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About Us Art Through Touch is an expanding London based art organisation which aims to promote and provide access to art for visually impaired people. Activities include art talks and seminars, art workshops, visits to museums and galleries, working to secure equality of access and provision of arts related information in accessible formats.    The main tenet of our approach as an organisation is to promote inclusion in relation to art and to enable visually impaired people to fully participate in cultural life. Through our activities we recognize the mutual benefit to both sighted and visually impaired people together exploring art, ideas and our surroundings, sharing a range of varied and different perspective and perceptions.  Talks Talks are given by professional artists who are commissioned to prepare and deliver accessible presentations of their work and ideas. The talks have been highly successful covering a wide range of topics from Situationist Art, an expedition to Lundy by a group of visually impaired artists, a practical workshop on landscape modelling to an improvised music session. See Events Bulletin for complete list of forth coming talks and other Art Through Touch and related events. Seminars Seminars focus on issues relating to access to art. The aim of these events has been to provide a forum for visually impaired people to discuss issues with museum and gallery professionals, and others working in related fields, with a view to securing equality of access. The findings of these events are made available through publication for wider dissemination. See Recent Projects for more information about recent Seminars. Art Workshops Artist led workshops focus on developing approaches to working creatively enabling participants to successfully execute their ideas and to continue their artistic development. See Recent Projects for more information about recent art workshops.   Access Issues " ...Although many museums and galleries are making some access provisions for visually impaired visitors, most of these events are designed more to be social occasions where a little art is described, rather than interactive fun art events... However, Art Through Touch, Shape and the Serpentine Gallery are working on an in-depth project for 2005, which is designed to creatively explore sensing the built environment through all of the senses." Lynn Cox from her article on Art Through Touch article courtesy of disabilityartsonline (dao) at www.disabilityarts.com Securing equality of access to museums and galleries is an ongoing concern of the organisation. Our approach is aimed at securing access which meets the variety of needs and interests of the individual; and establishes as routine access on a par with sighted visitors. Work to achieve this goal includes acting as consultants, participation in research, focus groups, conferences, seminars and working directly in partnership with galleries to deliver activities. See Access Issues for more information and future related events. Research One of our aims is to encourage on going research and development into furthering good educational practice in the area of art and visual impairment. We would be extremely interested to hear from any professionals working in this field either at home or abroad, to exchange ideas and keep each other informed of new developments and exhibitions. We would also like to hear from blind and visually impaired artists to run workshops in the future.  We would also like to hear from you if you wish to take part in any of the classes or related activities. We are also developing our own relevant book list and reference material.  We would be particularly interested to hear about any new publications that might be of interest. For more details on our research projects and reading list please email or contact at our address on the Home page.

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