Keynote Address: Betty Siegel

Director, Accessibility and VSA at The Kennedy Center

Betty Siegel closed out the second day of BEGINNING: A National Conversation with a powerful keynote address focusing on the topic of “cultural defenders.” Her story of being invited to a conference on this topic and being absolutely inspired by the stories of individuals sacrificing everything – including their lives – in defense of their culture was received with awe and shock in the audience.

Why are we here? How are we defenders of cultural rights? Defending the rights of other people to make culture?

“The answer is that we are all cultural defenders. All of the delegates are standing up for the rights of people with disabilities to exercise their right to have a voice and to express their culture – through arts, writing, dance. It made me think in a different way on the way and the why around the work that I do,” Betty said.

Watch the keynote address.

When 20% of the world’s people – 1 billion in total – identify as having a disability, Betty shared that disability arts is worth supporting, sharing, defending, protecting – as artists, allies, caregivers, arts institutions. A big part of it begins with accessibility – with physical spaces and program design – but also starts to flourish when communities come together.

“The best examples often come from smaller organizations,” she shared. “We are seeing a trend where cultural organizations are coming together to create access consortiums – institutions are coming together to work collaboratively on accessibility issues and to pool their resources, technology, and marketing.”

“The way we need to move forward is that we have to understand what was not possible today may be possible tomorrow, but only if we are all working on it together,” she added.

Delegate feedback:

“Betty’s keynote was interesting and fun, very informative.”