Arts Access

1. Hired twelve ASL interns to greet and assist ASL patrons upon arrival; recruited and train three ushers to assist with audio description patrons; Hosted two theatre open-house events to introduce patrons to our venue and services (one had very poor attendance due to snow storm); collaborated with Thompson Hall Deaf Club, Bread of Life Deaf Church, Vision Loss Resources and Lyngblomsten Senior Living on six special events to connect our artists with patrons in their own environment; held two disability awareness trainings with part-time/volunteer front line staff; recruited community advisors/liaisons, created special ASL videos to target the deaf community and promoted them through VSA e-blasts and TCDeaf.com; 400 free tickets were distributed through agencies that serve seniors and the disabled community (Wilder, Lyngblomsten, Kaposia, Vision Loss). 2. Tracked sales/attendance records; conducted surveys, interviews and focus groups, tracked use of devices, services and wheelchair seats. 2: 1. After year one of the project (2011 grant), we were hoping that use of ASL and AD interpretation would increase from the due to increased performance offerings, interpreted discussions and events, but instead the use decreased from 480 in 2011 to 260 in 2012/13. Only a handful of patrons with sight impairment took advantage of our pre-show sensory tours, but those patrons reported high satisfaction and a new level of engagement with the productions and with Park Square because of the tours. Captioning use grew from 280 in 2011 to 4,195 in 2012/13. Sales of wheelchair accessible seats went from 1,716 2011 to 2,145 in 2012/13. We did not track the exact usage of assisted listening devices in 2011, but we had many nights when we ran out of available units, so increased our capacity. In 2012/13 229 patrons used these devices, most for multiple performances. 2. Tracked sales/attendance records; conducted surveys, interviews and focus groups, tracked use of devices, services and wheelchair seats.