Trying to add a payment method? You can do this on the 
Overview:
The first-ever Art Belongs Day had students participating in adapted workshops across the building, including visual art, music creation, and a session where they suggested choreography for dancers.
Before this month, Ben Putnam had never been in the Hult Center before.
Now, he’s helped build a collaborative art piece in the building. Putnam, a 16-year-old life skills student with the Lane Education Service District at Thurston High School, was coloring a star in green and yellow in the lobby atrium, sun shining through the glass panes. Putnam smiled as he worked. The building was big, he said, and he was excited to be there.
That was exactly the goal this April 3, the first Art Belongs Day. It was a collaboration between Eugene’s interactive ballet project #instaballet, the Hult Center and the Lane Education Service District to bring high school students in the life skills program — where students with disabilities receive support services in Lane County schools — into the Hult.
There, students from South Eugene, North Eugene, Thurston, Churchill and Springfield high schools, many of whom use adaptive tools like wheelchairs and augmentative and alternative communication devices on tablets to speak, embarked on art-making experiences of their own across the building before a final performance combined all of their work into one showcase.
Sessions included a collaborative art project building a rainbow from each collective multimedia piece, a music session where they built a song with a looping station, shakers and a kalimba, and a session with #instaballet where students suggested different movements for dancers to knit into one cohesive piece of choreography.
The idea for the day started around three years ago as a pitch from Miranda Atkinson, the executive director of #instaballet, but accelerated into action in the last six months as she started talking with Hult Center and Lane ESD. That short timeline, she said, was powered by mutual passion for sharing the arts with Lane ESD students.
“I hope it feels helpful to see three totally different orgs all jump in with both feet at a time when resources are scarce,” she said. “I think it can be inspiring to demonstrate that if we can come together, we can still move forward.”
Hult Center managing director Laura Lee said making the Hult Center open to everyone was especially important because of the impression it can give to people who haven’t been inside: a large concrete building where only “elite” events happen.
“It’s re-envisioning how to use that space to be able to meet the needs of these students,” she said. “Not that the Hult has never been for them, or that the Hult has never met the needs of this particular group, but we need to be aware of who is not coming through our doors.”
A look inside Art Belongs Day
The actual grounds of the Hult Center were adapted to welcome the students for the day. Adaptations went beyond the workshop rooms. High-low physical therapy tables and sensory zones were set up in dressing rooms, and bathrooms had extra supplies. The large hallway leading into the Hult’s bowels, where talent walks between the green room, makeup and the stage, became the lunch space for the day. Workshops were set up across the building’s artistic spaces.
In the music workshop, located in the Hult’s Jacobs Gallery, Tyler was ready to go. When it was his turn at the microphone, the 16-year-old from Thurston High School knew exactly what he wanted to add to the song he and his classmates were building.
“I was born ready,” he said.
That affirmation entered a looping device, joining the plinks of the kalimba and vocalizing riffs his peers had added earlier to their ballad.
Chauncey Mauney, a teaching musician with the Lane Arts Council who ran the session, used a piece of paper with “yes” and “no” symbols on it for students to touch or nod at to indicate if they wanted to contribute. He said that when he works with children with disabilities, he focuses on fundamental skills of communication and autonomy but just happens to use music as the tool.
“That’s not a skill that everybody’s got,” he said. “It’s also great to give them a chance to communicate with me. Even just something as simple as saying ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to something, we tend to take for granted.”
Antonio Ancanan, a co-founder of #instaballet, ran the dance workshop in the Hult Studio by guiding participants to suggest different movements. Those ideas were knit together into one cohesive dance: waving hello to friends, making a mountaintop out of pointed hands, blooming like a flower. (But kids will also be kids: the final product for one group included a “6-7” nod, as well as “Gangnam Style” throwback and a Chicken Jockey reference to the 2025 “Minecraft” movie.)
Ancanan said that the #instaballet approach, where the students are encouraged to find their own movements and then see them echoed back at them as a piece of art, includes everyone in exploring movement as a medium, regardless of physical ability.
“That way they can hopefully feel like, ‘I have this instrument,’” he said. “We give them the tools so they can move and explore however they want to, whatever it means to them to explore the instrument, versus ‘it needs to look like this.’”
Savannah Ferguson, a special education administrator with Lane ESD, said getting students into programs like band or choir can be challenging when it comes to meeting particular needs. Building an event for these students intentionally was exciting, she said, and she got teary-eyed during the day.
The goal is ultimately to make Art Belongs Day an annual event.
“Getting on the bigger stage next year could be really exciting,” Ferguson said. “I think that a lot of our students would really relish that opportunity. They deserve to be in the spotlight.”
