After eight years of art outreach to grade schools for Art Spark Texas, Jan Meeks remembers breakthrough moments that brought home her mission as a teaching artist. “One of my favorites … was at [Austin’s] Zavala Elementary School kindergarten class,” she says. “We were working on a giant mural laid out in the hallway.” 

Throughout the term, Jan had been collecting the small art projects the kids had been making. These were going on the mural. “I had an idea of making snow,” she says. “The kids used squirt bottles of glue to cover the mural. Then we took bricks of styrofoam and rubbed them together, and all the little pieces of styrofoam came down and stuck to the glue.”

One small boy with Downs Syndrome stood in the “snowstorm.” “It was flying everywhere and he threw his head back, opened his arms, closed his eyes and stuck out his tongue like he was catching flakes. It made it all worthwhile to see him. I knew then I was [knocking] down boundaries.

“Art Spark programs are life-changing for everyone,” Jan says. “What I was doing is not only teaching the kids, but teaching the teachers how to use art — and that is probably the toughest part. Kids are a blank slate; they’re easy to teach. It’s the teachers and getting them to realize that there is not a right and wrong. You may want it to look one way, but it’s going to come out looking totally different. And that’s OK.

“There was an Arts Spark arts book that we could pull out for curriculum and ideas,” she says. She continues handing out Art Spark Texas materials whenever somebody asks for resources.

Jan says her Art Spark experience also benefited herself. “I began to value myself a bit more by putting into action what I am truly capable of. It just hit home,” she says. “Working with people with disabilities or kids in general, I realized that what I was doing was more powerful than I ever thought, because not everyone can do it. By doing so with Art Spark, it kind of reinforced what I was already doing and it gave me more self-confidence that I was doing things right, that everything that I thought was for me, was beneficial to somebody else.

“I would work with Art Spark Texas again in a heartbeat.”

Brenda Shirk has a passion for live theatre and movies. And she loves to learn new things.

“I audio-described ‘Titanic,’” she recounts, “which was released the year we first offered audio description.” 

In 1997, audio description was still a new practice, largely underdeveloped and only sparsely available. It is a narration service that provides verbal descriptions of key visual elements in media and live performances, making them accessible to individuals who are blind, low vision, or visually impaired. 

“I described all the visual elements, the costumes, the ship, the ice – without talking over any of the dialogue”, Brenda says enthusiastically. “It was the most enjoyment I ever got from a movie.”

With the help of dedicated volunteers like Brenda, Art Spark Texas became pioneers in the field of audio description, training audio describers and producing some of the first audio description training tapes. In fact, Brenda was one of the first volunteers to train as a descriptor. She learned that she could share her passion for film and theater with blind and visually impaired individuals in the community. 

The organization eventually developed training and mentorship programs to ensure quality, emphasize hands-on practice, and support continuous improvement, and was involved in the Audio Description Coalition to develop national guidelines for audio description certification.

Art Spark’s emphasis on training has made an impact across the arts and internationally, training docents and conducting workshops in places like Taiwan and Hong Kong, and helping museums create more inclusive experiences for visitors who have visual impairments. 

Brenda realizes that volunteering at Art Spark Texas changed her perspective. “I could make a difference in people’s lives,” she says. “It was a huge awakening.”  And the blind and visually impaired community thanks her for her commitment to, and expertise in, audio description. “It is a way to share the arts with others unlike any you could imagine. Your heart will soar with the experience and you will enjoy the difference you can make.”

Every volunteer, every action, every connection, every performance is an opportunity to expand our world and create richer, more meaningful cultural experiences for everyone.

Luke Stollings came to Art Spark Texas to participate in our audio description training sessions and fell in love with the process. 
“Converting visual information into words during a live theater event really lit up my brain.” In a recent article from Tribeza on Art Spark. As he says in the article, “I keep coming back to volunteer with Art Spark Texas for several reasons. First, helping someone else enhance their theater experience makes me really happy. Audio description can be an important part of a blind patron’s experience at the theater. Second, the challenge of accurately, quickly, and succinctly describing key visual content in words, and doing so in a way that doesn’t “step on” the actor’s dialogue or singing. Finally, I love how I get to play a small part in the overall mission of Art Spark Texas to champion accessibility in the arts.” Read more here: https://magazine.tribeza.com/books/dekl/#p=116

While reflecting back on my internship, the one thing that stood out to me most was the play “Waiting for the Bus” that Celia invited me to. It was an extremely eye-opening theater play that explored patience, hope, and the human condition about those with developmental and/or intellectual disabilities while also explaining the history of the disability rights movement. I learned about a lot of things that I had no idea had happened like the Capitol Crawl and it showcased a lot of hard topics such as the history of eugenics against disabled people, their general hatred for being called “special ed”, and how being placed in schools meant to care for them can lead to abusive environments and them getting essentially abandoned by their families. It was a very hard play to watch, but it felt very necessary to see. 

The play was told through the perspective of someone with an intellectual disability who waits for the bus at a bus stop because they want to leave the institutional facility that their family had placed them in; and between each bus stop scene is an event that was important for the disability rights movement. One of the scenes that stood out to me most was when the main character believed that they would get to leave the facility and how they were confident that they could learn to support themselves by getting a job at the grocery store while living with their sister, only to learn from the facility that they were deemed to be “not ready for society yet” and that his guardian (his sister) wasn’t able to take care of him because she was going to get married and was expecting a baby soon. I think that the play really hit home the feeling of being trapped in a bubble with no power of your own as you watch the people you love live lives without you and really pushes for the idea that what is most important for disabled people is independence and the ability to do things by themselves. 

In the audio description training for museums that I’m finalizing this week, I hope to integrate making spaces for people to draw their own conclusions. Through my recent completion of the Art Spark audio description training modules, I learned a lot about the importance of brevity, word choice, and even tone when doing audio description and this continues to relate back to my own knowledge as an Informatics major where we primarily study how people take in information and share it with those around them. Bias is in everything, especially in our tone and word choice, and it makes a lot of sense why audio describers typically watch something first before scripting up what they plan to say because it can be hard to decide word choice on the fly during live stage plays.

See Elana’s final presentation based on her internship with Art Spark Texas on our YouTube Channel.

Download the transcript to go along with the presentation.

As I continue working underneath Celia Hughes at Art Spark TX, I’m learning more about the best practices for audio description and hope to incorporate color theory and common color associations into the training that I am creating for museums. While starting this project, I was tasked with going through the training modules that were created to train audio describers and it stood out to me that the first module was primarily addressing what exactly blindness was. It had gone completely over my head about including this in the training that I’m creating and it also made me question what I knew myself.

Alt Text: Elena holding the Audio Description hardware as she sets-up for the show at Ground Floor Theatre.

I recently created a form that would collect people’s associations with colors in order to help with my desire to incorporate color theory into my audio description training and one of the first questions is for the person to describe the blindness. Although I knew about several different types of blindness and was aware that blindness was a spectrum, the various answers that I received still surprised me and it showed how little I knew about blindness. Despite growing up with possible retinal detachment, having my sister experience corneal degenerations, and having a cousin who had cataracts at a young age, there were still terms and definitions that I didn’t know about. One of the videos that Celia had me go through in my training modules was “Blindness is a Spectrum”, a YouTube video that had different blind YouTubers explain their vision loss. Terms like Retinitis Pigmentosa, Stargardt’s Disease, and Hermansky-Pudlak Syndrome Type 3 were all said within the first minute of the video and it showed me that there are still aspects to blindness that I should be aware of and learn more about because it really helped me frame the idea of blindness being a spectrum better.

Alt Text: Elena assists Adam as he tries out the audio description hardware.

With this in mind, a part of me wanted to focus more of the training on explaining what blindness was and to limit the time spent on colors and other artistic elements that museum docents would likely already be using in their work. However, Celia brought up the necessity of activating knowledge. While I might already be connecting the importance of explaining things like colors, lines, and shapes in audio description, the museum docents that my training is meant to teach may not realize that there is a strong connection between the explanation of those elements and their work as audio describers for blind visitors, so I definitely need to learn how to balance those two aspects as I create my training.

As I continue with my work, I want to integrate all of these things into my training while also playing up the strengths of the museum docents that the training is targeted towards. A hard truth that I had to confront was that I had no love or passion for abstract art, which went against Celia’s teachings of how you needed to love the art so that you can describe it as best as you can. I want to learn more about how museum docents talk about various types of art and there is so much that I can learn from the people around me as I create this training.

Alt Text: Elena and Celia pose for a selfie outside of the Ground Floor Theatre display.

Bios (alphabetical)

James Burnside – Playwright
Playwright, (slightly) disabled Veteran, Husband, Father, Old Man, Long Covid.

Deja – Guide Dog
A beautiful black Labrador who helps her momma navigate every day obstacles. Deja’s favorite thing to do is performing with her momma. No petting, eye contact, and no kissy or whistling noises.

Alexandria Ellison – Projection Designer
Alexandria Ellison is a media specialist based in Austin. She is passionate about theatre and has worked with Hyde Park Theatre, Bottle Alley Theatre Co. and Scottish Rite Theatre. Theatre credits include serving as assistant director for The Good Thief starring Ken Webster.

Nathaniel Fomby – Tracy/Elijah
Nathaniel Fomby is a graduate of Concordia University Texas where he studied theatre, music and education. He has been in many shows, including Reckless, Crimes of the Heart, A Stranger with Roses, and The Insanity of Mary Girard. He also starred in CTX Theatre’s first musical production of The 25thAnnual Putnam County Spelling Bee and Little Shop of Horrors. During the day, when he is not performing, he is an Elementary Theatre Teacher. Nathaniel is very excited to be working with Art Spark on this amazing project!

Daya Garcia – Dr. Pinky-Chorus
Daya, formerly performed with Tilt Performance Group, was a part of TUBU Fest and is excited to play the role of Dr. Pinky in the Chorus in Waiting for the Bus. Her favorite color is pink and she is an advocate for the blind community. And she’s ready to shine a ray of pink sunshine.

Kristen Gooch – Jamie
Kristen is Co-Founder of TUBU Fest and an Austin Based Actor, Poet and Disability Advocate.

Adam Griebel – Dana
Adam is a native Austinite and has always loved live theater. He was a member of the original cast of Actual Lives, a theatrical troupe of adults with disabilities participating in autobiographical page-to-stage theater productions. Adam has a degree in recreational therapy and has worked providing personal care attendant services to folks with disabilities. Adam wants to thank his loving wife, Laura and daughter, Madeleine for their support. He is very grateful to Art Spark Texas for this opportunity to participate in this production.

Christian Huey – Doctor/McPherson/Captain Haskell/Chuck/Court Officer
Christian is an Austin native and graduate of UT and Texas State University. He’s been active in the Greater Austin theatre, improv comedy, and indie film scenes for 20 years.

Celia Hughes – Producer
Celia is proud to be the keeper of the vessel that has produced this amazing play. Art Spark Texas tries to shine a light into the dark corridors of our history so that we may spark the conversations where change is possible. It is with hope that we share Waiting for the Bus with you today. 

Kaye Love – Etta/CFO
Kaye has been involved in performance advocacy since 2008, appearing in performances with Actual Lives Austin, Speaking Advocates, Stand Up for Mental Health, and as a member of Tilt Performance company from 2018 to 2023. She works as a Professional Counselor, and is a Minister in Connection with the Interfaith Temple of New York.

Ryan Moore – Rich/Dickson/Rod/Ben Riley/COO/Fight Coordinator
Ryan would like to welcome you to our production of Waiting for the Bus. Ryan recently graduated from Florida State University with a BA in theatre and its excited to be performing his second show in Austin. Some of his previous credits include Max (The Play that Goes Wrong), David (The Amen Corner) and Cedric (Puffs!). He would like to thank his family and mother for their undying support and he hopes you leave the theatre knowing something you didn’t when you entered.

Brynja Newman – Costume Designer
Brynja Newman has a bachelor’s degree in theater arts and a multi-faceted background in the performing arts. She worked as a costume technician for 2 years in the St. Edward’s University Costume Shop, and has deep appreciation for the history of clothing and costume.

Mia Nguyen – Dr. Chicolini – Chorus/Caroline
Mia Hsiung Nguyen is an actress based in Austin, TX. She is currently a fourth-year BFA in Acting major at the University of Texas at Austin. Her recent credits with UT include CHOREOMANIAC 1518 (Sevallia), HAMLET (Ophelia), THEN WE’LL REST (Penny) and OUR TOWN (Emily Webb), and more. This past summer, she studied at Shakespeare & Company and the Stella Adler Studio of Acting. Credits outside of UT include The Comedy of Errors and The Tempest at Illinois Shakespeare Festival. Mia has also starred in various films and music videos around Austin.

Grace Ramsden – Stage Manager/Intimacy Director
Grace Ramsden is a stage manager and intimacy director passionate about fostering a theatrical environment where consent, safety, and empathy are at the forefront of every production. Most recently, she has worked with Austin Playhouse on Emma (Assistant Stage Manager), The Spitfire Grill (Stage Manager), Born with Teeth (Intimacy Director), Big Fish (Assistant Stage Manager), and Indecent (Intimacy Director). She has also worked throughout Austin at Mary Moody Northen Theatre, Austin Shakespeare, TILT Performance Group, and Crown Theatre.

Mindy Rast-Keenan – Nurse
While having worked steadily in the Austin theater scene for two decades, Mindy is delighted to make her Ark Spark Texas debut. She was most recently seen as Twelfth Night’s Olivia in the original jukebox musical Bar(d) (Walking Shadow Shakespeare) last August, belting out Natalie Imbruglia to the masses. Outside of Art Spark, Mindy is a member of the VORTEX Repertory Company and The Paramount’s Story Wranglers, and has performed with Different Stages, Trinity Street Players, The City Theatre, Rosedale Shakespeare, Scottish Rite Theater, and Paradox Players, just to name a few. Beyond theater, Mindy is an award-winning voice actor with clients like Goodwill Central Texas, Staples, and plays a myriad of different characters in Pirate101 and Wizard101 (KingsIsle Entertainment), and even had a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo of the HBO series Quarry. When not acting, MIndy likes to spend her time playing D&D, and being a weirdo alongside her beloved husband, Drake.

John Rodgers – Lighting/Sound
John is a traveling English and theater teacher from New Hampshire with a deep passion for storytelling that extends beyond the classroom. He currently operates Communication By Captivation LLC, an online and in person multimedia arts company dedicated to live performance and animated content, where he and his team craft engaging narratives that resonate with audiences. With a diverse background in the performing arts, John embraces various roles, from managing technical aspects behind the scenes to performing on stage. An active participant in the ATX theater community, he is committed to contributing wherever he can. John is excited to lend his technical expertise to Waiting for the Bus as Lighting and Audio Technician and Designer.

Liz Ross – Director
Liz Ross is proud to direct Waiting for The Bus. They are the Executive Director and co-founder of TUBU Fest, an award winning disability short fringe play festival. They were a Board Member of KOOP Radio for 6 years, hosted The Sex Ed Show for 5 years, and recently received their grad degree in Integrative Medicine – Acupuncture and Herbology. Liz is a writer, director, producer, with experience in theatre, film, games, radio, non-profit, politics, and tech.

Rafael Trevino – Robinson/Carl/Mario/Leroy Bienvenue
Rafael acted in a short play earlier this year in TUBU Fest, a disability short fringe festival. He is excited to join the cast in Waiting for The Bus.

Yadira Uno – Dr. Firefly-Chorus
I am legally Blind with an eye condition called Optic Nerve Hypoplesia. I am an actress, but also an artist who is inspired by her guide dog Deja.

Kurt Wilkinson – Jimmy/Judge
Kurt Wilkinson (he/they) lives in San Antonio and graduated from Texas A&M University – Corpus Christi with a BA in Acting and Directing in 2019. Kurt is most known for the one man version of A Christmas Carol they did with The Classic Theatre of San Antonio in 2022. Kurt was proud to accept the SPARK award at the Art Spark Texas 2023 Artist of the Year awards, and they have previously worked with ArtSpark in TUBU Fest and the staged reading of this play.

Waiting for the Bus was created based on research into the history of disabled people in America. Here are some of the links and books we referenced when writing the play. We encourage you to read deeper into this history that was briefly touched upon in the play, Waiting for the Bus.

Alt Text: Waiting for the Bus, November 14-23rd at Ground Floor Theater. An original play by James Burnside, directed by Liz Ross.

Links

Dorothea Dix: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorothea_Dix

The legacy of Eugenics: https://tinyurl.com/avsm8vdb

Covid 19: https://tinyurl.com/mrajtydh

League of the Physically Handicapped: https://tinyurl.com/2yudtvzs

League of the Physically Handicapped: https://tinyurl.com/yaydh6zp

504 Protest: https://tinyurl.com/5n7t43u3

Black Panthers: https://tinyurl.com/4w3sdtks

Austin State Hospital: https://tinyurl.com/nhef3u5f

Haunted House: https://tinyurl.com/mr2rv3w6

Brains: https://tinyurl.com/4ft2y8zd

Texas Fight Club: https://tinyurl.com/5n8emws7

Unmarked Graves: https://tinyurl.com/y56x6uxt

Austin State School Cemetery: https://tinyurl.com/2cb38vje

Rusk State Hospital: https://tinyurl.com/38a34ked

Rusk State Hospital: https://tinyurl.com/4s9bku4s

A History of Institutions for People with Disabilities: https://tinyurl.com/5n7kxvpv

Books

Disability Visibility: First Person Stories From The Twenty-First Century; Edited by Alice Wong

What Have We done: An Oral History of the Disability Rights Movement; Fred Pelka

A Disability History of the United States; Kim E. Nielsen

No Right to be Idle: The invention of Disability, 1940s-1930s; Sarah F. Rose

May is Healthy Vision Month; established by the National Eye Institute in 2003, to educate people about the risks of ignoring the health of their eyes. The 2023 theme is Healthy Vision: A Family Focus, to inspire families to team up and learn how to protect their vision together. This year’s focus is on caregivers of children and older adults in Hispanic/Latino families, but all ethnic and cultural communities can benefit from this advocacy.

In honor of Healthy Vision Month, we are celebrating one of Art Spark Texas’ longest serving Audio Describers, Diana Payne. Originally from El Paso, Texas, Diana came to Austin to attend St. Edwards University, where she earned a degree in writing and rhetoric. After graduation, she started investigating weird and quirky opportunities where she would be able to put her rhetoric degree to good use. It was a podcast about Audio Description where she heard the opening scene of the Matrix described and became intrigued by the creative and technical aspects of AD. Following a weekend training retreat in North Carolina that sealed the deal, she returned to Austin where, to her delight, she learned that Art Spark Texas has been delivering AD services for years. The rest, as they can say, is history.

Diana started describing video clips for Art Spark through a service called extended description. The video is paused to deliver essential visual information, and it is most prevalent in educational environments. Diana’s first video was a black and white video that she remembers had something to do with groceries. It’s okay that she can’t remember because she has written scripts for hundreds of videos for Art Spark since then!

Just before the pandemic isolation, she started live describing in the Austin theaters. Her first show was Ann, at ZACH Theatre, starring Holland Taylor, and she was “really nervous.” In the beginning, she tended to over describe every little thing, but now she is more relaxed because she has developed her Describer reflexes. These allow her to know when to add information later if she forgets something important, to trust her instincts, and that more is not always better. She has, “gained a sense to let the work describe itself, and small movements may not be important.” But she really likes live describing, because she knows that people are in the audience listening to the description, and she hopes to be making it a more enjoyable experience. Hearing patron feedback is really satisfying, good or critical!

Asked how Audio Description has affected her appreciation of the arts, she said that she often finds herself trying to describe movies in her head, to see what words she can find to make it more understandable and enjoyable. She has a greater appreciation of the work that goes into producing a play; and really thinks about the arts through the lens of description all the time now, which “really excites me.” She actually spends some of her free time listening to described videos and films, because not only is it informative to her professional development, it inspires her to hear how other describers handle different visual information. She also admits that listening to description enhances her personal movie viewing and enjoyment. 

Diana offered a few suggestions for people who may be thinking about exploring Audio Description as a vocation or avocation: 

• Listen to a lot of Audio Description. Different types, including horror, comedy, drama, documentary, science fiction. Pay attention to language choices for the different genre, intended audience age levels, culture, etc.

• Seek out blind-centered discussions if you are a sighted describer. There are several informative and interesting conversations happening that concern the changing field of Audio Description, that can influence your development as a describer.  

• Get professional training! Look for trainers who have several years of audio description experience who co-train with blind or visually impaired individuals. 

• It is a rewarding and worthwhile service that takes good training and constant professional development to be good. So don’t give up!

Thank you Diana, for sharing your insights with others and keep describing!  

We corresponded with Question, recording artist and one of RAMPD’s founding members, to learn more about the origins of this important organization and what people with and without disabilities can do to push the music industry forward. Read more below and be sure to join RAMPD this Friday, January 21 at 5 PM ET for their Official Launch Party, which will stream live on YouTube (see video below).

First off, awesome acronym! Can you start by giving us an overview of RAMPD, and how it came to be?

RAMPD (Recording Artists & Music Professionals with Disabilities) is a music industry-oriented collective founded with the goal of shedding light on disability culture, inclusion, and access. RAMPD was founded mid-2021 by award-winning Recording Artist Lachi based in NY after a panel she spoke on alongside members of the Recording Academy. 

I love that part of your mission is “amplifying Disability Culture,” which I think is so important because a lot of people, especially those from outside the Disability Community, don’t even recognize us as a social group, much less one with a thriving culture. So, how do you define Disability Culture, and how do you amplify it?

It’s a culture made up of people who identify as having a disability who strive to progress through challenges. I amplify Disability Culture by pointing out the similarities with other subcultures and demonstrating we are capable of achieving equal forms of success.

Here is RAMPD’s “official” definition of Disability Culture: Disability Culture is a celebration of people who identify as disabled, while acknowledging the vast diversity of the disability experience and each person’s inherent and equal worth. It is unapologetic, creative, innovative, adaptable, imaginative, and rooted in problem-solving. It is based on the premise that disability needs to be seen, respected, included and celebrated. It includes our worldviews, our perspectives, our contributions, our art, our words, and our music. Disability Culture, at least in part, is a vibrant and thriving counter-response to the exclusion, marginalization, and oppression historically and currently experienced by many disabled individuals. 

What in your view are the biggest obstacles facing musicians with disabilities today?

• Accessibility: Companies and content creators don’t have people with disabilities in mind when creating their products and instead consider us as an afterthought leading to us having to create our own methods to interface with products.
• Awareness: Lots of companies aren’t gathering data and marketing towards people with disabilities which is an overwhelmingly large group. Companies underestimate our capabilities and buying power.
• Inclusion: Because many people aren’t aware of how many disabled artists are in the industry, we are often not included in opportunities.

What resources and opportunities does RAMPD provide?

RAMPD has a growing online database of esteemed music artists and professionals. This resource is available for the industry to aid in awareness and to recruit talent. 

If musicians with disabilities want to get involved with the organization, what is the best way for them to do so? Where can people learn more?

We are active on social media and becoming more so as we grow. Follow us on social media and at www.rampd.org. Here are all our links:

RAMPD LAUNCH EVENT LINK

RAMPD OFFICIAL WEBSITE

RAMPD ON FACEBOOK

RAMPD ON TWITTER

RAMPD ON INSTAGRAM 

RAMPD YOUTUBE CHANNEL

RAMPD SPOTIFY PLAYLIST

How can folks without disabilities, both in the music industry and beyond, support the mission of RAMPD and be better allies to musicians and music goers who identify as disabled?

We super encourage and appreciate allies and their support because there is power in numbers. Allies can visit our website to take our survey to sign up for our newsletter to stay aware of events and future opportunities.