Skip to main content
Skip to main content

Tuned in to an Audience’s Unique Needs

November 13, 2018 School of Music | The Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center

Thumbnail

UMD’s first sensory-friendly concert gives children with autism a gateway to the arts.

By Colleen Crowley M.Jour. ’19

Feel free to sing, clap and move in the aisles of the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center this evening, when the normal restrictions of a live musical performance will be lifted for a sensory-friendly experience for children with autism.

The concert by the Maryland alumni string quartet invoke will allow families of children with autism and other disabilities the chance to enjoy the arts, free of judgment. The children, who might have trouble sitting still and quietly during a formal concert, are invited to move, vocalize and fidget as needed.

Today’s performances, part of the nationwide Azure Family Concerts series for the same broad audience, were initially scheduled for a single performance this afternoon, but sold out so quickly that a second was added.

Read the complete article in Maryland Today.