Europe Beyond Access: How lack of knowledge in the cultural sector creates barriers for disabled artists and audiences

Time to Act is the first transnational study to clearly demonstrate that cultural professionals in the performing arts across Europe lack the knowledge and experience to support equal access to the cultural sector for disabled artists, practitioners and audiences.

Based on a large-scale open survey in 42 countries, a series of in-depth interviews and an analysis of existing literature, reports and guidelines, Time to Act explores the barriers that prevent cultural professionals from learning about and presenting artistic works by professional disabled artists, identifies knowledge gaps and trust deficits, and asks who should do more to promote equal access.

The survey is executed by the Creative Europe project Europe Beyond Access.

One of the clearest findings is that performing arts professionals need to know more about the work of disabled artists. More than half of the respondents rated their level of knowledge as poor or very poor. About 1 in 6 hadn't seen a single production by disabled artists in the last two years. Not surprisingly, lack of knowledge was cited as one of the biggest barriers to supporting and programming more work by disabled artists. Currently, 48% of respondents aren't very confident or not at all confident about the accessibility of artistic programming for disabled artists.

Read or listen to the full report (available in different languages).

Read this article in Dutch.