What’s New: The Art of Inclusion-Transforming Public Places

Roger Ideishi is a pioneer in the Philadelphia area for transforming public places into welcoming spaces. Ideishi has focused his work of transforming the city’s theatres, museums, and concert halls from places where families with children with disabilities felt isolated and scrutinized, into havens where no one is judged. Partnering with local cultural and arts institutions for training and education, Ideishi takes time to meet with the individual institution to make a tailored plan to focus on how best to accommodate the young patrons with disabilities. Working with producers, directors and production crews, Ideishi finds out what small tweaks can be made to a performance to make it more accommodating. This can be as simple as informing families of expected loud noises in the program, or asking the sound crew to temper the volume slightly during the most intense pieces. Ideishi’s work is not only confined to Philadelphia, he has also worked with cultural organizations across the U.S. such as the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, and Pittsburgh’s Andy Warhol Museum, as well as collaborating with colleagues in Australia and the U.K. “One of my agendas is that these organizations fundamentally change the way that they view accommodations, the way they view disability, so it becomes an inherent part of everything they do,” says Ideishi. His goal is to maintain the integrity of the performance or exhibit and “create an inclusive environment that everybody can come to and experience the same thing.”

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