Artsline was founded in 1981 as a Project funded by Capital Radio with the objective of delivering a first class access to the arts service for disabled people within the Greater London and for tourists from within the UK and around the world. Artsline's first Chairman was John Whitney who, 25 years on, is President and continues to give enormous support.
Following the International Year of Disabled People, Artsline grew in the services it provides and in the number of Staff both paid and voluntary. Since 1981 of course there has been a technological revolution which Artsline has embraced by going from being paper based to an online database service with over 1,400 accessible arts and entertainment venues, 10% of which are multi-cultural. It is the intention to increase this number to over 2,000 by the end of 2008 and we are on course to achieve this. However we still maintain a telephone information service for those without access to or the desire to use our database service. Many people still want to talk to a "proper person" rather than press buttons for information and this is an important part of Artsline's service.
Artsline has formed important links with The Society of West End Theatres, The Cinema Owners Association, Shape, Access in London , London Disability Arts Forum, The Liberty Festival, London Civic Forum etc. In addition we have participated in the last three Open House events and will continue to do so in the future. In 2006 Open House expanded this activity to children and young people which will involve an educational aspect working with schools.
Twenty five years on from our foundation Artsline finds itself facing challenges, some new, others familiar. In the 1980's concepts of accessibility and inclusivity in The Arts were not established, battles were fought by ourselves and many other organisations to convince both venues and funders of their importance. Today a greater understanding has been achieved about the rights of disabled people but we can not become complacent in this matter. Artsline's specialist access auditors will continue to audit and assess accessibility in new and existing venues, providing detailed information not only for our users but for the venues themselves to give them the opportunity to develop best practice.
Artsline's commitment to supporting disabled people remains reflected in our employment practices. Where possible, we will employ or engage disabled people who have personal and professional experience of disability; people uniquely placed to provide specialist input. Although we will continue to develop our state-of-the-art database we understand the importance of maintaining our telephone service to answer queries from those without computers or access to them.
Artsline has begun to establish itself as a source of research-based evidence on access issues, we aim to continue repositioning ourselves as the prime organisation providing guidance and information to national and regional policy makers, development agencies, forums and committees relating to access issues facing disabled people. We envisage that, as an end result of this developing role, Artsline will become one-stop shop for access information to culture and the arts.
Artsline believes that disability is the effect upon the lives of people with impairments created by discrimination, inequality of opportunity and inaccessible environments. Therefore disability is the experience of barriers. Attitude is Everything (AiE), our highly successful stand-alone project has achieved radical improvements in access to live music for disabled people, not only ensuring accessibility for audience members but providing opportunities for disabled people to work backstage and as performers. In partnership with a range of organisations we are actively developing projects which will replicate AiE's ground breaking achievements in other areas of arts and culture.
Artsline has been the leading provider of detailed access information for almost 25 years and in the spring of 2003 we launched the website www.artslineonline.com. At that time we had 300 comprehensive access reports covering venues in London and the website became Artsline's contribution to "The European Year of Disabled People 2003".
Launched by the, then Minister for Disabled People, Maria Eagle, the database has expanded to well over one thousand four hundred venues online, and includes a variety of events specific tailored to the needs of disabled people. Typically over 45,000 unique visitors use our invaluable resource each month and from well over 80 different countries.
Artsline has always been proud of the quality of information it provides and recently conducted a full postal survey of all its venues to keep that information current. The success of the project and the number of the venues involved has meant that we will rely more and more on the venues themselves to help us with the updating process. Carefully worded online questionnaires are all designed by disabled people to maximize the quality of our data and in future our focus will be shift to a 100% web database. We have not forgotten those users without internet access as all our access surveys can be printed and posted as well as accessed from our more traditional telephone hotline service.
The new website builds on the success of our previous model, and includes many improvements especially in terms of navigation and a far more powerful search engine. A message board area for our users to communicate with each other and Artsline staff makes the site more interactive and fun to use. The ability to post comments at the bottom of each venue and event pages provides feedback on our reports and communicate with other users on specific topics.
Alan Kerr
Chief Executive Officer
Artsline
54 Chalton Street
London
NW1 1HS
Tel: +44 (0)20 7388 2227
Fax: +44 (0)20 7383 2653
admin@artsline.org.uk
www.artsline.org.uk
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