The Art of Inclusion: Education, Movement, and Creative Practice

Makenzie (she/they) is a Mexican-American, queer, dynamically disabled theatre professional and small business owner. Several news outlets covered her video concept piece, Music and the Mirror (& Mobility Aids), in which she adapted the original Broadway choreography from A Chorus Line to her mobility aids. Lavender Magazine put Makenzie on the cover along with a full spread interview.

Creative Adaptations LLC selected credits: adapting movement workshops (NYU; Queens Theatre); Accessibility Coordinator (Butch Wicked); 1:1 client consulting. She hopes that through her work both on and off stage, she can help normalize integrating disabled performers into musicals.

Socials:
@makenziemorgangomez
@creativeadaptations

Carrie A Nath is a multi-hyphenate theater artist and educator and an Omaha native. She is currently the Director of Equitable Access at BLUEBARN and has served as Managing Director of The Art of Imagination at Ollie Webb Center, Inc.; Director of Education, Kentucky Arts Council; Associate Director of Education, Seattle Opera; and Education Consultant, Ford's Theater, D.C. Artistic credits include Actor’s Theatre of Louisville; Manhattan School of Music; multiple Shakespeare companies; and Washington National Opera. Carrie is an access consultant for Omaha Performing Arts and serves on their Voices Amplified Committee; is an Opera Omaha Community Panel member; is a WhyArts, Inc. guest artist; and is working with the Risky Disco team of the Common Senses Festival 2025 creating sensory spaces for adults experiencing impairment – disability. Ms. Nath is a Nebraska Arts Council (NAC) roster artist and serves on their inclusion committee, and is a panelist for NAC and the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA).

Katy Kepler (she/her) is thrilled to be a part of the RISKY DISCO team. She is the Mobile Theatre Director at the Omaha Community Playhouse, overseeing the VROOM! Mobile Sensory Theatre. VROOM! provides a traveling, immersive, and sensory-enriched theatrical experience for neurodivergent individuals and others with sensory sensitivities or disabilities. As an artist with ADHD, she loves the variety that her work provides, encompassing elements of directing, performance, teaching, and more. Celebrating her 10th year in Omaha, Katy is delighted to share community with others who share a passion for providing accessible arts spaces!

Karma LiLoLa is an Omaha-based performance artist, storyteller, deviser, and community builder. A first-generation Mexican-American trans woman and wheelchair user, she creates immersive experiences that blend ritual, theatrical spectacle, movement, audience participation, and emerging technology.

Karma earned degrees from Yale University and the University of Nebraska at Omaha, where she studied theatre, performance, dramaturgy, and cultural storytelling. Her work draws inspiration from ancestry, nightlife, disability culture, spirituality, and the transformative power of gathering in shared space.

Following a spinal cord injury in 2023, her artistic practice expanded in unexpected directions. Through wheelchair choreography, interactive installations, sand mandalas, and autobiographical performance, she explores how memory becomes connection and how communities imagine futures together.

*Magna Karma is a vogue ball for the soul, taking audiences through a rocket launch, a funeral march, and a community disco party.*

https://bit.ly/KarmasLinks

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Abz Cameron (they/them) is a neurodivergent multidisciplinary artist & self-proclaimed weirdo based in Omaha. A sensory-seeking creator, their work is hands-on and tactile - rooted in play, accessibility, and genuine human connection. With two decades of acting experience, Abz stumbled into visual during Covid-19 and fell in LOVE with yet another language of expression. As a Holland Community Opera Fellow with Opera Omaha and former Artistic Specialist with the Ollie Webb Center, Inc., Abz designs neuro-inclusive programming encouraging ALL to express their own truth, depth, chaos, silliness, and joy!

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Therman Statom is a sculptor, glass artist, painter, and longtime advocate for the arts, widely recognized as a pioneer of the contemporary glass movement. Best known for life-size glass ladders, chairs, tables, box-like paintings, and small-scale houses, Statom creates his works by joining glass plates with adhesive. Sandblasted surfaces become canvases for spontaneous, vibrant color and line, drawing from Abstract Expressionism and Minimalism while incorporating blown-glass elements and found objects.

Born in Winter Haven, Florida, in 1953, Statom grew up in Washington, D.C. His early interest in painting led him to ceramics at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), where an experimental glassblowing session with Dale Chihuly sparked his passion for glass. He attended Pilchuck Glass School during its inaugural year, earned his BFA from RISD in 1974, and later studied at Pratt Institute.

Statom has completed more than 30 large-scale, site-specific installations, with permanent public works at institutions including the Los Angeles Public Library, Corning Inc. Headquarters, Mayo Clinic, Toledo Museum of Art, and Telfair Museums. His 2009 exhibition Stories of the New World at the Orlando Museum of Art explored hope, discovery, ambition, and destiny through an immersive glass installation.

Education and community engagement remain central to Statom’s practice, reflecting his belief that art can empower, educate, inspire exploration, and encourage positive change.

Erin Lunsford is an award-winning visual arts educator, fine artist, and passionate advocate for neurodivergent individuals based in Omaha, Nebraska. With over 30 years of teaching experience, she earned her undergraduate degree from the University of Nebraska Omaha (UNO) and her graduate degree from Doane College. She spent nearly two decades as the Fine Arts Department Chairperson at Westside High School before taking on her current role as Fine Arts Chair at Gretna East High School. As a multi-disciplinary mentor in ceramics, photography, drawing, and painting, Lunsford balances a strict focus on core technical fundamentals with absolute creative liberation. Her exceptional approach to the classroom was formally recognized when she received the 2023 Schrager Distinguished Teaching Award.

Lunsford is also a highly regarded national and local presenter, sharing her expertise to build a more inclusive art world. To bridge the gap between public education and the professional fine art community, she frequently collaborates with working professionals. Notably, she has partnered with contemporary glass master Therman Statom and the KANEKO Foundation to transform ordinary school facilities into large-scale, site-specific art installations, proving to young creators that an art career is a tangible, viable future.

Her crowning achievement is her role as the co-founder of "Arts For ME!" (formerly Adapted Art). Frustrated by the limits placed on special needs students in general education modules, she built an entire curriculum designed around absolute creative agency. Her studio completely rejects traditional "hand-over-hand" teaching, giving neurodivergent students full autonomy to make every aesthetic decision independently. The program treats adaptive work with profound professional respect, culminating in high-profile gallery exhibitions at major cultural hubs like KANEKO to successfully democratize the fine art world.