Arts Access

Two external evaluators, Mary McEathron and Ann Mavis, were contracted by VSA Minnesota to provide evaluation services to the Minnesota Disability Mural Project. A pre- and post-workshop survey was completed by most of the workshop participants. One of the post- questions asked if the workshop had been fully accessible to them. From a total of 1044 survey responses, 843 reported yes, 10 reported no, and 189 didn’t respond to the question. Thus, 1% of the participants felt that because of time constraints (1), table set-ups (2), more personal assistance (2) or some other unstated reason that the workshop was not completely accessible to them. No person was turned away from any workshop and all participants either had a disability themselves or worked with or had a family member/acquaintance with a disability. Of the total participants, 79% expressed positive responses regarding how they felt about their art-making experience, 1% found it frustrating and 20% did not provide a response. 2: Each of the workshop participants were asked a couple of questions in the pre-workshop survey to determine both the frequency of participating in art-making workshops and if they had ever had any artwork that they may have created shown in a public venue. We used this second question to assess Outcome 2. Thirty-six percent (36%) of the respondents indicated that they had had their work on display previously, 48% said no and for 16% of the responses it was unable to be determined. We believe that a majority of the 16% for whom we could not determine a response would have responded no. Thus, we feel very confident in stating that our outcome was met; more than 50% of the participants will indicate this experience as their first for being part of a public art exhibit.