Behind the Scenes at the Festival

The Abilities Festival: A Celebration of Disability Arts and Culture is a project of the Canadian Abilities Foundation, a national not-for-profit organization founded in 1991 and based in Toronto. The foundation's mission is to enable people with disabilities to participate more fully in community life by providing them information, resources and opportunity. As part of its mandate, the foundation facilitates voice and expression for people with disabilities which includes developing disability arts and culture within Ontario and Canada.

CAF is the publisher of Canada's foremost cross-disability lifestyle magazine, called Abilities and distributed to more than 35,000. CAF also developed and manages Enablelink, an online community for people with disabilities which provides quick access to resources. The CAF also issues several directories for job seekers, guides for accessible public spaces and office-training and job-ready programs.

The Abilities Festival, CAF's latest program, is in line with these initiatives and is designed to showcase talent that remains unrecognized and to remove barriers which hinder the distribution of works of art, literature, performance and film by artists with disabilities.

Abilities Festival also has the continuing support of artists, disability activists, notable cultural industry professionals, media, sponsors, educators and students. It has gone from a small core group of nine interested people to committees totaling 31 committed volunteers and counting.

The Ontario Trillium Foundation, Alliance Atlantis, Famous Players, CHUM Television, Group of Goldline, join other corporate sponsors, private foundations, government agencies and individuals in support of the Abilities Festival.