Note: The Institute for the Humanities will cover the registration fee for U-M faculty (all campuses) who want to attend one or all three days of the conference. Please submit the receipt for reimbursement to [email protected] for processing.

Held October 5-8, 2026, the Creating Community Conference brings together artists and professionals from progressive art studios* across the United States and beyond, along with professionals active in disability arts, rights, and theory, to discuss best practices, advocacy, and the evolving landscape of art and disability. This annual event, a Creative Growth initiative launched in Oakland, CA in 2019, aims to foster dialogue and collaboration around the importance of inclusive creative spaces for artists with developmental disabilities and mental health differences.

This year's conference will be hosted in Detroit and Ann Arbor Michigan, and is locally organized and led by the Progressive Art Studio Collective (PASC), with support from the University of Michigan Institute for the Humanities, and Library Street Collective. National administration and strategic support is being provided by Creative Growth, in collaboration with the Progressive Art Studio Alliance (PASA).

CCC7 invites both internal (studio staff and artists) and external (general public) audiences to engage with the art and practice of progressive art studios. The conference covers a range of topics from hands-on studio practice, exhibiting, collecting and representing artists with disabilities, self-taught art, outsider art, disability studies, mental-health, radical pedagogy and more, expanding the conversation on platforming the creative production of marginalized communities, opening up the art world to disabled artists, and the transformative power of art.

Tuesday, October 6, 2026: First Full Conference Day
Location: The Shepherd, 1265 Parkview St, Detroit, MI 48214

9:00-9:10AM: Opening Remarks, Go over symposium schedule
9:10-10:30AM: Icebreaker
10:30-11:15AM: New Studio Presentations: How We Got Here
11:15-11:30AM: Break
11:30AM-12:15PM: ABLE, Trusts and Managing Funding for Artists with Disabilities
12:15-1:00PM: Lunch (provided)
1:00-1:30PM: Blackness and Disability: Intersections and Insights.
1:30-2:00PM: Studio Facilitation Presentation 1: Somewhere Between Knowing and Not Knowing. Facilitating Conditions for Creativity.
2:00-2:30PM: Studio Facilitation Presentation 3: Building Community with Disability Drawing Club
2:30-2:45PM: Break
2:45-3:15PM: Studio Facilitation Presentation 4: Tools of the Trade: Adaptive Practices and Creative Community
3:15-3:45PM: Finding Connection Through Art: Independent Learning, Mixed Media, and Neurodiverse Creativity
3:45-4:15PM: History in the Making: Academic Partnerships with Progressive Art Studios
4:20-4:50PM: TBD Drawing Workshop
6:30-9:00PM: PAS Short Film night. films by artists from PAS (Open to the General Public)

View the full schedule and register at https://myumi.ch/qwVRX.