 Hello, and welcome to a virtual celebration on excellence in access day two. I'm Anita Walker, Executive Director of the Mass Cultural Council. I'm a woman in her 60s wearing an ivory-colored jacket, glasses, and I guess about shoulder-leaf link hair. And I'd like to also say hello to our good friend and colleague, Charles Baldwin, who has been taking a leadership role and running our UP program. I spent almost five years now, Charles. I had to double-check with you this morning before we got started. This is day two. As you know, if you miss day one, you will have an opportunity to see a recording of that, I think coming up sometime later this week. But we are here, of course, to celebrate and acknowledge the amazing work our college have done in our UP program. UP, universal participation, is all about inclusion. And inclusion is not just an idea. It requires action, and it requires change. Our organizations in UP believe that change is possible, change is necessary, and change is urgent. Before we get into our discussion about the UP program and the organizations who are doing such amazing work across the Commonwealth, I do want to take a moment just to honor those with the courage and commitment to stand up and speak out in favor of social justice and call for justice in this country. I've received countless emails from cultural colleagues who are speaking out against the violence against people of color in our country and in our communities, and they are all promising to be part of the solution. But we know that the solution is more than just hopes and prayers. It's about action, and UP is about action. It requires commitment from the top. We require the Board of Trustees to literally sign a letter of commitment to be part of UP. It involves inviting the unheard voices into our organizations, putting them at the table, putting them in leadership roles. We call them user experts, but they count on their life experience to help us know how to be better and to do better. And we know that in UP, we must make change through action. Today, we're going to be seeing exactly what that looks like, and we're going to be honoring two of our organizations who have been with us since the very, very beginning of UP, Barrington Stage and South Shore Conservatory. They were both in our first cohort some five years ago, and actually they're both celebrating anniversaries of their own this year. We're going to start today, however, with Council Recognitions Awards, and I would like to introduce one of our Council members, Elise Najimi, from Western Mass, to take the first one. Hi. I'm Elise Najimi, a proud trustee of the Mass Cultural Council. I grew up in Pittsfield, Mass, and was shaped by the people, the natural beauty, and the amazing arts and culture opportunities I had. I now live in Boston, but the Berkshires are still a big part of my life. That's why I'm happy to present this special UP Award to a place that makes the Berkshires great. Barrington Stage opened its doors 26 years ago in the Berkshires, bringing music, joy, and art to so many in the Berkshires, our Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and beyond. They're a vibrant, generous creative force and raise up the voices of many for their musicals, plays, and events seasonally and year-round. Their commitment to giving back is inspiring. They nurture young talent on their stages. They go into the schools and provide art and culture workshops. They host internships for local aspiring actors and actresses, and actively mentor playwrights. They're an important part of the cultural economy in the Berkshires, providing jobs and opportunities. That's why I'm so pleased to provide them with their UP Cultural Council Award. Congratulations, Barrington Stage. For now, we'd like to welcome Brandon Haldine from the Barrington Stage Company to talk a little bit about their work and the ways that they realize access. So thank you, Brandon, for joining us today. Thanks for having me. Again, my name is Brandon Haldine. I'm the artistic producer of Barrington Stage. pronouns he, him, his. I am a submittal age white man with longer hair than normal and wearing a sport coat for the first time in three months. It feels great. Thank you for having me and thank you for recognizing Barrington Stage. Barrington Stage Company was founded 26 years ago here in the Berkshires is not just a theater to present great theater, both new and old, but also to be a theater of our community. From early on, our education and community engagement programs have been part of the essence of what makes Barrington special. Our playwright mentoring project to celebrate his 20th year. This program engages groups of local teens to share their stories with each other, learn conflict resolution skills and create their own place to present to the community, all while creating a new family in the process. Here at Barrington, we continually discuss how to engage our wider community on various levels, free tickets, discounted Berkshire resident nights, free symposia and forums and more. We take each show on its own and discuss who should be seeing the show, who would benefit from seeing the show, and how can we get them into be part of that conversation. While the 2020 season is not what we originally planned, we hope to present next year what we had hoped to present this year. Including in the next year season is exciting world premiere musical for families called the super duper kid based on a book by local Pittsfield author Ty Allen Jackson. It tells the story of a young African American boy who gets superpowers and goes on to try to save his community. We realized early on that we had a very special story and a wonderful amazing musical in our hands and wanted to figure out how to reach as many families as possible. So we tossed out our old playbook for our youth theater decided to present the show for free in a century located park here in Pittsfield, removing barriers of cost transportation and bringing the theater into our community's backyard. And we are excited to present that show in Pittsfield for free in the park next year. This show exemplifies how Barrington Sage approaches our work in the community. We look for barriers for entry and we figure out how to either smash them or get around them. We want everyone to feel welcome at Barrington Sage no matter your barrier. We are a theater for this community and we are honored honored to be recognized by up for our work and we look forward to facing new challenges keeping theater alive in the Berkshires for years to come. Thank you so much Brandon. Now Brandon, you at Barrington stage are pretty good with this zoom because I had an opportunity to see some of the work that young people had prepared to put on the stage this year. And then at the last minute translated into this zoom format they made entrances they made exits it was absolutely amazing the work that they did but your organization is truly exemplary. When it comes to inclusion and access and you have acted to make that so for your community. So thank you very much. I would absolutely like to thank our council member Karen Berry from the Plymouth area of Massachusetts who took the time to record an introduction to our next guest in our next organization. This year marks the 50th anniversary of the social conservatory making music and changing lives on the South Shore. Social conservatory reimagined online learning and they continue to reach and support our community. Their commitment to access is realized every day through creative partnerships. They provide invaluable literacy programs, extensive art therapy and they increase opportunity for greater participation for our children through their scholarships. All of their actions support a full life spectrum from toddler to elder. And I thank them for fully embracing the important role that they have in our community wellness and also enhancing our civic lives. I am very pleased to honor social conservatory with the 2020 of Council Recognition Award. Congratulations and thank you for the work that you do. Eve, you and I have had a chance to work together. You are a music therapist who actually brings well being and healing to so many people in your community through music. And we are so proud of the South Shore conservatory for the work you're doing in our up programming and to be as inclusive as you possibly can. Thank you. Thank you, Anita. My name is Eve Montague. I'm the director of creative arts therapies at South Shore conservatory. I'm a board certified music therapist. We are the largest community music school here in New England. We serve over 4000 individuals each year in traditional music lessons in creative arts therapies and then a host of other programs including dance programs and early childhood education. We have significant partnerships in our communities, including local schools, long term health facilities, the hospice programs, and other programs that serve individuals who might learn differently. We are celebrating five years as an up designated organization and are very proud to be part of this network. We are also celebrating 50 years of making music and changing lives here at the conservatory. In our creative arts therapies program. We have the privilege of serving over 500 individuals each year, ranging in age from zero to 100 plus. We serve individuals with all different kinds of abilities, including those who have developmental or intellectual challenges. We serve on the autism spectrum, those living with Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease, medically fragile individuals, physically and sensory challenged folks and adults, and those with mental health challenges. Music is the great equalizer and that's why it works so well for us in creative arts therapies. We have specially designed groups and ensembles as well as individual therapy and wellness focused services for all our communities. Access and accommodation support to all teaching faculty and staff is what we also provide so that they may work with their students in the least restrictive environment. We build capacity amongst our instructors and with community members so that they too can make the arts more accessible to everyone. For us, it's not a matter of whether someone can do something, but really how do we help them do it? How can we make them work? We use universal design for learning as really a pillar for our services, multiple means of engagement, representation and expression. The community partnerships allow us to bring service and therapy to those in need where they are. We understand the importance that everyone needs arts in their lives and we provide entry points to the arts as creator, audience, performer and lifelong learner. Our facilities are warm and inviting, very accessible. We've been fortunate to make significant improvements over the course of the years thanks to the generosity of Mass Cultural Council. We provide know before you go and social stories so people can plan ahead and know what to expect. It's a work in progress for us however and we continue to make improvements. Our culture at the conservatory is inviting, helpful and attentive to everyone who walks through our doors and accesses our services. We provide staff and faculty training so that we build capacity with all our constituents. We understand the importance of people first language and we want to be an accepting, creative and celebrating individual skills. We are welcoming. Our jazz rock department has seen an increase in young individuals who might be questioning their place in society and where they fit in and they have found a home and a comfort within our programming. We're non-judgmental. That's the beauty of the arts. It's the great equalizer. Providing safe space has been very important and creating community. We provide a true continuum of service and opportunity. As I said, we are a work in progress. We have made huge gains, but we don't want to be complacent or assume we have finished the task. Thank you to MCC and their development of the UP initiative and for their ongoing support. And thank you to SSC and especially our outgoing president Kathy Cherney and the board leadership. We appreciate everything that's doing and at SSC we are making music and changing lives. Thank you. Eve, thank you. What I appreciate and love about what you said is the idea of the work in progress. And I think that Anita and I can agree that this virtual space is a work in progress. And that is all part of it. You know, Charles, it's interesting because as we've all been learning how to use this new technology and I keep trying to say we're going to wrestle into the submission one of these days. On the one hand, it provides increased access. If you have difficulty getting out of your home, if you don't have time to get to the theater and so forth, in a way it reaches more people and it provides greater access, but it's also a barrier to access at the same time. And I think this is something that we're all trying to think very carefully about. Not everyone has broadband and high speed internet and not everyone can appreciate this without glitches even those that we've programmed in. Everybody has a laptop. We found in our creative youth development programs as they are now homebound and their supporters and their organizations like Barrington Stage are trying to reach out and continue that programming and relationship with the young people. First they have to have a laptop and they have to have a place to put their laptop and sometimes they're in crowded homes with everybody being sequestered at home and even just finding that place. And the other thing that I think we've also discovered about our zoom conversations with people is, as you were noting in our pre show conversation. You organized your books to make your background look good we're inviting people into our homes in a way, and that can be a wonderful new lens and way to understand people but it also is sort of crossing a level of knowledge about people that maybe they don't want to share. I think that's all of those points are so spot on, because I do think that this intro into our homes. You know, so many of us are used to this third space, whether it's the office or the community center, where we have a chance to be sort of meet on equal ground. And suddenly becoming into our homes with pets or children or seniors or family there's, there's a lot and so I have fabricated this back wall. I should introduce myself because I've never even I'm Charles Baldwin. I am the program officer for the universal participation initiative. I am an older white gentleman with a beard glasses and a mohawk. And I want to even though with technical glitches to give a shout out to our tech team because these virtual spaces that we're trying to turn in to this third space so that we can still be connected. This that's the wrestling that we're doing how can we make these virtual spaces more accessible. So through this half hour, we're providing ASL interpretation. We have the captioning happening. We are also trying to with 30 minutes attempt a certain pace that contributes to our own well being for many of us working remotely we zoom, zoom, zoom and zoom again, and even that can start to wear us down. So throughout all of this up initiative in the virtual space while we're celebrating access. We're also experimenting with new methods of access. I have to say Charles, first of all Charles is a fantastic leader, a fantastic teacher. And we've all taken a leap of space. So when you first said we're doing five days in a row there was this sort of panic that set into the leadership team at the Mass Cultural Council, and we're going to have performances and we're going to have honors and we're going to have videos and we were like, Oh boy, let's do it Charles let's go for it. Thank you for allowing that experimentation because sometimes access is also risk. And we talked about turning word into action. This idea of how do we not only to be responsive, but to be aspirational and to take those risks, and to try new things. And really now more than ever in this speculative landscape. These risks are going to be part of our everyday lives. This taking, first of all it requires a certain amount of courage, but it also requires a lot of forgiveness. And I feel that we are all in an environment of forgiveness since we're all trying and succeeding at various levels to work with the new technologies by the way that we never ever used to use 10 weeks ago. For many of us, although many of these virtual spaces have been used by a variety of people who don't have the ability to get out and about. I mean there is an assumption around technology, but it has been serving people for a long time, and now it's serving more of us, which really fits into this whole idea of you improve things for one person and so many more people benefit, and that's an up directive. Exactly. So take it away, Charles, what's. Yeah, I am delighted to introduce Sarah Minkara, who is our keynote today. I first met Sarah really classic online. My good friend and colleague Maggie Austin had said, What have you heard about this empowerment through integration, and their dinners in the dark. And I was like I had never heard of them so I went online immediately. And being the shy fellow that I am, I reached out to everyone's email address that was on the website. And this is how I met Sarah. And what she does through her organization is bias breaking. I have participated in one of her dinners which was really eye opening. I'm also thrilled, not only because I have the opportunity to work alongside Sarah, and we have been juggling ways that we might work together. I would like to note that she has just been awarded the, the Harvard Kennedy School emerging global leader award. So the timing to have Sarah here with this, and in a real acknowledgement of the work that's being done around the world, and the work that needs to be done right here in the Commonwealth. I'm pleased to introduce Miss Sarah Mencara, our keynote for the upper ward 2020. So hi everyone, I'm going to start off with an introduction and then I'll go into kind of what I do and eti and all that fun stuff. I'm a daughter. I'm a sister. I'm a friend. I'm a colleague. I'm a troublemaker. I love math. I love nature. And I love to eat chicken. I love to listen to audio books. I like to take, take walks outside in nature. I am a woman. I am Muslim. I am blind. And I'm very proud of it. When I was seven years old on my birthday to be exact, I woke up that day and I had lost most of my vision. And I remember telling my mom and my mom realizing that her second daughter has also become visually impaired. She hugged me really tightly. And she said, Sarah, everything is going to be okay. And everything was okay. Because of my mom specifically, my family and my support system. My mom never allowed society's expectations or lack thereof to enter our home in our narrative in our community at home. She never allowed the what disability meant externally to enter what it meant internally in our home. She helped us to see that our blindness was a strength. Our blindness was an identity that we should embrace and see a beauty behind. She pushed us to see our potential and take every single step to tap into the value that we have. She never allowed us out of the words, I can't do this because I cannot see. So we saw our blindness as part of who we are, we didn't see it as something off or wrong. Yes, the external world, the society sees it as negative. But because she empowered us, we were able to face every single obstacle that we face because yes, society is not inclusive, society has so many issues when it comes to access. But because we were empowered and we believe that we belong, we exist and we can contribute, we were able to tackle these obstacles. I wanted to continue to go to the mainstream schoolings here and we grew up in the South Shore, we went to the public schools. I was able to go to Wellesley, study math and economics. I went to Harvard and I was able and able to hike and slide down a volcano in Nicaragua. That's not because I have more potential or more ability, but that's because I had the privilege of having an amazing supportive system. I was empowered to see the beauty that I had. But do you know what? Most people with disabilities, one billion individuals in this world are living, majority of them are living a narrative of being marginalized and cast aside and told that, you know what, you are a burden, you are a charity and you cannot, you cannot and you cannot. I found an empowerment integration, a nonprofit that really focuses on let's disrupt the narrative surrounding disability. Let's take it from the charity lens to value based lens, not a human rights lens, because when we stop at human rights, you know where we stop at. We stop at this narrative saying, well, I guess I have to educate, I have to integrate, I have to employ people with disabilities. And then I come to a point where society says, I want to include people with disabilities because if I don't, I lose out on their value, because every single person has something beautiful to contribute. And we're also trying to get people with disabilities, youth with disabilities to say, you know what, I am proud of who I am, I belong, I exist and I can contribute. So our approach is to really tackle this narrative on all fronts, especially on the societal level. But let me take this to where we are right now and how can we relate to the every single one of us in this virtual room and beyond. We all have faced some kind of marginalization based on one or more of identity, and especially now thinking about what we're dealing with in our country. On one hand, and this is a journey, including I'm still going through this journey, how can we reflect and make sure that we embrace every single identity of ours and love who we are? How can we get to a point where we not allow these isms in our society to impact how we see ourselves? I always say that I am proud to be blind. My blindness, my disability is a strength. It's given me creativity, innovation, stubbornness, perseverance, and I can go on forever. But that's a journey, because you know what, these isms and these narratives are so strong. But it's so important for us to always take a step back and say, am I listening to my inner core, am I listening to my value, my beauty? Am I allowing these narratives to impact how I see myself? So let's really move towards embracing all of who we are in a beautiful way. But let me flip the narrative and flip the table and say, you know what, we're all so humans and we all judge, including me, right? We all humans, that's part of who we are. And we are part of creating these narratives and isms, all of us, in our own ways. So it's also important for us to really take every single step in our lives and reflect on how am I judging? How am I seeing this world? What are the assumptions I'm, am I creating? And how can I delay my assumptions and have one assumption when I approach any single person? That this person has something beautiful to contribute. Because if we approach every single person in that mindset, we are part of creating a space of empowerment and inclusion. We're a part of creating a space where people feel like they belong and they can bring out their value. It's so important for us to reflect on these systemic isms that we're dealing with in our country. And think about how can we start addressing it within ourselves and in our families and in our communities. So my final ask of us and this is an ask, I always ask of myself is let's really move forward and see the beauty within ourselves and see the beauty within others. Thank you so much and hope you have a rest of the day. Thank you so much, Sarah. I knew I wanted you to be a part of this. And I'm delighted that you were able to join us. But that was amazing and what I, I mean, I learned so much every time I have a chance to, to really listen, we really get a chance to learn. And I loved that you gave us all a tool that we can use ourselves, a question that we can ask ourselves, and a way to sort of peel back that human barrier that we all put in front of ourselves that is bias. So thank you. Thank you very much for that. I'm going to give a thank you to everyone who was able to participate today, Brandon and Eve total shout out to Karen and Elise because we worked so hard on those videos, and I've got to know them a little bit better because of it. Again, a great big shout out to Sarah for participating for people who may be listening today, we are trying to reach through the screen. So do check out mass cultural council.org slash up award for an evaluation for some universal design for learning projects, and for some resources to keep learning more about what access is, and what it can be. I think this was a great day today, and we have three more to come. So every day, same time, same station, join us tomorrow we will be celebrating more of the wonderful work and please know there is amazing and wonderful work going on in every corner of the Commonwealth. Charles and Angelina who work together on our program are keeping the ball rolling and we are so excited to see what's coming next and don't forget there's a big, big reveal on Friday so it's time to start building the suspense and excitement enthusiasm so if you missed any portion of this they will eventually at some point in time be available to you as a recorded binge watching opportunity, but in the meantime, stick with us, you know live is fun you never know what's going to happen right Charles. That is so true so true, but you did point out that you know this is part of actually a grant or prize ceremony. So someone at the end of this week is going to be given $10,000. Ah, now you're going to stick with us because you want to know who the contestants are. Well, this is more than a contest it's real work that our organizations are doing together. And we want to make sure more and more organizations and individuals have an opportunity to participate and become increasingly inclusive. Thank you so much for joining our virtual up awards session today and we will be right back here tomorrow.