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Protecting the Right to Culture of Persons with Disabilities and Enhancing Cultural Diversity through European Union Law: Exploring New Paths

Project description

Exploring New Paths to Protect the Right to Culture of Persons with Disabilities

One fifth of the EU population has some form of disability. Ensuring that people with disabilities have access to culture, either as a consumer or an amateur or professional contributor, is essential to create an inclusive society. The EU-funded DANCING project will investigate to what extent the protection of the right to take part in culture and the promotion of cultural diversity intersect and complement each other in the EU legal order. It will use a combination of legal, empirical and arts-based research to pursue three complementary objectives, respectively: experiential, normative and theoretical. The project will identify and categorise barriers to and facilitators of cultural participation experienced by disabled people and how they affect the wider cultural domain. It will also provide a normative exploration of how the EU can combat discrimination, ensure accessibility of cultural activities, promote disability identities, while achieving cultural diversity.

Objective

The right of people with disabilities to participate in cultural life - which encompasses the rights of access to, and to be involved in cultural activities, as well as the recognition of disability identities, such as Deaf culture – has been for long denied. The cultural exclusion of disabled people has engendered their marginalisation. It has also entailed a loss for society as a whole, because of the lack of cultural diversity resulting from an inaccessible and exclusionary cultural realm. DANCING will investigate the extent to which the protection of the right to take part in culture of people with disabilities and the promotion of cultural diversity intersect and complement each other in the European Union (EU) legal order. It will disrupt the conventional approach adopted by EU law scholarship by using a combination of legal, empirical and arts-based research to pursue three complementary objectives, experiential, normative and theoretical respectively. First, it will identify and categorise barriers and facilitators to cultural participation experienced by disabled people and how they affect the wider cultural domain. Secondly, it will provide a normative exploration of how the EU has used and can use its competence to combat discrimination and its supporting competence on cultural matters, in synergy with its wide internal market powers, to ensure the accessibility of cultural activities, to promote disability identities, while achieving cultural diversity. In doing so, it will bridge, in an unprecedented way, the implementation of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and the UNESCO Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions. Thirdly, it will advance the understanding of the legal concept of cultural diversity, which stems from the intersection of different sources of law, and will propose a new theorization of the promotion of cultural diversity within the EU legal order.

Host institution

NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF IRELAND MAYNOOTH
Net EU contribution
€ 1 999 337,00
Address
CO KILDARE
W23 Maynooth
Ireland

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Region
Ireland Eastern and Midland Mid-East
Activity type
Higher or Secondary Education Establishments
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Total cost
€ 1 999 337,00

Beneficiaries (1)