Disability Arts History Australia

Items

• “Australia Council grants funding for projects about disability or for disabled participants throughout the 1970s”
  The 1974/75 Australia Council annual report states $1,350 in funding granted to Spectrum Films (NSW) to "develop a screenplay for a feature film of the social pressures on a deaf mute”, as well as a $4,500 travel/study grant to Lloyd Nickson (QLD) "to attend summer schools in children's theatre and theatre for deaf children (USA and UK) for six months". In the same year, the Council reported Bryan Gracey as one of numerous individuals in receipt of Experimental Film funding for his short film ‘The World of a Blind Child’ (1975) about the emotional and physical difficulties 10-year-old Peter faces and how he navigates his disability. In the 1974/75 financial year, Australia Council’s crafts board awarded $1,288 to the Wheelchair and Disabled Association (NSW) for "Jewellery making tools and equipment". The 1979/1980 Australia Council annual report describes the following funding: "As in previous years, a grant was given to the Braille and Talking Book Library for its Braille Book of the Year.”
• "Arts Project Australia - Annual Report 2002"
  Arts Project Australia - Annual Report 2002 - Management Committee, Aims and Objectives, President's Report, Director's Report, Studio Manager's Report, Exhibitions Report, Lifedrawing at RMIT, Financials - reads, in part “Since 1984 the organisation has run a visual arts studio program where people with an intellectual disability have the opportunity to work in a community-based setting, using high quality art materials, and to receive advice and assistance from practising contemporary artists.”
• "Arts Project Australia - Annual Report 2001"
  Arts Project Australia - Annual Report 2001 - Management Committee, Aims and Objectives, President's Report, Director's Report, Exhibitions Program, Studio Report, Financials - reads, in part "Since 1984 the organisation has run a visual arts studio program where people with an intellectual disability have the opportunity to work in a community based setting, using high quality art materials, and to receive advice and assistance from practising contemporary artists."
• "Tutti Arts - Annual Giving Promotional Flyer"
  Tutti Arts - Annual Giving Promotional Flyer2016 - Reads, in part, “Please help support disabled artists develop their artistic talents, earn income and feel pride like The Sisters of Invention. With your assistance, Tutti can provide more opportunities for artists to create, develop and exhibit their own work. It costs over $1 million a year to run our diverse art form programs. The possibilities of how your donation will help are endless.”
• "Arts in Action Annual Report 2003"
  Arts in Action Annual Report 2003, describing the organisation’s work, including preparation for the 2004 High Beam Festival, an artistic program including visual arts workshops, music club, and choir, and assistance with preparation of funding proposals, informational and referral, networking, advocacy.
• "Interview with Asphyxia"
  Asphyxia is an artist, author, activist and performer who has founded Amplio, a music app for Deaf and hard of hearing people. She also provides free online Auslan lessons and online art courses. Interview Summary Asphyxia is a Deaf artist whose journey into the arts started with a deep love for ballet, but after facing discrimination due to her Deafness, she pivoted to a successful career in circus performance and later puppetry, which embraced her Deafness and signing skills. Her work in performance art led her to write and illustrate the Awards-winning art-journal book, Future Girl, which explores Deaf identity and environmental issues. She has now moved into music, creating an app that makes music accessible and writing music designed with Deaf and hard of hearing audiences in mind. Although not sure about the major milestones in disability arts history in Australia, she considers her art to be both political and personal, often tackling issues related to her identity as a Deaf person and the aesthetics of disability equipment. While Asphyxia identifies as a Deaf artist, above all, she sees herself as an artist whose work appeals to the mainstream while celebrating Deafness and diversity.
• Asphyxia
• "Australia Council - Annual Report 1976-77"
  Australia Council Annual Report 1976-77 discusses membership, the year in review including NSW Theatre of the Deaf as the only funded organisation working in nonverbal theatre with production of “King Lear”, and grants paid by Australia Council including Salaries, travel and costs for NSW Theatre of the Deaf and Braille Book of the Year Award, funding the program of entertainment for the old, sick and handicapped in homes, programs including salary and costs for Arts Access Society (Victoria) and performances by Arts Access Society and Arts Council of Australia (Victoria).
• "Australia Council - Annual Report 1985-86"
  Australia Council Annual Report 1985-86 - discusses functions and objectives, structures, process and membership of Council, Council Committees and members, Board Members, Assessment panels, staff lists, organisation chart, main activities of Council and its Boards, and includes financial statements and lists of grants made including grants for programs, workshops, tuition and skill development for disabled people in community arts, grant for Theatre of the Deaf Playwright, travel/study grant, Braille Book of the Year award and establishing audio visual gallery accessible to deaf and blind.
• "Australia Council - Annual Report 1975-76"
  Australia Council Annual Report 1975-76 discusses membership, the year in review, National theatre of the Deaf from New York show and directors development program assisting Theatre of the Deaf, programs including salary and costs for Arts Access (Vic), Salaries, equipment and materials for program of multi-arts activities to Adult Deaf Society, Braille Book of the Year Award and funding program of entertainment for the old, sick and handicapped in homes.
• "Australia Council - Annual Report 1978-79"
  Australia Council Annual Report 1978-79 discusses membership, members of boards, senior staff list, principals and precautions of grants, grant lists, programs including funding for multi arts camps for handicapped children, salaries and travel for NSW and QLD Theatre of the Deaf, and presentation and production costs for Braille and Talking Book Award for 1979.
• "Australia Council - Annual Report 1983-84"
  Australia Council Annual Report 1983-84 - discusses main activities of Council and its eight Boards, and includes financial statements and lists of grants made including artist fees, performances for handicapped, production of radio material for blind, and activities for Theatre of the Deaf.
• “The 1985 New Directions Report is released”
  People with disabilities and their families participated in the review for the first time as part of a comprehensive consultation process. The resulting report ‘New directions: report of the Handicapped Programs Review’ was released in 1985. It indicated the need for change in disability policy culture of how people with a disability rights and capacities to realise their individual capacities for development.
• "Royal Commission on Human Relationships"
  In 1977, the Royal Commission on Human Relationships noted the legal and human rights of handicapped children and adults.
• "The Australia Council establishes the Community Arts Committee in 1973 and the Community Arts Board in 1978"
  The Australia Council established the Community Arts Committee in 1973 and the Community Arts Board in 1978. The purpose of the latter was to encourage wider participation in the arts, especially for groups with little social capital. The Board was “the first funding body to identify the community arts phenomenon and respond with definition and policy." This occurred under the directorship of Rosalie Bower, the first director of the Community Arts Board, who wrote in a paper entitled 'The Case for a Community Arts Centre': “The activities within a centre should be accessible to children, aged people, the physically handicapped, ethnic groups and those whose time is severely restricted by work and family ties. The activities supplied by the centre should be conducted free from competitive elements which otherwise might discourage people from participation, and they must be inexpensive and accessible at almost any time. They must not pre-suppose education or income levels which would cut them off from any section of the community.'" (Australia Council 1979/1980 Annual Report, page 32)
• “Disabled actors perform at Melbourne Concert Hall”
  In 1982, 50 “handicapped” actors (though none were named in the media) were involved in Access Arts’ ‘Theorem’ at the Melbourne Concert Hall, an example of inclusive arts practice. The performance received broad public attention.
• “The Broughton Art Society is founded in 1965”
  The Broughton Art Society was established in 1965 by Ian Broughton (as The Arts Society for the Handicapped). Broughton, who had muscular dystrophy, was a resident at The Home for Incurables. BAS offers community-based art classes to adults living with disability.
• "Queensland Government (2024) Arts and Disability Plan. 25 September 2024. https://www.arts.qld.gov.au/projects-and-initiatives/arts-and-disability-plan-web"
  Reads, in part "The Queensland Government acknowledges the rights of people with disability to participate equally in the state’s cultural life and to have the opportunity to develop and use their creative, artistic and intellectual potential, as recognised in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disability."
• "Janice Rieger, Jasmien Herssens, Megan Strickfaden, Marianella Chamorro-Koc, Bree Hadley (2019) Vis-ability Exhibition."
  "The United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD, 2016) foregrounds the importance of cultural participation to realise human rights for people with disabilities. The creative industries play a critical role in supporting and shaping these social attitudes towards inclusion. Through the theoretical foundation of Design for All (EIDD Stockholm Declaration, 2004) new engagement processes involving a transdisciplinary team from Australia and around the world converged at QUT to co-design more equitable and collaborative forms of knowledge and practice around inclusion. International universities, the EU Commission and the European Institute for Design & Disability collaborated and presented Design for All for the first time in Australia, positioning QUT leadership in this field and as the first non-European member of EIDD-DfA. Co-design methods were employed through, Vis-ability workshops, Making Visible workshops, tactile artefacts and audio description work in the VisAbility Exhibition. Innovative practice was through the Inclusive Film Screening and Wondrous Googles technologies. An innovative model of engagement was created through the DfA Week program and events across sectors. Knowledge was disseminated through academic articles."
• "Janice Rieger and Megan Strickfaden(2019) “Dis/ordered assemblages of disability in museums.” In The Routledge Handbook of Disability Art, Culture, and Media, edited by Bree Hadley and Donna McDonald, 48–61. London & New York: Routledge."
  "Museums are spaces of power and care. They are institutions that present assemblages (Deleuze & Guattari 2002), which are reconstructions and representations of history and societal values, and thus are partial realities that curate human existence. These assemblages cannot ever represent the totality of human existence because it is never possible to do so, and yet these assemblages are embedded with power because choices are made about what ought or ought not be represented within museums (Ott 2013; Bennet 2017). The nature of partial realities is that, at their centre, these are still representations that tell stories of what one would imagine to be the most significant events related to a place (nation, city), with a particular focus on a societal event or issue (war, art, sports, nature, human rights, etc.) and peoples (e.g. immigrants, migrants, First Nations or Indigenous peoples, etc.). Persons attending museums rely on the expertise of historians, curators, archivists, conservators, and exhibition designers to present materials within the museum that focus upon and represent societal values. Most museum visitors are not aware of the power that museums hold, although more and more museum visitors push against narratives which they do not feel to be adequate representations of the places, events, issues, and peoples of society (Hooper-Greenhill 1992, 2000; Anderson 2004; Janes 2009, 2010). Where there is power, there is also care. Historians, curators, archivists, conservators, and exhibition designers take great care in how they assemble materials within museums."
• "Christopher Newall (1996). The Disability Rights Movement in Australia: A note from the trenches. Disability & Society, 11(3), 429–432. https://doi.org/10.1080/09687599627705"
  Reads, in part “A recent visitor to Australia from the UK commented to me on their return ‘I looked in vain for the disability rights movement. Can you tell me where they are?’ In essence, the Australia disability rights movement is currently fragmented, predominantly organised around disease labels and seems to have lost ground, compared with the self-help initiatives fostered around the time of the International Year of the Disabled Persons in 1981.”
• “Tutti Arts - Blind Date - Promotional Flyer”
  Tutti Arts ‘Blind Date’ 2008 Promotional Flyer - reads, in part “'An eye-opening cabaret performance by five VIPs' (Vision Impaired Persons)”
• "Tutti Arts - Blind Date - Program"
  Tutti Arts ‘Blind Date’ 2008 Program - reads, in part “'An eye-opening cabaret performance by five VIPs' (Vision Impaired Persons)”
• "Australia Council - Annual Report 1992-93"
  Australia Council Annual Report 1992-93- discusses objectives, organisation chart, year in review, support for artform development, main activities of Council and its Boards, and includes financial statements and lists of grants made including grants for programs, projects, writers fees and expenses and resource development
• "Australia Council - Annual Report 1993-94"
  Australia Council Annual Report 1993-94 - discusses objectives, organisation chart, year in review, support for people with disabilities in Art and Working Life, artform development, main activities of Council and its Boards, and includes financial statements and lists of grants made including grants for programs, development of performance, visual art/crafts, media and multi arts, writers in community residence and local documentation projects as well as “Arts and Disability” research and collaboration in performance of “Love Dances (and other stories)”