Webinars
- Guest speakers, to be announced prior to each webinar.
- Open registration
- 1-hour, 4 times a year
- Recording will be available
Upcoming:
Tuesday, December 10, 2024
11am-12pm CST
Register here
Topic: The Front of House Impact: Empowering staff to build a culture of accessibility
Whether navigating a cultural space for the first time or fiftieth, visitor experience at any cultural institution relies on interactions with front of house staff. Building a confident, empowered staff who knows how to talk about facility and programmatic options is a critical piece to any patron's decision to return, and especially critical for visitors with disabilities. Join for an interactive conversation about how cultural institutions are preparing their staff to talk about accessibility options, where the challenges lie in building institutional knowledge, and how using a model of incremental change can build cultural shifts.
Speaker: Hillary Pearson (she/her)
Hillary Pearson (she/her) is the Program Manager of Accessibility Services in the Office for Diversity, Literacy, and Outreach Services at the American Library Association where she works both internally and externally to support accessibility initiatives, processes, and strategy. Additionally, Hillary has been a member of the Steering Committee for the Cultural Access Collaborative, a nonprofit organization with a mission to empower Illinois cultural organizations to be more accessible to visitors with disabilities, for over seven years. Before moving to the Association space, Hillary spent 12 years in patron services and operations at the Harris Theater for Music and Dance, working directly with companies to ensure front of house needs were met, connecting renters with resources and options for accessible programming, and communicating daily operations in the facility. In her free time, Hillary loves to sing, binge shows that she’ll never tell her parents about, and check out local watering holes with her husband Joe.