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Becoming Citizens was initially commissioned through the Seattle
Office of Arts & Cultural Affairs. The program, Artist’s Residencies
Transforming Urban Places, matched an artist with a community to
realize a collaborative project.
In 2002 Susan Schwartzenberg began working
with the Seattle Family Network, a group of parents who are the
principle care-givers of a family member with a cognitive
disability. They came together to work with an artist to tell the
stories of the senior families in the disability community.
This was
a group of pioneering parent advocates who during the cold-war era,
went against conventional medical wisdom—and chose to bring up their
“children with mental retardation” in the family home.
Living in the
community their children were often denied access to public schools,
churches and many other services, motivating the parents to invent
an alternative vision. Their efforts culminated in the passage of
the Education for All Handicapped Children Act of 1975.
This civil
rights legislation secures a public education for every person with
a disability in America. The principle product is a book, published
by the University of Washington Press. It chronicles in images,
documents, testimonies and snapshots, stories of
family and disability and the ways ordinary citizens become
activists.
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