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Concept of the INVISIBLE EXPERIENCE program
I.
[About our Festival]
We would like to present a small but very important program widening knowledge about social and
psychological needs of blind and visually impaired people.
In Russia they are still mostly excluded from a range of very important spheres of life, and people with
vision can hardly understand their needs. One of the most vulnerable and at the same time exciting
spheres is the field of visual arts. Cultural institutions in Russia, dealing with visual arts are still hardly
accessible for people with sight problems, their annual programs are still not intended for this category
of visitors.
We invite museums and galleries to get the skills for building a new, mixed and very enthusiastic
audience! We hope due to our festival cultural institutions in Moscow dedicated to visual arts become
meeting places for people with and without handicaps. Both categories of visitors can get common
educative experience!
We hope our initiative could become a regular event in Moscow and partner cities of Russia.
I.
[Mission and Goals]
Our target groups (audience). The Program was developed for two main categories of audience:
1/ Professionals: staff of museums and galleries, working mostly on popularization of visual arts,
educative programs.
2/ Average audience without experience (blind and visually impaired, or/and people without
any visual disabilities, mixed groups)
3/ Artists working with people in art-therapy and art-education programs
- Main goal of our program is to attract professionals and other audience to the problem of integration
(inclusion) of the blind and partially impaired people into cultural space. It’s no secret, that public
space and cultural institutions for these groups of Russian citizens are [still] mostly very unfriendly.
- People with vision can get unique experience of empathy and involvement into non-visual feelings. It is
not only a kind of extraordinary, multisensory, attractive and entertaining experience, this activity leads
to the much deeper understanding needs of blind and visually impaired people in our society.
- Cultural institutions such as museums and galleries serve to socialization, collective practices of
recognition and education in field of visual arts and also they give their audience a chance to reflect and
rethink their experience in visual arts. We hope that as a result of holding our festival Moscow
museums will be able to deal more with blind and visually impaired people, and could use our
theoretical and practical knowledge to build the program for these categories of audience. We are
happy to expand friendly connections among Russian and abroad colleagues in this field, which as we
hope can lead us to the new regular tours and educative programs for blind and mixed groups in
schedules of our museums.
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Choosing famous artefacts of Russian art for our practical program we expand the circle of audience,
well acquainted with its own native visual culture and let the museums to use the new concept for
regular practice with visually impaired audience.
- Audience with vision can get the experience of great worth on workshops and tours for visually
impaired people; this experience helps the sighted audience to understand psychological and practical
needs of blind people and raises up the attention of our society to the vulnerable categories of our
citizens.
II.
[Our participants, partners and managers]
Participants
Katja Sudec - organizational and pedagogical leader, lecturer in the cultural educational
field - fine arts, gallery mediation and cultural management specifics, otherwise the author
of the projects COoperate and AKTIV (SOdelujem; http://www.co-operateskuc.com)
Katrin Modic - colleague of Katja Sudec, collaborating in Workshops method
Evgen Bavčar – D. Phil., writer, philosopher and artist, author of teaching methods for
visually impaired people
Anja Winter (to be confirmed) – guide for blind and visually impaired people in various
cultural institutions of Berlin, author of concept of ‘Touch tours’ for the Museum of Indian
Art and the Museum of German Film and Television, Berlin.
Supramen Tour Project (Sweden) – www.supramen.se
Art-Therapy Studio for Children and Adults ‘SAMO’ (SELF)(Moscow) –
www.facebook.com/selfstudio.ru; www.selfstudio.ru, http://garageccc.com/en/event/306
Management & Curating
GARAGE Museum of Contemporary Culture, Moscow
Anastasia Tarasova – art historian, curating & coordination of the event
Ekaterina Vladimirtseva – art-education for youth, GARAGE
Maria Sarytcheva – professional training manager, GARAGE
Locations for events
GARAGE Museum of the Contemporary Art
State Tretyakov Gallery
Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts
Partners and professional audience of the Festival (proposal, under discussion)
State Tretyakov Gallery http://www.tretyakovgallery.ru/en/
Jewish Museum & Tolerance Center http://www.jewish-museum.ru/en (Evgeniya Khaet,
jkhaet@gmail.com)
Strelka http://www.strelkainstitute.ru/
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Garage Museum of Contemporary Culture http://garageccc.com/
Museum of Moscow http://www.mosmuseum.ru/
Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts http://www.arts-museum.ru/?lang=en
ŠKUC Association http://www.skuc.org/index.php?lang=eng
SOdelujem (COoperate) http://www.co-operateskuc.com
Sankt Petersburg?! (Ask by Rita Kuleva, The Higher School of Economics)
Dialogue in the Dark, Moscow http://dialogue-in-the-dark.ru
All Russia Association of the Blind http://www.vos.org.ru/
Accessible Environment (Russian State Program) http://zhit-vmeste.ru/
Moscow Culture Department http://kultura.mos.ru/
Moscow Government http://www.mos.ru/en/index.php
Perspektiva (Regional Non-governmental organization) http://perspektiva-inva.ru/