Ebony Tucker and volunteer Chloe Weissman decorate Ebony's clay paintbrush holder.

Paint, photographs and slime filled the Absalom Jones Community Center gym April 21, as people with disabilities, their family members and UD students came together to participate in Artfest. Hosted by CDS and Art Therapy Express, the community celebration and creative workshop featured 10 stations, each of which offered an accessible art project.

The festival welcomes people with disabilities of all ages, and this year saw participants younger than 10 painting alongside participants older than 80. Each participant was paired with a UD student volunteer, giving the two a chance to connect and learn about each other while they explored the projects. The students came from fields of study spanning human development and electrical engineering. Some heard about the event through their instructors in the university’s Disability Studies minor. Others learned about it through their service fraternity. Many knew about Artfest because they had volunteered before, and jumped at the chance to come back.

Lisa Bartoli, Artfest’s creative director and lead artist of Art Therapy Express, staged each station to ensure the projects were accessible. Sometimes that meant incorporating a participant’s own assistive technology, as was the case with the floor mural, which allowed people using wheelchairs to paint by rolling across. Elsewhere, squeezable bottles shot paint onto a spinning canvas, accommodating people who might have difficulty gripping a paint brush. A new slime station, replete with glitter and dye, offered a squishy sensory experience to the adventurous artists who stirred it with their fingers.

Bartoli said Artfest is meant to be joyful, encouraging both creativity and friendship. Indeed, at the festival’s end, as many smiles and embraces filled the community center gym as did the number of inventive canvases, painted masks and other works that were created that day.

Relive the joy, inclusiveness and creativity on display at Artfest 2018 by visiting this new slideshow.

Read what made the 11th Artfest workshop and celebration indelible in this Inclusion blog post from CDS's Jasmina Chatani.