Recorded on April 20, 2017 - Artists who are deaf or disabled are encouraged by various government arts councils to apply for grants to pursue their artistic projects and develop their professional capacity. However, if those artists are on ODSP, the grants are treated as "income". This causes many artists with disabilities to fear that they would receive little or no benefit from those grants, or that their ODSP eligibility might be threatened. The ODSP Action Coalition, in cooperation with Workman Arts and other artists’ groups, has published an information pamphlet to explain the rules to deaf and disabled artists. We show how many arts grants should be fully or at least partially exempt, so the ODSP recipient can actually use them for their artistic project and maintain their ODSP benefits.
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ODSP and Arts Council Grants from CLEO Webinars on Vimeo.
About the presenters
Andrea Hatala is a musician and an ODSP recipient. She has released one CD called "Never Had My Kind Before". She is co-chair of the ODSP Action Coalition's Public Awareness and Advocacy Committee, and a participant in the working group which developed the brochure "ODSP and Arts Grants".
Nancy Vander Plaats is a community legal worker at Scarborough Community Legal Services, with over 30 years' experience in social assistance casework, public legal information and law reform. She co-chairs the ODSP Action Coalition's Policy and Research Committee, and has researched issues related to arts grants and self-employment of ODSP recipients.
Jennefer Laidley is Research and Policy Analyst at the Income Security Advocacy Centre, a specialty community legal clinic mandated to advocate for improvements to the income security of people in Ontario. She is on the Policy and Research Committee of the ODSP Action Coalition.
This webinar was facilitated by Fiona MacCool, Digital Projects Manager at CLEO.