 Welcome to our celebration of universal participation up and the up awards. I am a woman on the far side of the sixties with shoulder laying pair. I am wearing a navy blue sweater, but I do want to say a little bit about my necklace because it is a series of sort of reddish balls. Some people think they look like strawberries. Some people think they look like beach balls. So you could imagine what you like. And I do have glasses on and with me is the inevitable inimitable Charles Baldwin and good morning Anita thrilled to be here. I am Charles Baldwin. I am the program officer for the universal participation initiative or I am an older white gentleman with a beard glasses and a mohawk. And today I am wearing a plaid blue shirt. So day three. And today is our the beginning of really of our our nominations for the up award. It's been a pretty good process to get here. You know, we put out this call for organizations that are part of up to identify who they think is really doing the good work. And then we ended up with about eight, which we've been sharing and then a panel has discussed the top five and really help determine who they think is really an exemplary right now. So I'm excited that we've been able to get started on this. Charles, this is really been an interesting week so far we are on day three as you have said, and we could never have imagined that we would be celebrating this incredible work around inclusion in a week where the entire world is discussing the consequences of centuries of lack of inclusion. And I think at first we were sort of thinking, oh, I don't know if it's right to be celebrating anything at this time because of how painful and and really the searing pain so many millions of people are feeling today. But as I've been thinking about it. We've been talking about how our up organizations aren't just about an idea. They are acting. They are making change. They are making a difference. And as every single day we think about where is the leadership. I'll tell you where the leadership is. It's in our up organizations. I couldn't agree more because I do know that this acknowledgement of good work can sometimes seem frivolous when there are inequities that are being shouted about and change daily. And yet sometimes the artists and the slow and steady and incremental steps are actually instituting change and up is is that as you say it's a it's a direction. So it is this goal of constantly do I use the word persistence constantly persisting on the change. And we've got some amazing organizations that are part of up. And it's wonderful if if it's not a celebration. It's a serious acknowledgement of good work. You know sometimes powerful leadership is hiding a plain sight. And that's what we have here. It isn't always loud. It isn't always on television and you know in the news media and on the front page of the newspaper. But the leadership that we've been sharing this week amongst our organizations that are truly not just thinking about change, but they are intentionally making change that is including more and more people into their organization. So shall we get started with Let's do it on a reason that we're going to be talking about. So we have three finalists again as Charles just said, selected by their peers. Tower Hill Botanical Garden Discovery Museum and Abilities Dance and we're going to be hearing from each and every one of them so shall we get started with Grace Elton, who is the executive director of Tower Hill grace. Welcome. Hi there. Thank you all so much for having me. As you said I'm Grace Elton and the CEO of Tower Hill. Today I'm wearing a black and white dress that has flowers on it we like to stay on mission here at Tower Hill and make sure flowers are in part of everything that we do. We are so grateful to be nominated for this award because at Tower Hill were committed to strengthening connections between people and plants. And as horticulturists we understand that biodiversity is so important in creating a garden, and we feel that the diversity of people that we bring to our garden is also just so much. It's so important in strengthening our community here at the garden out in out in Worcester. We have to call our garden a garden for all. This means that we open our gates for people of all experiences and interest all abilities all backgrounds and all communities. Being a garden for all means that we make sure that first of all everyone can access our gardens, being outdoors, it can be challenging to ensure that people of all abilities can move around the garden with the with ease. And that's why we're committed to using universal design principles and all of our new construction. The garden within reach which you can see on the screen is part of one of the first gardens that we designed using these universal design principles. It was supported by the MCC facilities fund and the app program so thank you very much for that. Couldn't have been done without you all. It has many features such as raised beds moveable planters, and other great things that allow people to garden from a wheelchair without having to kneel on the ground there's also areas where you can stand in garden if bending and squatting and sitting is not comfortable for you. So this year we're working on redesigning our entry experience the first impression that people have of the garden. There are six accessible paths that will be adding to the garden, and it makes it makes it a lot easier for people to purchase tickets to learn about the garden and to engage with our staff, you might not know that we have a great tour coming up or a wonderful program going on that you can be a part of. It wouldn't be possible without empowering our staff with the knowledge skills to think create critically about inclusivity diversity equity and accessibility at the garden, we shorten that to idea here at tower home. And in 2019 we began our idea committee, this is a group of staff and board that work together to make sure that all of our programs are strategically aligned, and it really prepares staff to carry out these programs in a way with idea in mind. The committee hosted several staff programs, we got to learn wonderful things like accessibility 101 being an LGBTQ plus ally, working with visually impaired people, and a periodic idea brown bag lunch reading group actually is been pretty popular with our staff as well. This winter we also had a staff wide inclusion and diversity survey to measure the inclusive culture of our workplace, and we identified a lot of opportunities where we want to grow in the future. In January with 2020 this with the support of the MCC up grant. We had also two consultants develop and host a mandatory all staff training on implicit bias and engaging with diverse visitors. These are just a couple of the things that that we've been doing to increase our idea knowledge and try to make our garden more of that garden for all that we're striving to towards. So together, all of the these efforts ensure that our staff considers that inclusivity diversity equity and accessibility is very important to their daily lives and to their both work and personal lives. So really we try to empower our staff to to make tower hill truly a garden for all both inside and out. We know our work has just begun, and we're very excited to consider, or to continue this very joyful work. So thank you again for this nomination, and the garden is open now to members this week and we'll be open to the public on Monday so I hope you all come and see some of these these wonderful garden additions in action. Thank you so much grace I was going to ask you if the gardens were open because I do know that in phase one some of our outdoor organizations are absolutely starting to open up. I do want to say one other thing that you are a great example of we talk about access for all when you, you know, put the ramp on the sidewalk or the curb cut. And for our bicycles are pulling our roller suitcase we all use that blue button on the door to help the door open. And I have to admit that I'm an aspiring gardener let's put it that way. And one of the hardest things for guard about gardening for me is like bending down on my poor knees in the dirt and trying to, you know, break my back and you have these wonderful platforms that go up and down and just hit you right at the right height whether you're in a wheelchair or whether you're a child or whether you're just a creaky old person like me. I really enjoyed when I had the opportunity to meet. You have a very by basis active crew of women who are blind who are amazing personalities and are not a shy bunch. And that I have to say was a real treat to meet them and actually do some work with them because they were on point. They actually come and help us plant some of the planters in the garden within reach each year. And they can repeat or they continue those, those staff trainings to help us better welcome visually impaired visitors to the garden, and the leader of that group Liz Miska actually joined our board about a year ago. Yes, I need, I need these concepts embedded in everything that we do and she agreed to come on as a trustee of our organization so we're really happy to have beautiful happy to hear that. Okay, thank you. So Charles, should we move on to the next one, Neil. Yeah, Discovery Museum and Neil, long time friend of the program Neil has been a true exemplar and an advocate and a champion of this work. And we are so happy to have Discovery Museum as one of our honorees this year. Thank you Anita that that's really nice of you to say so introduce myself I'm, I'm Neil Gordon I'm the CEO at the Discovery Museum and I would describe myself as an older white guy with progressively more and more gray hair. No facial air classes that are clear framed and today I'm wearing a blue and white check shirt. What about the Discovery Museum though I do want to take a second to acknowledge that Anita's impending retirement and thank her for her 13 years and all that she's done for all of us, not including the creation of the up initiative but so much so much. I need to thank you and good luck out there. So, let me start with a simple point and that point is that the Discovery Museum, we believe is good for kids, and their families, and we want to make sure that all families have the opportunity to play and learn here. So we serve about 250,000 people a year. We believe it is our job to make sure that they all feel that they belong when they are here. Our approach drives everything that we do. With the support of our community partners, we work to ensure that all of our visitors experience depth of learning that engages everyone, and that we eliminate all the barriers of being here. In conventional museums, those types of barriers can be physical, financial, racial, cultural, or can exclude kids or their grown ups, because of differences in learning style or family type. So there are a number of different ways that we do this work are especially for me program, which is celebrating its 10th anniversary this year, reaches kids on the autism spectrum or kids who are deaf of hard of hearing, or have vision impairment. All with free programs and events for the whole family. We co create inclusive learning opportunities with direct service organizations. We provide free and nearly free admission and school programs to more than 50,000 people a year through all of our access initiatives. Recently we renovated and design redesigned our facilities and followed principles of universal design and doing that work. Importantly, we always look for ways to improve and seek guidance from user experts and from our network of advisors and peer organizations, including MCC up. We're looking, we are working to become a platform for program presenters with disabilities to share their talents and knowledge. So why do families come to us. It's because the Discovery Museum fuels creativity and inspires kids to be curious, collaborative to take risks, but mostly at the Discovery Museum, families can have fun and learn together. Everything we do is rooted in the science, how kids learn and how their brains naturally drive them to acquire knowledge. The Discovery Museum makes a big difference for families. Because we believe every family deserves and needs this experience, we're going to make sure that they can. So the idea is simple. Again, make this all possible. All kids and all families. So thank you for recognizing the Discovery Museum. Anita, you're muted. Again, I keep pushing on fighting with the controller. We talked at the beginning about leadership and Neil. Leadership is exactly what you exemplify. You're the first one, Charles, I think since we've been talking for the last three days, that has mentioned the principles of universal design. And this was really a platform on which we built the up program. Universal design isn't just about building design or facilities design, but it's about program design. It's about website design. It's about how you communicate with your audiences. And it's truly universal. I mean, everything that we've done has made everything more available to all segments of our audience. And we're so pleased to be part of this initiative and had the chance to embrace those principles in all of our renovation. And a lot of this work is with our critically important partnership with the Institute for Human Center Design, which is really instilling the universal design principles that inclusive by design ideas. And that really gets the ball rolling and really starts making people see all the environments that we create at our cultural institutions in new ways. We have a lot of contact with those folks early on and we're really inspired by their work. And I should mention, Neil, it's not just the tactics and the strategies. It's cultural change. It really is important for the feeling to permeate everybody who works in your environment. And often that's the first question people ask when we start thinking about a new idea is how will this be something that we can do for everyone. Well, thank you, Neil. Congratulations. Well deserved honor and we are so glad to have a chance to talk to you about it today. So Charles, time to go on to our third honoree today, Elise Patterson is joining us from Abilities Dance, another amazing program and actually I know a little less about this one than I do some of our other so I'm very excited to meet Elise and learn about Abilities Dance. Hi, thank you for having me. Thank you for honoring us. My name is Elise Patterson. I am a black young woman who is right now wearing a red head wrap and a black blouse. So I want to start by acknowledging everything and saying that I am tired. This organization was founded on this hard moment that I was facing in my life of not feeling like I have this space to be able to reach and grow and have the opportunities that my other artistic colleagues were embracing in the greater Boston area. From that has grown this amazing organization, but there has still been setbacks and challenges. And even today we're realizing that we're still struggling. I'm personally struggling. The identities within some of the company members of our company are struggling. But we hope that through this work, we are able to foster understanding, and we're able to say that intersectional disability rights means black rights means human rights. And that we're able to push that work forward in the greater Boston area and beyond to be able to show that this work is possible, access is possible in all of our spaces, that given the platform, we are able to do everything, and that we will continue to do everything, even in spite of. So rewind. Ability Stance was founded in 2017. We have three different programs. Our professional performing company is a company of professional dancers, musicians, composers, and different artists that create work, train rigorously, and perform in really amazing venues to be able to provide representation on stage, provide equitable work opportunities and push that mission forward in a variety of ways. Our community engagement partners with different organizations and teaches movement workshops or lectures on disability culture and history. Intersectionality and more so that we're able to have conversations on how we can increase the conversations and the equity in both of our spaces. And then our education program teaches adaptive technique to different students with and without disability so that we're able to train the next generation of dancers. And through all of those different programs, we hope to be able to, like I mentioned earlier, be able to really push conversations, push that we are able to do the work that we need others to do the work with us, and that we can build a more equitable, greater Boston area and beyond. Thank you. Thank you so much, Elise. Elise, Charles, let's see. Get all my buttons pushed. Okay. Charles, you said the word persistence. And Elise, you kind of started out saying you can get tired being so persistent. There have been a lot of barriers and hills. I mean, what is it that keeps you going? I have to have that be successful because not only am I relying on it, but the people in my company are relying on it and the people in our communities are relying on it to have that space that you just don't have. And I will say Elise, you know, when we first met, and I don't even remember what that, when that was now, but where we are acknowledging a lot of organizations that have been around for 50 years, 40 years, 30 years. And so your persistence and your drive has created a place in the last four or five years. And it's commendable, because you have positioned yourself as an artist, as a professional company, and a new way of looking at bodies and space and claiming that. I've really had a great deal of joy working alongside you. Thank you. And add to that, Charles. This makes me think so much of what our keynote speaker Sarah said yesterday about looking at people and seeing beauty first. And Elise just exemplifies, I think, the message that we were hearing yesterday from our keynote speaker. And today we have another amazing speaker and I'm going to let you fill us in on who we've got next. Well, back in the pre pandemic times and I don't say that lightly. This was going to be a physical event, and to bring people together in a room is very meaningful, particularly with rich variety this integrated space. However, we're exploring how we can make these virtual spaces, these third spaces so I was really happy that we were able to bring in the performers and the some of the artists who might have a chance to work with to be a part of this ceremony this acknowledgement. And one of those is Caroline Whidden with me to orchestra. They are a wonderful organization that I will let Caroline explain, but sometimes when we think about access. People get really invested in the physical access. And yet we know that access broadly has a is a wide umbrella that encompasses many different abilities. So Caroline thrilled that you're here today with me to orchestra. Thank you Charles very much. I'll start by describing myself for those who cannot see me. I am a Caucasian female 50 years old with shorter length brown hair today I am wearing a sleeveless red dress and my reading glasses. I also want to tell everyone that there are things that you cannot see about me from the outside and that is that I live with mental illnesses that are invisible. I have a diagnosis of chronic anxiety disorder and panic attacks, as well as depression, and I am fortunate that those illnesses have been well treated now for almost 30 years. I share that because I'm here to represent me to and our tagline is classical music for mental health. Our mission is to erase the stigma surrounding mental illnesses and we do this through supportive classical music rehearsals as well as inspiring performances. So there's just a few things that I want you to know before you hear us perform today. There are absolutely no auditions and no fees involved in participating in our orchestras and ensembles. That's one of the ways that we remove the barriers to inclusion. So I expect my email inbox to blow up after this with people who play orchestral instruments and want to be a part of our movement. About half of our musicians are living with a diagnosed mental illness and this can range from depression and anxiety to bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, dissociative disorder, which is formerly known as multiple personalities and addiction. It's critical that you also know that half of our musicians do not have their own diagnosis and really that's how we represent this beautifully integrated community. It's really how we want the world to be where everyone is welcomed. Me too is the brainchild of the man who is now my husband Ronald Brownstein. Ronald is our research director and conductor and he also lives with a diagnosis of bipolar disorder. Although I am quick to tell people that that is absolutely the least interesting thing about him, but it is important for you to know. Ronald wanted to found this organization due to the stigma and discrimination that he experienced in his professional life. So please keep in mind as you watch our performance that you are viewing this beautifully integrated community that many of us are living with serious mental health diagnoses, and that we're able to work beautifully together, literally side by side, making great music. Today we're going to share with you a recording of Elgar's enigma variations. This was from a performance in February, just before the pandemic sidetracked all of us. This particular movement is titled Nimrod and I just think it's really a perfect brief piece of music that provides us with a beautiful contemplative space to think about inclusivity. And I hope you enjoy it. Thank you so much Caroline. You know, I think you are absolutely the exemplar of both the power of culture and the power of inclusivity. And when they merge together. It is just seamless and inspiring and telling your story and sharing your story. I can tell you that is so meaningful to people who probably never said out loud what you have said. Thank you. Thank you Anita. It means a lot and I am a caveat to music people out there we are sharing music over the zoom, which is never quite as rich as when we have the opportunity to hear it in person. But I also appreciate that it was a moment to slow down and just listen. And I think that as we experiment with this virtual space, one of the things that we are looking at is pace, because we do zoom, zoom, zoom, zoom, zoom. But the need to slow down, to process the information, to listen and move forward just seems so critically important. And sometimes for many of us, music reaches through this lens and does just that. So thank you for being a part of this today. Thank you Caroline. So Charles, we have a challenge you're going to tell us about our challenge. Yes. So the challenge is just that how do we reach through this virtual screen to engage people in an authentic manner, and also highlight the different ways that we communicate. So each day we're asking people who are listening or watching to go to the website mass cultural council.org slash up award. There are four different up challenges there. First one has to do with health and well being. Yesterday was around description as a process and a service. And today it's around interpretation, which is I thought a good reaction to music. How do we interpret music physically visually. And that's the challenge so do check out mass cultural council.org slash up award to find the different ways that you can think about interpreting the music. And if you have the wherewithal, please share it with us. You're going to highlight a few of those on Friday. And if you are having conversations over the rest of the day or between today and tomorrow or next week, and people say to you, where is the leadership. Well, you can say it's a tower hill. It's a Discovery Museum, set abilities dance. And tomorrow you'll find out a couple of more places where we have incredible leadership. Arts Emerson and Wheelock Family Theater, two more amazing stories and amazing up honorees. Charles, shall we shall we say goodbye until tomorrow. I think this is a nice little nugget of some good work. And it's okay to say goodbye. Thank you so much. Bye bye everybody.