Katalin Zanin, founder and director of the cultural project “Ich bin ok” (“I’m ok”) in support of the disabled, was awarded the “GlobArt Innovation Award” at a ceremony in Vienna on 18 February. The aim of “Ich bin ok” (www.ichbinok.at) is the promotion and development of the personality of children and adolescents suffering from Down’s syndrome through bodily expression and especially through dancing in groups composed of disabled and non-disabled. Zanin’s initiative entered the limelight in 2001, when disabled ballerinas inaugurated the Viennese Opera Ball together with members of the corps de ballet of the Vienna State Opera. During the award ceremony, Austrian Health Minister Maria Rauch Kallat recalled the event in 2001 as the “moving culmination of the ball”, “almost a visiting card of Austria in the world”. Rauch Kallat also praised Katalin Zanin for contributing to a situation in which “it becomes normal for the disabled and non-disabled to live together. It’s important for the non-disabled to understand the normality of the disabled”, she added. The president of GlobArt (www.globart.at), the Premonstratensian monk Joachim Angerer emphasized the “wonderful contribution” that the disabled had made to the history of culture and expressed the hope that the award of the prize would represent “a positive impulse to achieve the parity of the disabled in our society”. In his “Laudatio” at the award ceremony, the disabled Austrian writer and actor Peter Handke observed that the disabled “represent a particular enrichment for society; they give new impulses to art and culture; they are what the Bible calls the salt of the earth”.
