Accessing the arts: Accounting for neurodiversity and disability in performing arts feedback methods

This report reflects on a research partnership between the CERC Health Equity and Community Wellbeing and Xenia Concerts. Xenia concerts provide family-friendly, accessible programming to the broader neurodiversity community, the disability community (including Deaf-friendly performances with musical ASL), the dementia community, and older adults with low income. The partnership involved the CERC hiring a student intern through TMU to work for Xenia for 3 months to support the organization and work collaboratively with Xenia. As part of a broad investigation into the social factors that affect health and wellbeing, the student, Danielle Licorish, explored access to the arts in the contexts of disability and neurodiversity. The student supported Xenia concerts in researching the design and evaluation of accessible concerts by designing and implementing innovative methods for collecting feedback directly from disabled and neurodivergent children and youth. Supervised by the CERC’s postdoctoral fellow in arts, healing and wellbeing (Temba Middelmann) and Xenia’s director, Rory McLeod, the student intern drafted a report of key findings from the piloting of the new methods over Xenia’s July programming. The aims over time are to improve programming and share insights with artists and arts organizations to improve accessibility more widely. Esthar Taha from TMU worked on developing the literature review, and Temba Middelmann revised and completed the report with feedback from Rory McLeod and Xenia. This research will aid Xenia in developing new forms of audience surveys to engage continuously and meaningfully with their diverse audiences. It will also assist in developing research questions related to Adaptive Concerts and accessible arts programming for future and broader research.