Arts Unbound (AU) is a non-profit organization founded in 2000. Arts Unbound is dedicated to the artistic achievement of people living with disabilities and seniors. We provide visual arts education and professional development to help emerging artists compete on the retail market. By promoting the work of artists with disabilities and seniors, we center their art-making rather than any impairments and by doing so challenge the stigma associated with disability and aging. In the simplest terms, we are an art gallery and educational art studio for people with disabilities and seniors. Yet what we are doing, through the arts, is challenging the stigma and barriers that keep people with disabilities from participating in the workforce. We are dismantling the link between disability and poverty, which are so often mutually reinforcing. We are preparing talented individuals to be self-employed, working artists contributing to our community, and our economy. People with disabilities often are directed to low-wage jobs or sheltered workshops. They usually are not encouraged to seek a career in the arts, or to express their creativity. We promote careers in the arts because artistic self-employment should be option for people with disabilities or special needs. Arts Unbound works with artists to ensure they have equal access to resources and can express their own creative vision, rather than be isolated and controlled. Likewise we recognize that mere age does not denote reduced capability. All seniors deserve to live fulfilling and productive lives, and as such, we support seniors in this capacity by providing access to our educational studio, its gallery, as well as bringing our programs directly to seniors. Arts Unbound works with learning and emerging artists with disabilities and seniors through our two core programs, visual arts education and artist development.
