner Siân Heder’s upcoming feature “Being Heumann” for Apple Original Films. Based on Heumann’s bestselling memoir of the same title, “Being Heumann” follows the activist as she leads over a hundred disabled people to take over the San Francisco Federal Building, kicking off a 28-day sit-in.
Read the article about Being Heumann on Variety.com
Emily Schooley, Actor and filmmaker
Creative Connector member.
Emily Schooley’s episode: Episode 45
Emily Schooley’s resource page
About Emily Schooley
Emily Schooley is an award-winning multi-dimensional performer, filmmaker, and storyteller. She works primarily across theatre, film, and new media as an actor, voiceover artist, director, writer, and host. While Tkaronto is her current home base, she creates and tours work throughout North America and internationally. To date, Emily’s independent work has screened at festivals across North and South America, UK, Europe, Africa, and Asia. Her 26-minute sapphic short “Life and the Art of Lying” won multiple awards including Best LGBT Short (Toronto Short Film Festival 2018). The film also received recognition from the Swedish institute ValueCine for significantly surpassing gender norms on-screen: with over 90% of total screentime and dialogue going to women. Her most recent short “The Sweetest Goodbye” – which Emily wrote, produced, directed and stars in – has received a record seven awards and nominations thus far in its festival run; it was funded by the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council, and generously supported by Panavision Toronto, William F. White, and Workman Arts.
For updates on Emily Schooley’s activities, visit her Patreon page.
The Squeaky Wheel: Canada
Based on Steven Verdile’s popular web publication The Squeaky Wheel and produced by Hitsby Entertainment in association with AMI TV, The Squeaky Wheel: Canada is a satirical, half-hour news format which pokes fun at the ableist society people with disabilities face every day. Directed by Lucy Belgum and Tobi Abdul, the series stars Graham Kent and Gaitrie Persaud as lead anchors Grant Gewürztraminer and Arianna Salara. The ensemble cast of Margaret Rose, Samantha Wyss, Sivert Das, Wesley Magee-Saxton and Yousef Kadoura are on the scene, ready to take on absurd situations and characters, including flipping the script and embodying obnoxious able-bodied/neurotypical personalities. It was just nominated for two Canadian screen awards.
The episode on which Emily Schooley worked is called “Are We Filming This?”
Kemal Gorey, Media Composer, RAMPD Secretary
RAMPD Prop member.
Kemal Gorey’s episode: Episode 37
About Kemal Gorey
Kemal Gorey is a professional composer, mainly working for the media industry; making arrangements and orchestrations for songwriters and producers. He also does orchestral mock-ups for fellow composers. His passion is to tell stories with music. Composing and designing tracks that serve motion picture in a perfect manner is his humble obsession. Since his childhood, music has been his trusted guide to fully internalize films, TV series, and video games. Music has always come to his rescue, when it was hard to catch a slight gesture of a character due to his specific visual impairment. He has always believed in the unique role of scoring in a picture, and how important it is to elevate the story for the audience. He is a proud member of the Able Artist Foundation (AAF) based in the United States. AAF works to support composers with disabilities from all around the world, and advocates for them in music and entertainment industries. He is also the secretary of RAMPD (Recording Artists and Music Professionals with Disabilities).
Malicious Sheep, Multidisciplinary artist
Creative Connector member.
Malicious Sheep’s episode: Episode 9
Malicious Sheep’s resource page
About Malicious Sheep
Malicious Sheep is a disabled and queer multidisciplinary artist, photographer and vocalist from rural Ontario, Canada. The artist is self-taught in many mediums including, but not limited to drawing, painting, sculpture, fibre, mixed media, performance, assemblage of found objects, digital and time-based art. Malicious Sheep has developed motor and mobility issues in recent years and had transitioned primarily to photography, digital and vocals as these are the most accessible mediums the artist can use at this time. The artist’s mobility issues necessitates the repeated examination and photographic documentation of wildlife within a half-acre property over time. Themes of study include; growth and decay, isolation, worth, as well as textures, patterns and cycles in nature relevant to biomimetics.
Visit Malicious Sheep’s website
Teia Community
Malicious Sheep is part of the Teia community, an open-source, experimental dApp developed and maintained by the Teia Community and powered by the Tezos blockchain. The community is @TeiaCommunity on on X (former Twitter). They have a blog and a website. On the website, with each refresh, a new logo designed by a community artist appears.
A. Laura Brody, Artist, curator, founder of Opulent Mobility
Creative Connector member.
A. Laura Brody’s episode: Episode 13
A. Laura Brody’s resource page
About A. Laura Brody
A. Laura Brody turns wheelchairs, walkers, and mobility scooters into works of art, and takes reclaimed materials and gives them new lives. She teaches pattern manipulation, draping, alterations, and wearable art.
Opulent Mobility
Opulent Mobility is an international annual exhibit that asks artists to re-imagine disability as opulent and powerful. It imagines a world where disability is celebrated instead of denied, ignored, and feared. These exhibits are curated by founder A. Laura Brody and disability arts activist and photographer Anthony Tusler.
Visit Opulent Mobility’s website
Rory McLeod, Artistic Director of Xenia Concerts
Rory McLeod’s episode: Episode 4
Xenia Concerts
Having initially launched in 2014 as a pilot project to create autism-friendly concert experiences, Xenia Concerts is now a leading resource for accessible concert design and production across Canada. Working directly with neurodivergent, Deaf, and disabled artists and community members, Xenia Concerts presents over 30 Adaptive Concerts per year, develops innovative concert designs, and delivers accessibility training to artists, arts workers, and fellow music presenters with the goal of building a more inclusive future in the performing arts.
Accessing the Arts: Accounting for Neurodiversity and Disability in Performing Arts Feedback Methods
We shared an article on social media a few days ago about this study.
Xenia Concerts, in partnership with the Canada Excellence Research Chair in Health Equity and Community Wellbeing (CERC-HECW), is excited to announce the publication of their groundbreaking study, “Accessing the Arts: Accounting for Neurodiversity and Disability in Performing Arts Feedback Methods.”
Stefan Sunandan Honisch, Musicologist, Sessional Lecturer
Stefan Sunandan Honisch’s episode: Episode 5
Stefan Sunandan Honisch’s resource page
About Stefan Sunandan Honisch
Stefan Sunandan Honisch is a Sessional Instructor in the Department of Theatre and Film, at the University of British Columbia, having previously held a Banting Postdoctoral Fellow within the department for a project on the musical life of Helen Keller (1880-1968). He is a Scholar-in-Residence, St. John’s College, University of British Columbia. His research interests are at the intersection of Critical Disability Studies, Music, and Critical Pedagogy. His first monograph project Vulnerable Virtuosities: Disability in Concert and Competition (under contract with University of Michigan Press) uses a Disability Justice framework to explore how blind virtuoso pianists radically challenge stubborn dualisms of musical strength and weakness, demonstrating that vulnerable manifestations of disabled embodiment intensify the aesthetic and expressive power of musical virtuosity.
Visit Dr. Stefan Sunandan Honish’s academic page
Academic Ableism
Stefan (and later Elizabeth) quoted Jay Timothy Dolmage’s book, Academic Ableism: Disability and Higher Education.
Academic Ableism brings together disability studies and institutional critique to recognize the ways that disability is composed in and by higher education, and rewrites the spaces, times, and economies of disability in higher education to place disability front and center. For too long, argues Jay Timothy Dolmage, disability has been constructed as the antithesis of higher education, often positioned as a distraction, a drain, a problem to be solved. The ethic of higher education encourages students and teachers alike to accentuate ability, valorize perfection, and stigmatize anything that hints at intellectual, mental, or physical weakness, even as we gesture toward the value of diversity and innovation. Examining everything from campus accommodation processes, to architecture, to popular films about college life, Dolmage argues that disability is central to higher education, and that building more inclusive schools allows better education for all.
Learn more about Dolmage’s book
Andrew Dell’Antonio, Musicologist, Professor
Andrew Dell’Antonio’s episode: Episode 18
Andrew Dell’Antonio’s resource page
About Andrew Dell’Antonio
Andrew Dell’Antonio specializes in musical repertories of early modern Europe, with a focus on seventeenth-century Italy. His research interests include musical historiography, reception history, and disability studies. Partly spurred by his personal experience of neurodivergence, he has recently turned his focus to Universal Design for Learning and related critical approaches to anti-racism, anti-ableism, and intersectional equity / inclusion in higher education music pedagogy. The academic page also includes a video presentation with closed captions.
Visit Andrew Dell’Antonio’s academic page
Visit Andrew Dell’Antonio’s personal website
Elizabeth McLain, Musicologist, Assistant Professor
RAMPD Prop member.
Elizabeth McLain’s episode: Episode 35
Elizabeth McLain’s resource page
About Elizabeth McLain
Elizabeth McLain is Assistant Professor of Musicology and Director of Disability Studies at Virginia Tech. She completed her Ph.D. and M.A. in Musicology at the University of Michigan. A proud Hokie, McLain earned a B.A. in Music and a B.A. in History at Virginia Tech. As a transdisciplinary scholar, McLain has two research areas. Her work on music and spirituality since 1870 confronts assumptions about secularization by deciphering the spiritual and religious references in modernist and postmodernist musical compositions. Devout, skeptical, mystical, or manipulative, a composer’s spiritual journey remains relevant to understanding their works. Her doctoral dissertation was supported by a Lurcy Fellowship.
Visit Elizabeth McLain’s academic page
Open the Gates Gaming
Open the Gates Gaming is a research collective at Virginia Tech that focuses on inclusion and access broadly construed in tabletop role-playing games (TTRPGs). Play is a human right, and Open the Gates Gaming (OtG) empowers everyone to tell their stories through the medium of TTRPGs. They develop open-access tools so everyone can play together without altering the rules of the game, adding flexibility to make systems like Dungeons & Dragons 5th edition more accessible. The adventures they write represent creative arts-based research on opera that does not merely witness or reenact one author’s story, but instead allows players to inhabit the operas, wrestle with exclusionary narratives, and craft their own hero’s journey.
Learn more about Open the Gates Gaming
Dom Evans
Elizabeth mentioned the work of Dom Evans, a director/writer, activist, Twitch streamer, and consultant with a BFA in Film. He fights for inclusion in media, marriage equality, gaming, and reproductive rights. Dom founded #FilmDis, to better understand Disability in media. He works in Hollywood to make the industry more inclusive to disabled people.
Robin Hahn, Soprano, opera singer
Robin Hahn’s episode: Episode 8
About Robin Hahn
Robin Hahn is an operatic lyric soprano, disability advocate, and queer artist, working to uncover the hidden disabled and LBGTQ+ histories, tales, pathways, and communities in opera and the arts. She is also a vocal coach.
Visit Robin Hahn’s Linktree page
Opera Mariposa
Opera Mariposa is a critically-acclaimed company working to make opera more accessible. As Canada’s first entirely, openly disability-led and run opera company, they are dedicated to creating inclusive opportunities for emerging and underrepresented artists, and have been recognized as “[one of] Canada’s key indie players” (Opera Canada Magazine). Since their launch in 2012, past mainstage productions have been hailed as “well-honed” (Opera Canada), “delightful” (Review Vancouver) and “a stroke of genius” (The Voice), while their present digital offerings have reached audiences around the globe, and their annual Benefit + Awareness events have raised over $128,000 for a variety of charities and healthcare programs.
Robin Hahn is the co-founder and Associate Director of Artistic Planning of Opera Mariposa.
Visit Opera Mariposa’s website
Kello Inclusive
Kello Inclusive is a talent agency exclusively representing disabled and visibly different talent; because the beauty of disabilities, diversities, and differences deserves to be represented fairly and fully.
Visit Kello Inclusive’s website
Deshaymond, Singer, songwriter, producer
RAMPD Prop member.
Deshaymond’s episode: Episode 24
About Deshaymond
Deshaymond is a singer-songwriter and producer living in Atlanta. In 2015, the Louisiana native lost his sight to Optic Atrophy. He was then working as a software trainer at one of the world’s leading cloud based HRIS companies. After becoming blind, Deshaymond was told by several people close to him he could never achieve his dreams or realize the life he had been working towards. The blind music artist has made it his life’s mission to realize every single one of his life’s dreams. With a career spanning over two decades in the corporate world, Deshaymond possesses the business experience necessary to run his company, Deshaymond Media LLC. Deshaymond has released several singles and released his debut album in 2024.
Heather Feather, Children’s performer
RAMPD Prop member.
Heather Feather’s episode: Episode 46
Heather Feather’s resource page
About Heather Feather
Heather Feather’s toe-tapping music and sunny, energetic personality will have the whole family singing and dancing along. Her songs are not only joyful and fun, but also encourage physical, cognitive, social, and emotional development in children of all ages. Her award-winning 2022 album, Songs for Growing, is filled with “delightful songs and potent melodies all topped off with a lavish production. The vocals are sublime, as are the lyrics which dramatize the music superbly.” (Dez Staunton, Electric Kids Music), while CBC’s Sonali Karnick noted that her song, “appeal to kid’s intelligence.” Songs for Growing was awarded two Artist Development Grants from FACTOR and helped launch her career as a full-time performing artist and a highly sought-after Teaching Artist in preschools, schools, and community groups. With Songs for Growing, Heather was nominated for the 2023 and 2025 East Coast Music Awards Children’s Entertainer of the Year, 2023 Music NL Jazz Album of the Year, and she won two awards in the Funky Kids Radio Awards in Australia.
Visit Heather Feather’s website
Communities:
RAMPD
RAMPD (Recording Artists and Music Professionals with Disabilities) is a professional consultancy group and networking platform amplifying Disability Culture and inclusion within the music industry.
Creative Connector
Creative Connector is an online arts hub for Deaf and Disabled artists and creatives who want to find community and discover accessible opportunities in the arts.