CASE STUDY
Accessible PR + Journalism
Image description: Three dancers are encircled by waves of green and blue light. Laurel Lawson, a white person with cropped hair, bends backward, arms curved over head and torso, as she hovers above the stage. Alice Sheppard, a multiracial Black woman with short curly hair, also hovers behind Laurel, cradling her legs and wheels. Jerron Herman, a Black man with blonde hair, balances on one foot, embracing Alice and Laurel’s wheels and peering over with curiosity. Photo by Robbie Sweeny.
Image description: Alice and Laurel soar in their wheelchairs in front of a bright green screen, each with extended arms and one hand gripping a white barbed wire prop. Alice’s torso is upright as she flies, and she is positioned above Laurel; Laurel flies below, almost upside down, legs and wheels tucked above their torso. They wear shimmery copper bodysuits overlaid with black mesh. Photo by Cherylynn Tsushima.CLIENT
Kinetic Light
CHALLENGE
I have worked with disability arts company Kinetic Light since 2017. A longtime purpose and challenge surrounds accessible PR and journalism. This means ensuring that the client’s materials and press coverage are accessible, and that the storytelling focuses on desired topics such as access as art or disability arts culture rather than ableist tropes like struggle, overcoming, and personal or medical history.
WORK
Encouraging accessible media coverage while developing relationships with journalists requires a multi-pronged approach. I developed proactive context and information guides with company history, language guidance, and ways to avoid harmful (and often unintentional) ableist stereotypes and tropes. In collaboration with the KL team, I ensure that access is clear and evident in all of their press and marketing materials. I pitch art and access-related topics the artists are interested in exploring. I also offer guidance to journalists and media outlets who may be new to access, supporting them in their efforts to ensure accessible coverage, including image and audio descriptions for photos and video, accurate human-checked captions and transcripts, and more.
RESULTS
Over my long relationship with Kinetic Light, we have secured many in-depth, accessible pieces exploring their work. Favorites include KQED, regular disability arts coverage by Emily Watlington of Art in America, and stories by Siobhan Burke and Margaret Fuhrer of The New York Times, to name a few. Most importantly, I have noticed a profound ripple effect due to the work of many journalists, artists, and arts workers in this field, as accessible journalism practices and media focus on disability arts continues to grow.
Selected Press
“Mariclare is awesome. She is precise, careful, and when there is a dance PR crisis (because such things do exist!), Mariclare is a rock. I trust her to share our company’s work. She gets people, knows how to work with them, and is able to see through the junk to the heart.”