By Carolyn Brown
For the Valley Advocate
The Academy of Music recently launched two initiatives to make performances more accessible to guests with disabilities: a capital campaign to raise money for an assisted listening system, and a partnership with Valley Eye Radio, an organization that provides radio broadcasts to blind and low-vision listeners.
“The Academy is here for the whole community,” Executive Director Debra J’Anthony said. “We want everybody to have the full enjoyment of the experience here, to the best of our ability.”
The Academy’s new capital campaign, “Let’s Hear It!”, aims to raise $10,000 during the month of April to fund the assisted listening device system with 30 headsets for patrons. The project costs about $14,500 total, for which the theater has $4,500 in hand — $2,500 from its own board-advised funds and $2,000 from a grant from The Beveridge Family Foundation. If the campaign meets its goal on time, the equipment will be installed by early June.
J’Anthony said that the Academy, whose previous accessibility improvements had largely focused on guests with mobility issues, had hoped to make this initiative happen sooner, but the building had “so many other safety and technical issues that we had to address first,” and the board also had no luck in applying for grants to fund an assisted listening system. They’d tried to help hard-of-hearing guests by putting them closer to the stage, “but it’s not the same experience,” she said.
“It’s not enjoyable if you go to a performance and you can’t hear what is being spoken on stage or sung on stage, or if you can’t get the description of what is happening … so these are enhancements to allow for these communities to be able to enjoy the performing arts in a more full experience,” J’Anthony said.
As the theater celebrates this new accessibility initiative, they’re also celebrating a new partnership with Valley Eye Radio, a Springfield-based broadcasting service that uses volunteers to read local news publications to listeners with visual impairments or other disabilities that make reading difficult.
The partnership came about because VER’s Executive Director Chloe Collins reached out to a number of other local venues to ask if they were interested in collaborating to make the local performing arts scene more accessible to blind guests.
Not only was the Academy the first to reply, but the message came around the same time as the Academy was in the planning process for the “Let’s Hear It!” campaign. It was lucky timing. J’Anthony and the Academy team reasoned that the assisted listening devices could help blind patrons, too, not just hard-of-hearing patrons, by facilitating audio-described shows, and thus would help two communities who’d been excluded from or self-selected away from live shows.
Though the organizations are still figuring out the particulars of what their collaboration will entail, Collins said it could include things like live remote broadcasts, audio-described performances, behind-the-scenes audio interviews, and audio tours of the Academy — as much as possible, programming “by and for the blind community.”
“We’re really looking at a range of approaches to make the arts more accessible,” she said.
In any case, they’re looking to kick it off with Valley Players’ production of “It’s a Wonderful Life,” which is styled like a live 1940s radio show, in December, which will give them plenty of opportunities in the meantime to figure out how best to meet the needs of both communities.
“The partnership is really about access, creativity, and community, and making sure that more people can connect with the arts in ways that work for them,” Collins said.
To donate to “Let’s Hear It!”, visit aomtheatre.com/donate-lets-hear-it, or email development@aomtheatre.com for more information.
