The Atlantis Community - Nola Nash

IDRAC 2012 Presentation - 9:30 am PDT, August 3, 2012

Nola Nash is the Project Manager of The Learning Center at Atlantis Community, Inc., in Denver, CO. She has been involved with the disability community for almost 20 years, both as an activist and with the independent living center.

The Atlantis Community in Denver is the second-oldest Independent Living Center in the United States. Atlantis began in 1975 when the Reverend Wade Blank, a nondisabled nursing home recreational director, organized a handful of other staff and a group of young disabled adults to move people with disabilities out of institutions and into their communities. The concept was to create self-determined lifestyles, a revolutionary concept in the 1970s.

Nash will describe the Atlantis Community’s formation and sketch its history. She will talk also about ADAPT, the group that is famous for blocking busses in the 1980s to protest a lack of bus lifts.