As we hit our 20-year mark and prepare to close our doors, Upstream Arts is reflecting on the last two decades of incredible work. Today’s highlight: Self-Advocacy Classes.
In 2017, we launched the Art of Voice and Choice residency, a precursor to our Self-Advocacy Classes, where we delved in-depth into the concepts of informed choice and person-centered planning. The idea that individuals with disabilities should have agency over their own lives and dreams, and should be supported in exploring their interests and hopes, has been foundational to our work from the beginning. But these residencies gave us a chance to more explicitly and thoroughly investigate how to advocate for oneself and how to support self-advocates.
With the Olmstead Plan finally made law in Minnesota, it reaffirmed the best practices of person-centered planning and informed choice. But what do these words really mean? We were particularly excited to use our arts-based curriculum to address these concepts, which can often feel heady and inaccessible. Through creative play, we could set these ideas on their feet, and start to practice listening, choice-making, dreaming, and advocating in real-life ways.
The beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020 had a devastating impact on our community, and drastically shifted what was possible. As we moved classes online and worked to fight the isolation that so many were feeling, we reimagined our Voice and Choice residency as Self-Advocacy Classes. In the summer of 2021, we offered virtual, and then hybrid, Self-Advocacy classes. We also put in a huge amount of organizational work to make our classes available through the state waiver system.
Since then, our Self-Advocacy community has grown, with both online and in-person classes, giving individuals the chance to practice self-advocacy skills with each other and with friends, family, and guardians.
When Upstream Arts announced that we were sunsetting, one of the ways that we prioritized saying goodbye to our disability community was to offer a final open-enrollment Self-Advocacy class series, free of charge, so that individuals could come together once more, both to process the ending of this organization, and to practice the skills that will carry all of us forward. We’re full of gratitude to MSS, who generously sponsored the series. We’re honored by the 30+ self-advocates who joined us, and whose creative approaches to the world will help carry on Upstream Arts’ legacy.
Images taken by Artistic Director Matt Guidry during Upstream Arts’ final Self-Advocacy Class.