Lachi to headline No Limits Celebration at Butler University

Award-winning recording artist Lachi is headlining the Indiana Blind Children’s Foundation (IBCF) 2025 No Limits Celebration: An Evening with Lachi.

Established by the Indiana School for the Blind and Visually Impaired in 2019, the No Limits Celebration is an annual event highlighting performances by artists with disabilities. Proceeds for the No Limits Celebration directly support the IBCF, and this year, the event is partnering with Butler University to host the event on March 1 at Schrott Center for the Arts.

“We are excited to bring this year’s celebration to the Schrott Center for the Arts,” Laura Alvarado, Executive Director of IBCF, said in a statement. “This partnership with Butler University allows us to grow the No Limits Celebration, introduce new audiences to IBCF and showcase the remarkable talent of artists like Lachi.”

The 2025 No Limits Celebration: An evening with Lachi will be an empowering evening showcasing the strengths, talents, and abilities of local and national role models who both inspire and reflect the students IBCF serves, according to a press release. Transferring the host site of the event to Butler University’s campus allows for an opportunity to expand audiences and increase accessibility as the Schrott Center, which is fully accessible, ensures “an inclusive concert experience.”

Guests can expect an evening of empowerment, fun and inspiration, Lachi said — complete with an opening reception, a musical performance from Lachi, featuring songs from the “Mad Different” series, and fireside chat style Q&A with 2015 Indiana Teacher of the Year Kathy Nimmer.

As a legally blind Black woman, Lachi said her music centers around uplifting others while blending a touch of comedy and healing energy into each performance. Additionally, Lachi has a sign language artist — someone who blends artistry with sign language — join her onstage to break down a few more barriers and stigmas.

“I love to blend my art with advocacy and advocacy with my art,” Lachi said. “Personally, I love the fact that there is a blind woman and a deaf woman together on stage performing because you often wouldn’t see a blind woman able to communicate with a deaf woman and vice versa. So, we’re here to break down barriers and stigmas with everything we do.”

Lachi is also an award-winning social entrepreneur, GRAMMYs Chapter Board Governor and host of PBS’ American Masters series Renegades. However, when she first got into the entertainment industry, she said there was no one for her to look to for inspiration as a Black woman with a disability.

“If no one has built it yet, someone has to,” Lachi said. “That’s where all my passion and purpose comes from. It just comes from as a blind Black woman, seeing so many doors shut, so having to sort of take a chisel to the wall and kind of create my own little window, turn that into a door and let everybody else through.”

Lachi said all that passion is channeled into her music, but also into her storytelling, fashion, and advocacy, to uplift the notions of disability culture and the pride and community it brings to bridge the economic gap. The way she presents herself today, confidently in bold colors, sparkly outfits, and with her cane, is a celebration of all facets of herself – her disability pride, Black heritage, womanhood and feminism, she said.

“The entire time I was navigating through life without the cane, I was contributing to the erasure of disability because people weren’t seeing (the) disability, because I wasn’t showcasing it, because I was afraid of it,” Lachi said. “Now, I walk 10 toes down in my seven-inch heels. I got my cane that’s sparkling right out front. I have a gorgeous gown. I talk big, loud … I got my big braids.”

In 2024, Lachi was named one of USA Today’s “Women of the Year,” and her organization, RAMPD — Recording Artists and Music Professionals with Disabilities — has collaborated on disability-inclusive solutions with the GRAMMYs, Netflix, Tidal and SONY Pictures Entertainment. Currently, Lachi said RAMPD is working with “some of the biggest names in the music industry” to bring access, accommodation and inclusion, as well as paid opportunities and visibility.

“All of my hard work being recognized is beautiful,” Lachi said. “For a Black person with a disability or a person of any color, to see themselves represented on that list, that is a huge honor. But I would also go even further to say that while I love being honored with, being put on Woman of the Year, or being ad color innovator, all of those really amazing honors are great, but the work is actually what gets me up in the morning.”

The No Limits Celebration: An Evening with Lachi, takes place March 1, at the Schrott Center for the Arts. The pre-concert reception begins at 6 p.m. with the concert at 8 p.m. Tickets are $50.

For more information, visit butlerartscenter.org/performances/no-limits-celebration-lachi.

To follow along with Lachi’s musical journey and advocacy, visit lachimusic.com/index.html.

Contact Arts & Culture Reporter Chloe McGowan at 317-762-7848. Follow her on X @chloe_mcgowanxx.