As we approach the 34th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), signed into law on July 26th, 1990, we recognize and celebrate the Disability Rights Movement. To honor this milestone date, NHCJE spoke with Jeff Symes, who leads the Unified + Inclusive Arts group, based in Nashua, New Hampshire, about the initiative’s effort to promote inclusion in the arts industry. From dance to text, graphics to music, U+I Arts encourages the participation of individuals with disabilities in the creative process across a wide range of arts media. The group seeks to open new avenues of perception and creativity for everyone involved.

“The urge to create and to express is one of humankind’s oldest compulsions. As a universal language, art can fill a unique role as both source and outcome of a shared experience. U+I Arts aims to make connections and provide fuel for collaborations between the arts community of greater Nashua and artists who have disabilities,” said Jeff Symes, Co-Founder, U+I Arts

U+I Arts: Creating on Common Ground

Disability inclusion has gained visibility and claimed space in the missions and practices of arts organizations around the world. For Jeff Symes, “U+I Arts is aligned with this equity mindset, driven by a desire to create collaborative opportunities for individuals with disabilities to participate in community projects in the greater Nashua area.” Their contributions encompass different artistic expressions, with members who draw, play music, sing and dance, write, photograph, edit videos, and even design their own fashions.

Part of U+I Arts’ mission is also to facilitate the movement of people with disabilities into leadership positions within the group, where they can make decisions on projects, such as choosing the community locations or the groups to approach for collaborations. U+I Arts pioneered a support model in which members with disabilities invite those without disabilities to share a creative space, where equal opportunity can lead to equity in participation.

“People with disabilities demonstrate that we perceive and experience the world in diverse ways. Some people, occasionally through necessity, engineer their own means to meet and understand the world. We accept and include some of those people, those we call ‘artists.’ For an artist who can perceive with imagination, inclusion is an instinctive and creative act. It is in the arts community, in the very human urge to create – to seek and discover, invent, translate, blend, contrast, unify, and connect, that we may find common ground and the best environments for inclusion,” Symes explained.

Shifting Perspectives on Disability

Individual perception is what has most affected our public conduct toward disability. From childlike innocence to pathological menace, history has treated people with disabilities according to the views of each era. Before the advent of institutions in the mid-19th century, which focused on restraint and control, disability was largely an accepted or at least expected part of family and community life, especially in non-Western cultures. 

Symes referenced “New Hampshire’s own School for the Feeble-Minded, which opened in 1903 and later changed its name to Laconia State School in 1924, is an example of shifting perceptions of disability.” He added that “the switch from the term ‘feeble-minded’ to today’s ‘developmentally disabled’ demonstrates that the words we use to refer to disability have also evolved through the years.”

Once a source of local pride, by the time New Hampshire’s only state-run institution was closed in 1991, Laconia State School had come to be seen with other institutions as sites of neglect and brutality, becoming targets of lawsuits that spurred the nationwide deinstitutionalization movement begun in the 1960s. 

“It has been an uphill battle ever since to provide people with disabilities the opportunity to rejoin their communities, to become not only a visible but a vital part of daily life,” emphasized Symes.

It has taken heroic efforts by people with disabilities like Judith Heumann, the “mother” of the Disability Rights Movement, and their allies to protest institutional rule and call public attention to the obstacles people with disabilities face not only in being active members of their communities but having autonomy in their own lives.

In her memoir, “Being Heumann: An Unrepentant Memoir of a Disability Rights Activist” the pioneering activist, who died in 2023, wrote, “Accidents, illnesses, genetic conditions, neurological disorders, and aging are facts of the human condition, just as much as race or sex.” As Heumann points out,  disability is one of the few conditions of life that can run through every other demographic category in the census: any person of any age, race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, language, or socio-economic status can be or become a person with a disability. 

“It is the largest minority group in the country. Moreover, it is unique as the only minority group any one of us can join at any time in our lives,” noted Symes. “In that light, disability could be considered a defining attribute of humanity; indeed, how we view and respond to disability can shape our very sense and idea of what it means to be human,” he added.

The Social and Medical Models of Disability

In modern times, formal thinking around disability policy presents two, often contrasting views of disability: the medical model and the social model. The medical model views disability as a condition in need of correction – surgery, therapy, behavior alteration, and habilitation. In this view, the focus is on changing the person with a disability. On the other hand, the social model sees a person with a disability as someone who is disabled by some function of society that cannot or will not accommodate them. For example, the presence or absence of a ramp will dictate whether a person who uses a wheelchair can access a building, regardless of their ability to use what’s inside the building.

Most of today’s structured disability support is based on the medical model. However, decision-makers in the disability support system rarely have lived experience with a disability. As a result, programs for those with disabilities often include physical or mental spaces that may or may not accommodate their disability, failing to fully meet their needs and to promote community inclusion.

For Symes, “there is a lack of representation of people with disabilities in the leadership positions that create and oversee accepted practices in disability support.” For him, “it is an odd system in which those with disabilities who require support must meet criteria set by people without diagnosed disabilities.”

People with disabilities are often overlooked, or marginalized, because of their differences from what is “typical.” Nonetheless, exclusion is frequently less of an intentional act than it is a response to discomfort, lack of information and experience, and a fear of saying and doing something wrong. 

“Silence is the most common culprit in exclusion. Exclusion can run in both directions when people with disabilities exclude themselves from a community or activity by the very same products of inexperience, fear, and discomfort,” Symes pointed out, highlighting the complexities of social dynamics.

By encouraging creative collaborations, promoting the inclusion of artists with disabilities in the creative industry, and providing them with leadership opportunities, U+I Arts is paving the way for a more inclusive and equitable future. Their work exemplifies how the arts can serve as a unifying language, bridging gaps and creating common ground for everyone involved. 

To learn more about their inspiring initiatives or to get involved, reach out to U+I Arts at ui.artsgroup@gmail.com.

Jeff Symes has worked in the disability support system in NH for more than 15 years, from direct support to service coordination/case management. Working with participants in that support system, colleagues, and community members, he helped found U+I Arts as a community group to work and create in collaboration outside the system. The hope is for a group that acts as a Third Space for people with and without disabilities to meet and learn from each other and create art and aesthetic experiences that reflect our lives and tell the stories of our communities.