This report outlines and discusses the arts-based research undertaken within the larger multi-method project ‘Protecting the Right to Culture of Persons with Disabilities and Enhancing Cultural Diversity through European Union Law: Exploring New Paths (DANCING)’, funded by the European Research Council (ERC) and based at Maynooth University (MU), Ireland.[1] DANCING has been running from 1 September 2020 and will be completed by 31 August 2025.

Notably, DANCING deploys arts-based research alongside socio-legal and doctrinal research to explore the right of persons with disabilities to take part in cultural life as an essential aspect of enhancing cultural diversity in the European Union (EU). Arts-based research (i.e. qualitative research that employs the premises, procedures, and principles of the arts) has been used in the DANCING project as a data collection method to understand barriers and facilitators to cultural participation. In particular, arts-based research has helped identify what features are experienced as exclusionary by people experiencing different types of disability, both as audience and as artists, and to advance the understanding of what facilitates cultural participation. Arts-based research has also been vital to gauge a deeper understanding of key concepts of disability law, such as accessibility. Further, it has provided an actual demonstration of the cultural diversity brought by and inherent to disability.