Upcoming Odyssey events

The 2025 Odyssey webinar series includes three webinars that address the challenges and opportunities of aging and disability services by bringing possibilities to life.

After attending, you will leave these sessions inspired, validated and ready to put these concepts into action every day! Attend all events free of charge.

Event topics and dates

Save the date for these upcoming 2025 Odyssey events. We will add more information about webinars, including registration information, as it becomes available. Please check back for updates or subscribe to the Odyssey eList to get future announcements.

The Art of Access

Date: Thursday, April 10, 2025
Time: 1 to 3 p.m.
Registration closed.
The Art of Access presentation (PDF).

More information
- Description: This session offers tools and best practices to help design educational programming, arts events and community spaces to be accessible and welcoming to people of all ages and abilities. Learn how to prepare your environment, culture and curriculum to be the most accessible for the most diverse community through a lens we call S.M.I.L.E. (sensory, movement, identity, language, experience). When we all prepare and S.M.I.L.E., we start developing richer connections and relationships.
- About the presenter: Julie Guidry (she/her/hers), co-founder, executive director and teaching artist - Julie has worked in the disability and nonprofit communities since 1997. She is the co-founder and executive director of Upstream Arts, an innovative nonprofit organization that uses the arts to help people with disabilities develop social and communication skills. Founded in 2006, Upstream Arts is a place where people with disabilities, the arts and education come together. Julie and her husband, Matt, started Upstream Arts after they saw the positive impact the arts had on their son’s self-expression and communication with those around him. Each year Upstream Arts works with more than 100 partners and serves more than 5,000 people of all ages and abilities. Since Upstream Arts started, Julie works closely with disability service providers and community organizations as well as special education directors and arts departments in the Minneapolis public school district . Together, they developed a model to integrate Upstream Arts’ unique arts-based curriculum into social skills learning, vocational and career development training and other disability services.
  Julie leads trainings on arts-based instructional strategies, universal design for learning, access and inclusion for social service organizations, school districts and arts organizations. She held management positions with several disability and youth organizations, including Wilderness Inquiry and Youth Frontiers. Julie is a member of the Minneapolis Public Schools Special Education Advisory Council and previously served on both the District Parent Advisory Council and Access Advisory Council. She also has been on the Arts on Chicago leadership team for the last eight years and is a founding board member and former board chair of Wonderlust Productions.
- Continuing education: The Minnesota Board on Aging approves this webinar to count for 2.0 hours and 2.0 social work continuing education unit (CEU) credits.

Exploring the Impact of Aging with HIV: Resources, Insights and Lifespan Considerations

Date: Thursday, Sept. 18, 2025
Time: 1 to 2:30 p.m.
Presenter: TBD.

2025 legislative updates

More information to come.

Statements, viewpoints and opinions expressed are those of the presenter and do not necessarily reflect the positions of the Minnesota Board on Aging and/or DHS.