MixAbilities Inclusive Arts Training Program – Community Access

Letters of Interest & Bio/Resume Due: January 6, 2025

H’art Centre invites Kingston’s artists and arts educators to apply to attend the upcoming round of MixAbilities inclusive arts training. We designed MixAbilities to help local artists/educators learn to:

1) Increase your awareness and understanding of inclusive and accessible arts.

2) Effectively and empathetically support an interested community of all abilities to participate or contribute to the arts.

3) Develop your skills and confidence as inclusive artists/educators, and;

4) Increase your knowledge and understanding of the value of arts for this population.

Our primary goal is to grow our roster of trained community artist-instructors and to spread awareness of our inclusive arts approach. Many, after learning these basics, have used their skills in the H’art Studio program at H’art Centre and others have applied their expertise and adapted their learning in order to craft inclusive art experiences in the wider community.

OVERVIEW 

January 6, 2025
We will invite local community artists to express interest in attending a MixAbilities training session to be held on January 13, 2025.

January 13, 2025
Our facilitator will guide up to 10 community artists through MixAbilities modules 1-5 in THE MIX at H’art Centre. Using the H’art Studio program as an example to explore the importance of inclusive arts training, the group will complete modules on communication techniques, lesson planning, creative space considerations, and arts-based instructional strategies. After a short lunch break, the community artists will be introduced to H’art’s Workshop Template and its supportive resource guide that will help create an inclusive workshop. The group will be introduced to the experiences of local artist-instructors. The day will conclude with a wrap-up and reflection Q&A. There are no fees for this training session thanks to the generosity of our supporters. If you would like to complete the full MixAbilities Training, you can then register to take part in module 6, a two-part practicum scheduled at a later date.

Practicum Details: July-August 2025
For those community artists opting to complete the full MixAbilities Training, you will complete the module 6 practicum during the summer or early fall. You will deliver the workshop created in the previous session to H’art Studio artists. H’art staff will observe the delivery of the workshop, document the execution of learned strategies, and provide feedback. In addition, interested participants may wish to take a module on our Zoom best practices and deliver a short online workshop.

ABOUT MIXABILITIES

H’art Centre has introduced over 1500 volunteers, placement students, community artists, and arts educators to our approach since 1998. We launched the MixAbilities Inclusive Arts Training Program, a formal blueprint of our approach to meaningful arts programming in 2018. MixAbilities received the City of Kingston’s Celebrating Accessibility Awards in 2018.

ELIGIBILITY

Community artists and/or arts educators are eligible to apply. In your letter of interest, please indicate your developed skills through training or practice, any recognition you have received in your artistic tradition, history of public presentation or publication, and how you are actively practicing your art.

Spaces are limited, please send a short letter of interest and bio or resume. Please let us know if you need to submit your interest in a different format.

H’art Centre is strongly committed to equity and values diversity. H’art Centre encourages expressions of interest from equity groups. Applications from disability-identified persons are strongly encouraged.

KEY DATES

December 5, 2025: Call to artists opens.
January 6, 2025: Letters of intent and resumes due
January 9, 2025: Final successful applicants notified.
January 13, 2025: MixAbilities Training Session Delivered
August- September 2025: Opportunities to complete a practicum. To be scheduled

We will offer a four-hour practicum in the summer. (Note: This is optional, but required if you want to complete FULL MixAbilities training.)

MIXABILITIES BACKGROUND

First recommended by educator and past Board member Bonnie Henderson, the training program was shaped by former board member Peter Wolf and graduate student (MA International Education) Sarah Carroll with input from H’art staff Anita Boldt throughout 2018. We completed the pilot testing phase of this project in 2018-2019. For 13 weeks, six artists/educators participated in the pilot to evaluate the program. We modified the material content, layout, and design throughout the pilot phase based on feedback from the initial participants. After our pilot phase, we received the City of Kingston 2018 Celebrating Accessibility Award in the category of Education for our efforts. ArtBridges, a hub and forum for connection for anyone interested in or active in community-engaged arts and arts for social change in Canada, documented the development of the program in their Tips & Tools series. In 2019, H’art Centre received an Ontario Arts Council Market Readiness grant to adapt MixAbilities in a way that will effectively share our expertise with arts organizations, collectives, and groups. It resulted in the Inclusivity Guide. You can use this tool to evaluate the accessibility of future workshops. Karen Dolan, our past MixAbilities Facilitator, was awarded the 2021 Community Arts Teacher of the Year by the Ontario Arts Education Association. In 2022, a webinar about this program was featured on the National Art Centre’s Arts Alive resource website. The program now features a continuing education module on inclusive arts for seniors.

Expressions of interest and resumes should be submitted by 4:00 pm on January 6, 2025. Please submit your information via email to: hartinfo@hartschool.ca

We would like to thank the Anna and Edward C. Churchill Foundation for their continued support of our MixAbilities Inclusive Arts Training program in 2025.