Research Stream: Symposium
Author: Alessia Palladino, Research Assistant, Protecting the Right to Culture of Persons with Disabilities and Enhancing Cultural Diversity in EU Law: Exploring New Paths (DANCING)
In her Mission Letters, the President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen has entrusted the Commissioners Raffaele Fitto (Executive Vice-President for Cohesion and Reform), and Jessica Roswall (Commissioner for Environment, Water Resilience and a Competitive Circular Economy) to further develop the New European Bauhaus (NEB).
The NEB is an initiative introduced by the Commission in 2021 with the goal of fostering sustainable solutions to transform the built environment of the European Union (EU). It aims to create a new design that represents the paradigm shift required by the European Green Deal (EGD), which entails a set of policies and investments to make the EU carbon neutral by 2050. The NEB is a multifaceted tool and is informed by three core values: aesthetic, sustainability and inclusion. This blog, written within the remit of the DANCING project, argues that the NEB, in pursuing inclusion at large, can play an important role in enhancing access to culture for people with disabilities.
The right to participation in culture for persons with disabilities is explicitly provided in Article 30 of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD). This provision, which is at the core of the DANCING project, highlights the importance of access to culture and the role of people with disabilities in enriching culture and society. If read in conjunction with the principle of participation as well as with the other key rights elucidated in the CRPD, it is clear that access to culture empowers persons with disabilities and allows them to fully participate in community life. In that regard, cultural participation can also be seen as key to wellbeing, as sustained in the DANCING project.
When looking at access to culture, accessibility of the built environment is vital. Article 30 itself mentions the obligation of State parties to ensure “access to places for cultural performances or services such as theatres, museums, cinemas, libraries and tourism services, and, as far as possible […] access to monuments and sites of national cultural importance”. In that regard, it is argued that the new design of the NEB, as made explicit in the NEB’s tools and resources, can support the implementation of this obligation (and of the CRPD broadly).
The NEB is in fact consistent with the overall ethos of the CRPD in relation to participation of persons with disabilities in all decision-making process affecting them, in that it went through and also requires for future NEB initiatives a co-creation phase, in which different civil society representatives engage and manifest their needs. The NEB also embeds a Design for All approach, i.e. a specific type of design that grants buildings and objects to be usable by everyone to the greatest extent possible.
Besides a general approach that is consistent with the CRPD, the NEB focuses on the renovation of cultural buildings. The NEB’s tools and resources highlights that cultural buildings like museums, theatres, libraries and cultural centres are vital to enhance community engagement. Further, cultural buildings also have a relevant influence on the perception of the overall built environment, hence they can have an effect on how the remaining built environment will be designed. In fact, cultural buildings are often a landmark of a specific area, and they can have a deep cultural meaning for the local community. Hence, implementing the NEB can not only support renovation initiatives that grant everyone physical access to culture, but can also have a butterfly effect and influence other players to engage with inclusive and accessible building processes.
Finally, the link between culture and circular practices, makes accessibility strictly intertwined with another core value of the NEB, i.e. sustainability. A building that is suitable for a higher number of people is less likely to undergo other adjustments in the future, thus becoming more sustainable.
Being an initiative that started in 2021, the NEB has encompassed some projects that have been fully completed. Among these, there is the Multi-sensory Museum, a project that, in line with the NEB, bridges art and technology to achieve sustainability, beauty and social inclusion. This project brought together designers and people with disabilities to create a space that “draws the museum visitor in through all the senses” to express inclusion through architecture and provide a new way to experience a museum visit that is accessible to all. This project well-epitomises the importance of this EU initiative to enhance access to culture for persons with disabilities.
On the whole, the NEB has already played and could play a powerful role in enhancing access to culture for people with disabilities. It remains to be seen whether the new Commissioners will be able to leverage on the results that the NEB has achieved so far and further develop this initiative, which has a great potential to boost inclusion and well being of persons with disabilities.
