In 2003, the European Year of Disabled People, Arts Council England’s New Audiences Programme invested £1.8m in 112 projects supporting change within arts organisations and tackling the barriers preventing disabled people from engaging with the arts.
The Programme found that, “Communicating clearly with people with all kinds of impairments is an area of continuing development. It requires a knowledge of appropriate formats and styles which not all arts organisations can lay claim to.” One of the major benefits of the initiatives promoted through the New Audiences Programme was that they gave people the opportunity to try out new approaches for engaging disabled audiences, which were regarded as an important niche market that most venues and artists wanted to tap into.
