Rocco Landesman Announces North Carolina Arts Council as Recipient of the 2010 National Accessibility Leadership Award

Arts Council acknowledged for exceptional leadership in arts accessibility

September 10, 2010

		Contact: Liz Stark 202-682-5744 starke@arts.gov

Washington, D.C. -- Today, during a visit to Winston-Salem, North Carolina, as part of his Art Works Tour, Rocco Landesman, Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, announced that the North Carolina Arts Council is the recipient of the 2010 National Accessibility Leadership Award/grant for its outstanding accessibility work. Sponsored by the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies (NASAA), the award recognizes exceptional initiatives or programs that make the arts accessible and inclusive for older adults and individuals with disabilities. The award will be presented in October at the NASAA annual conference in Austin, Texas.

At the announcement, Chairman Landesman was joined by Mary B. Regan, Executive Director of the North Carolina Arts Council, Linda A. Carlisle, Secretary of the N.C. Department of Cultural Resources, and other members of the arts community.

The North Carolina Arts Council provides exceptional leadership in making the arts fully available to people with disabilities, older adults, and people in health care environments. Among its accomplishments:

• The North Carolina Arts Council implemented an awareness-building and technical assistance campaign for cultural providers in North Carolina. This included a new Arts Inclusion section for its website and a checklist that is a required component of every grant application submitted to the Arts Council. 

• Beginning in 2006, the Arts Council organized a team of staff members dedicated to increasing access to the arts through strategic partnerships, planning, assessments, and marketing.

• Partnering with Arts Access, a Raleigh-based accessibility service organization, the Arts Council worked to expand the organization's capacity from a local service provider to a statewide resource. This collaboration included a series of regional access workshops and site evaluations for arts groups around the state, and a comprehensive needs assessment. 

• The Arts Council is collaborating with the North Carolina Division of Vocational Rehabilitation Services to reshape the division's online and print tourism guide, ACCESS North Carolina, and include arts organizations in its listings.

• The Arts Council is partnering with the Center for Creative Aging–North Carolina to involve older adults in the arts as creators themselves, and has an ongoing role as funder and collaborator of arts-in-healthcare programming across the state.

Rocco Landesman said, "I would like to congratulate Mary Regan and her colleagues at the North Carolina Arts Council for their work in truly infusing the tenets of accessibility throughout their agency, and more importantly, across the state.  It is not enough that people of all backgrounds are allowed to participate in the arts; they should be welcomed and encouraged to do so.  I am proud that the NEA is able to invest in this work and help extend it even further."

NASAA CEO Jonathan Katz said, "On behalf of the nation's state arts agencies, I want to congratulate the North Carolina Arts Council and thank the NEA for its partnership in recognizing successful efforts to broaden access to the arts." 

The NEA and NASAA established the National Accessibility Leadership Award in 2001. Since 2002, the award has provided a $30,000 NEA competitive grant to the selected state or regional arts agency to advance its access work. With this award, the North Carolina Arts Council will provide support to Arts Access for a number of activities, including the redesign of its website in order to reflect its new statewide scope of service and contracting with additional accessibility specialists to provide trainings, site visits, and other field work. In addition, the Arts Council will provide support to the Pitt County Arts Council to advance the Healthy Living Initiative in Greenville and Elizabeth City, part of a National Arts in Healthcare project with the Liz Lerman Dance Exchange.

Previous National Accessibility Leadership Award recipients are the Indiana Arts Commission (2009), Florida Division of Cultural Affairs (2008), the Minnesota State Arts Board (2007), the Maine Arts Commission (2006), the Massachusetts Cultural Council (2005), the New Jersey State Council on the Arts (2004), the New York State Council on the Arts (2003), the Ohio Arts Council (2002), and the Arizona Commission on the Arts (2001).

The National Endowment for the Arts is a public agency dedicated to supporting excellence in the arts – both new and established – bringing the arts to all Americans, and providing leadership in arts education.  Established by Congress in 1965 as an independent agency of the federal government, the Endowment is the largest national annual funder of the arts, bringing great art to all 50 states, including rural areas, inner cities, and military bases.

The NEA Office of AccessAbility provides advocacy and technical assistance to encourage accessibility in arts programming for older adults, veterans, people with disabilities, and people who reside in institutions. The AccessAbility office works internally with Arts Endowment staff, grant panels, and grantees to make NEA-supported arts programs fully accessible. The office also convenes panels and seminars and initiates cooperative projects with other federal agencies and nonprofit groups to better educate professionals serving older adults and people with disabilities. Information about the NEA AccessAbility Office and its programs and publications is available at www.arts.gov.

The National Assembly of State Arts Agencies (NASAA) is the membership organization of the nation's state and jurisdictional arts agencies. The public sector plays a unique and essential role in ensuring that the benefits of the arts accrue to all American communities. State arts agencies broaden citizen access to the arts in every corner of the country, making the cultural, civic, educational, and economic benefits of the arts an essential ingredient of state policy and practice.

Return to News Index

National Endowment for the Arts · an independent federal agency
1100 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20506