CSUN Aims at Getting Disabled Involved in Arts

For the last six years, Cal State Northridge has offered a conference on technological breakthroughs--computers and other such equipment--that help disabled people do everything from write business reports to design skyscrapers.

Now the university has turned to a subject more thespian than theoretical, more glitz than gadgets.

The Arts and Entertainment Conference for Persons with Disabilities will focus on helping disabled artists and actors. There won’t be any drama coaches coaxing performers to emote or music teachers discussing technique. Instead, 10 workshops will address ways in which disabled people can get jobs in, or simply get involved with, the arts.

The May 3 conference was organized because of the growing popularity of an arts and drama program that CSUN has offered its 1,000 disabled students since 1985.

“The students have fallen in love with the arts,” Jim Hammitt, the program’s coordinator said. “They have asked us, ‘Can we do more?’ ”

A number of the conference speakers will come from film and television. Carol Black, one of the creators of the ABC television show “The Wonder Years,” will discuss industry accessibility for disabled artists. Terri-Sue Hartman, a publicist for the movie “My Left Foot,” which portrayed the life of a disabled writer and painter, will talk to participants about promoting their work.

“We want networks to develop between the disabled performers and the industry,” Hammitt said. “As those networks are created, it becomes easier for disabled people to move around the industry.”

A number of recently successful films, including “Rain Man” and “Awakenings,” have featured characters with disabilities. The fact that Hollywood is shining its spotlight on the issue is of great satisfaction to the people at CSUN.

The university’s 6-year-old program--called Artistic, Cultural and Entertainment Opportunities for Persons with Disabilities--sponsors arts festivals and summer workshops. The program has staged such plays as “The Odd Couple,” “The Glass Menagerie” and “The Mousetrap” with casts and crews that mixed disabled and nondisabled people.

“We’ve given our disabled students an opportunity to present whatever artistic abilities they have to the campus,” Dan Duran, a university counselor, said.

The conference, expected to draw 200 participants, is designed to help those students take the next step by taking their talents to the outside world.

But Hammitt, who has cerebral palsy, is determined that the forum be more than a job market. Various speakers will inform disabled people about programs and services that allow them to learn and do everything from poetry to set design.

“We want more disabled people to participate in the arts,” said Harry J. Murphy, director of CSUN’s Office of Disabled Student Services.

Before he began working at CSUN, Hammitt said, he drew and painted only as a therapeutic exercise. At the university, he has been exposed to special computer equipment that allows him to do such sophisticated graphic arts that he designed the logo for the arts program.

The administrator wants other disabled people to have this same chance.

“The change isn’t going to happen overnight,” Hammitt said. “It might take a little longer, but we are encouraged.”