This symposium is organized researchers from UBC and ArtsAbly. Kickstart is the community partner associated with the event.
Dr. Stefan Sunandan Honisch
Stefan Sunandan Honisch is currently Sessional Lecturer in the Department of Theatre and Film, and Scholar-In-Residence at St. John’s College, at the University of British Columbia. From 2019 to 2021, he held a Banting Postdoctoral Fellowship in the department from 2019 to 2021. He is also Co-Director of a Race, Gender, and Diversity Initiative, “Facilitating Anti-Ableist Remote Music-Making,” and Co-Applicant for a Partnership Development Grant, “Canadian Accessible Musical Instruments Network.” Both projects, led by Adam Patrick Bell, Western University, are funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. His research interests are at the intersection of Critical Disability Studies, Critical Music Studies, Performance Studies, and Critical Pedagogy. His first monograph project Vulnerable Virtuosities: Disability in Concert and Competition (in progress) uses a Disability Justice framework to explore how blind virtuoso pianists radically challenge stubborn dualisms of musical strength and weakness, demonstrating that vulnerable manifestations of disabled embodiment intensify the aesthetic and expressive power of musical virtuosity. Honisch presented work from this project as a keynote speaker for Holyoke College’s 2024 symposium Reframing the Gaze: Maria Theresia Paradis, Blind Musicians, and Musical Culture before and after Braille.
Read Stefan Sunandan Honisch’s full biography
Dr. Anabel Maler
Anabel Maler is a scholar of music theory with interests in music and disability studies, music in Deaf culture, music perception, embodiment and gesture, post-tonal form, and the intersections of music theory, musicology, and ethnomusicology. She is the author of the first full-length scholarly monograph on sign language music, titled Seeing Voices: Analyzing Sign Language Music (Oxford 2024). Her research has appeared in many venues, including SMT-V, Music Theory Online, Intégral, Music Perception, and the Journal of the Society for American Music. She is an Assistant Professor of Music Theory at the University of British Columbia, Canada and has previously held appointments at Indiana University and the University of Iowa.
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Dr. Diane Kolin
Diane Kolin is a French-born Canadian singer, a music educator, and a voice teacher. She is a professional member of RAMPD (Recording Artists and Music Professional with Disabilities), and of the Recording Academy. She frequently performs in North America and Europe. Diane is the founder of ArtsAbly, a not-for-profit offering diverse activities related to accessibility and disability in the arts, including workshops, lectures, and free resources. She hosts the podcast ArtsAbly in Conversation, which can be found on all streaming platforms, highlighting the work of artists, project leaders and scholars with disabilities. Diane is a certified Rick Hansen Foundation Accessibility Certification (RHFAC) professional, which allows her to assess accessibility of buildings and sites across Canada, with a focus on cultural venues and concert halls. She completed her MA and her PhD in musicology at York University, Toronto, Canada. Her research focuses on professional musicians, composers, and music specialists with disabilities, in music history, disability studies and music education.
Read Diane Kolin’s full biography
ArtsAbly
ArtsAbly is a Canadian organization dedicated to making the arts more accessible for people with disabilities by fostering dialogue, providing resources, and working with performers and educational institutions to improve access to stages and classrooms. ArtsAbly focuses on inclusion in performing arts and education through talks and workshops, and the podcast ArtsAbly in Conversation. ArtsAbly’s aim is to challenge the lack of conversations about disability in the arts and promote access as a collective responsibility, offering resources, interviews with disabled artists, and facilitating events like symposia and workshops.
Kickstart
Founded in 1998, Kickstart Disability Arts and Culture is a multidisciplinary professional Disability Arts non-profit committed to showcasing the artistic excellence of artists working within the field of Disability Arts and Culture and supporting disabled artists in BC and across Canada as they continue to push the boundaries of what Disability Arts and Culture can do in this world. Kickstart is rooted in the history of Disability Arts and Culture as being tied to a community and cultural movement, and has prioritized supporting the arts and cultural practices of artists who exist at multiple axes of intersecting oppressions. As an arts organization founded and run by disabled artists for disabled artists, having artistic and administrative leadership who identify as disabled, ensures that decision making is driven by people from within the community it serves. Such a model has provided an example within the field of arts and culture, in that Kickstart both started and continues as an organization that is run ‘for us/by us’; rather than simply providing programming for marginalized communities. In order to promote the development of Disability Arts and Culture, Kickstart is led by disabled Arts administrators; programs, presents, and works with artists who not only identify as disabled but also develop aesthetic markers linked to the canon of Disability Arts and Culture, and centers accessibility in complex and intersectional ways that make it possible for disabled people to take up the role of professional artists, curators, as well as art audiences.