Disability Arts History Australia

Items

• ”Racheal Missingham, Bree Hadley (2022) Oppression and allyship in Australia's Deaf Arts. Australasian Drama Studies, 80, pp. 304-332.”
  "In this article, we investigate the history of Deaf theatre in Australia, through the lens of oppression and allyship. Through a review of the to date limited academic, industry, and media literature, in conjunction with survey and interview research with Deaf theatre practitioners, this research sheds light on Deaf theatre makers’ perceptions of the ways in which ally support can operate to create both social benefits and barriers, and how this has impacted on the non-linear development and recent decline in Deaf theatre companies in Australia. It finds that, in developing a framework to scaffold stronger allyship relationships with d/Deaf and hard of hearing artists, it is critical to consider the accessibility and cultural requirements not just in relation to theatre methodologies, but in relation to arts management practices, which support continuing company production, too."
• "Bree Hadley (2022) Disability and the Arts, Creative, and Cultural Industries in Australia. Australian Academy of Humanities"
  "This week saw the release of Ensuring Occupations are Responsive to People with Disabilities, a landmark report by the Australian Council of Learned Academies (ACOLA) commissioned by the Australian Government Department of Social Services. As part of the Academy of Humanities’ support for the project, Professor Bree Hadley provided a study of disability in the arts, creative, and cultural industries for the project, and Professor Gerard Goggin was a member of the Expert Reference Group. In this week’s Five-Minute Friday Read, they explain why disability training needs fundamental reform now."
• "Bree Hadley, Janice Rieger (2021) Co-designing choice: objectivity, aesthetics and agency in audio-description. Museum Management and Curatorship, 36(2), pp. 189-203.”
  "The ‘Vis-ability’ exhibition, presented at the QUT Art Museum in 2019 was an exhibition curated with clear social inclusion goals from the outset. Through it, the museum sought to develop innovative, cost effective, and readily replicable techniques to allow blind and low vision visitors and artists to engage with the institution and its collections. The results affirm the benefits of offering blind and low vision visitors a spectrum of engagement choices, and also affirm that blind and low vision artists and visitors have capacity to make a critical contribution in co-designing that spectrum of choices. This exhibition and its use of multisensorial elements offers a useful prompt to museums to engage this community more fully in co-designing inclusion in the future."
• ”Hadley, Bree, Batch, Morgan, & Whelan, Michael (2021) The entitled ally: Authorship, consultation, and the 'right' to stage autistic people's stories. Disability and Society, 36(9), pp. 1489-1509.”
  "Theatre has a long tradition of presenting disabled characters as plot devices to tell someone else’s story. A recent production, All in a Row, resulted in heated debate around this issue. This article examines not the play itself, but the conflict between those who objected to the play’s representation of autism, and its creators, who defended their choices by citing their disability-adjacent identities and processes of consultation. For critics, the fact that the creators did not take the community’s concerns seriously was a source of trauma. This article uses this conflict to draw out lessons about how we might better negotiate the right to tell disability stories and strengthen frameworks to support that negotiation. We propose a decision tree diagram to assist artists in understanding the meaning, role, and most importantly the potential consequences of consultation – up to and including a community saying ‘no’ to an artist’s planned representation."
• "Bree Hadley (2020) Allyship in disability arts: Roles, relationships, and practices. Research in Drama Education, 25(2), pp. 178-194.”
  "In this article, I propose that investigation of allies, ally skills, and allyship in disability arts is overdue. I articulate some of ways in which non-arts approaches to allyship need to be adapted to meet the needs of disabled artists, given the aesthetic as well as professional and social dimensions of allyship distinctive to disability arts. In doing so, I highlight the need for new theory, terminology, and frameworks to define the different approaches to allyship, developed by different artsworkers, operating in different roles, across the different domains of disability arts and/or arts and disability practice."
• "Australia Council for the Arts (2018) Arts and Disability a Priority as Australia Council Commits Significant New Funding. 24 September 2018."
  Reads, in part "The Australia Council has committed $750k over three years to support sustainable careers and to recognise the artistic excellence of artists with disability."
• "Carriageworks (2015) NSW Arts and Disability Partnership Launched at Carriageworks Including $100,000 Support for Two Major New Works. Carriageworks, 30 January 2015"
  Reads, in part "Sydney, Australia: The NSW Minister for Disability Services, Minister John Ajaka MLC, today launched an extension of the NSW Arts & Disability Partnership, announcing funding of $475,000 for 2015 to support four programs that promote social inclusion through the arts and disability sector. The Partnership includes $100,000 support for Carriageworks to commission two major new works developed by artists with disability in collaboration with NSW arts companies and artists."
• "Australia Council for the Arts (2022) Australia Council releases Towards Equity: a research overview of diversity in Australian arts."
  Reads, in part "The Australia Council for the Arts have released their critical new report Towards Equity: A research overview of diversity in Australia’s arts and cultural sector. This overview gathers published and unpublished data and research on representation within the arts and cultural sector in Australia."
• ”Bree Hadley, Donna McDonnald (Eds.) (2019) The Routledge Handbook of Disability Arts, Culture, and Media. Routledge International Handbooks. Routledge, London; New York.”
  “In the last 30 years, a distinctive intersection between disability studies – including disability rights advocacy, disability rights activism, and disability law – and disability arts, culture, and media studies has developed. The two fields have worked in tandem to offer critique of representations of disability in dominant cultural systems, institutions, discourses, and architecture, and develop provocative new representations of what it means to be disabled. Divided into 5 sections:- Disability, Identity, and Representation; Inclusion, Wellbeing, and Whole-of-life Experience; Access, Artistry, and Audiences; Practices, Politics and the Public Sphere; Activism, Adaptation, and Alternative Futures - this handbook brings disability arts, disability culture, and disability media studies – traditionally treated separately in publications in the field to date – together for the first time.”
• "Bree Hadley, Donna McDonnald (2019) Introduction: disability arts, culture, and media studies - mapping a maturing field. In Hadley, B & McDonald, D (Eds.) The Routledge handbook of disability arts, culture, and media. Routledge, United Kingdom, pp. 1-18.”
  Reads, in part "In this book, an internationally recognised collection of established and emerging scholars, artists, and activists from across the US, UK, Europe, Asia, and Australasia come together to trace the development of disability arts, culture, and media studies in recent decades, flag current interests, and forecast future concerns."
• "Bree Hadley, Donna McDonald, Sarah Austin, Kath Duncan, Gerard Goggin, Lachlan MacDowall, Veronica Pardo, Eddie Paterson, with collaborators Dave Calvert, Jori De Coster, Shawn Goh, Alice Fox, Ann M. Fox, Andy Kempe, Petra Kuppers, Justin Lee, Alex Lubet, Sarah Meisch Lionetto, Ann Millett-Gallant, Laura Misener, Bronwyn Preece, Megan Strickfaden, Joanne Tay, Matthew Reason, Nancy Quinn, and Sarah Whatley (2019) Conclusion: practicing interdependency, sharing vulnerability, celebrating complexity - the future of disability arts, culture, and media research. In Hadley, B & McDonald, D (Eds.) The Routledge handbook of disability arts, culture, and media. Routledge, United Kingdom, pp. 362-372."
  "In this chapter, the authors conclude The Routledge Handbook of Disability Art, Culture, and Media studies by reflecting on the past, present, and potential future of disability art practice debated throughout the book. Based on research currently underway in the work of many of the Australian contributors, and including reflections from the global contributors, this concluding chapter reflects on what the disability arts, culture, and media practice and research of the future might look like, do, and achieve in the public sphere."
• "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."
• "Sarah Austin, Chris Brophy, Lachlan MacDowell, Edward Paterson, and Winsome Roberts (2015) Beyond Access: The Creative Case for Inclusive Arts. Melbourne: Arts Victoria."
  Reads, in part "Beyond Access sought to create an evidence base for the creative case for inclusive arts practice to support greater recognition for artists with a disability by transforming and extending notions of what art is and who produces it."
• "Bree Hadley (2014) Disability, Public Space Performance, and Spectatorship: Unconscious Performers. London: Palgrave Macmillan."
  "Why would disabled people want to re-engage, re-enact and re-envisage the everyday encounters in public spaces and places that cast them as ugly, strange, stare-worthy? In Disability, Public Space Performance and Spectatorship: Unconscious Performers, Bree Hadley examines the performance practices of disabled artists in the US, UK, Europe and Australasia who do exactly this. Operating in a live or performance art paradigm, artists like James Cunningham (Australia), Noemi Lakmaier (UK/Austria), Alison Jones (UK), Aaron Williamson (UK), Katherine Araniello (UK), Bill Shannon (US), Back to Back Theatre (Australia), Rita Marcalo (UK), Liz Crow (UK) and Mat Fraser (UK) all use installation and public space performance practices to re-stage their disabled identities in risky, guerilla-style works that remind passersby of their own complicity in the daily social drama of disability. In doing so, they draw spectators' attention to their own role in constructing Western concepts of disability. This book investigates the way each of us can become unconscious performers in a daily social drama that positions disability people as figures of tragedy, stigma or pity, and the aesthetics, politics and ethics of performance practices that intervene very directly in this drama. It constructs a framework for understanding the way spectators are positioned in these practices, and how they contribute to public sphere debates about disability today."
• "Bree Hadley (2015) Participation, politics and provocations: People with disabilities as non-conciliatory audiences. Participations: journal of audience and reception studies, 12(1), pp. 154-174.”
  "Disability has always had a prominent place on the theatrical stage. Throughout the C19th, C20th and C21st to date, disabled characters have been used to signify corruption, innocence or suffering, and, of course, as salutary examples of how to overcome such suffering. In the past three decades, the work of disability scholars, activists and artists has also provided opportunities for people with disabilities to produce their own plays, performances or installations challenging these stereotypes. Interestingly, though both the body of literature on theatre makers with disabilities and the body of literature on theatre audiences has grown apace over the past decade, there is still surprisingly little written on people with disabilities as theatre audiences. In this article, I draw on observations made during five years of practical, empirical and theoretical research into disability theatre to discuss how people with disabilities work as a distinctive sub-group of spectators, with distinctive spectatorial processes, modalities and preferences, within contemporary theatre audiences. I begin with the factors that make attending theatre difficult for people with disabilities. I note that people with disabilities respond to the challenges they face in attempting to become active audiences of contemporary theatre in three common ways. I then unpack what these spectatorial modalities teach us about people with disabilities as audiences, other marginalised groups as audiences, as well as about audiences, audiencing and the part audiences play in theatre practice more generally."
• "Bree Hadley, Clark Crystal (2017) Style, stage presence, and the poetic subversion of stereotypes: A case study of Blue Roo Theatre Company. Social Alternatives, 36(4), pp. 15-21."
  "In this article, we consider the work of Blue Roo Theatre Company (http://www.bluerootheatre.org.au/), a Brisbane-based theatre company which “creates contemporary performances lead by the artistry, experiences and imaginations of an ensemble of artists with diverse ability and impairment” (http://www.bluerootheatre.org.au/). Writing from a dual insider-outsider perspective – as a scholar of disability theatre and a creator of disability theatre in conversation – we discuss the work done in the training and rehearsal room in the lead up to Blue Roo Theatre Company’s performances, such as the company’s recent sell-out performance of Orpheus and Eurydice in collaboration with Opera Queensland at the Judith Wright Centre for Contemporary Arts, and the way it creates a distinctive performance style, poetics, stage presence, pleasure for the spectators who come along to witness the results of the work, and sense of community. We document moments in which facilitators, collaborators, co-creating artists, audiences and the media alike feel the physical, psychological, and aesthetic focus and force of voice, movement and character work by people with disabilities. We identify ways in which this stage presence can subvert dominant depictions of people with disabilities as innocent, childlike, or inspirational as significantly as the content of a show. In doing so, we provide insights into Blue Roo Theatre Company’s processes, and the aesthetic results it produces, and contribute to a growing body of commentary around disability theatre and performance, which – though increasingly well understood by those working in the form – clearly can still provide surprises for audiences and commentators anticipating conventional representations of people with disabilities onstage."
• "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."
• "Hickey Moody, Anna. 2009. Unimaginable Bodies: Intellectual Disability, Performance and Becomings. Rotterdam: Sense."
  Reads, in part "Unimaginable Bodies radically resituates academic discussions of intellectual disability. Through building relationships between philosophy, cultural studies and communities of integrated dance theatre practice, Anna Hickey-Moody argues that dance theatre devised with and performed by young people with and without intellectual disability, can reframe the ways in which bodies with intellectual disability are known."
• "Australia Council for the Arts (2014) A Million Dollar Commitment to Artists with Disability. Australia Council for the Arts. 28 October 2014"
  Reads, in part "Australia Council Chief Executive Officer Tony Grybowski made the announcement today at the Arts Activated Conference in Chatswood, Sydney. Mr Grybowski said the decision to extend the dedicated arts and disability funding was made after a successful pilot was run earlier this year."
• "Australia Council for the Arts (2014) Australia Council Promotes Disability Leadership in the Arts. Australia Council for the Arts. 25 June 2014."
  Reads, in part "The Australia Council for the Arts is presenting a suite of activities from next month to develop the leadership skills of people with disability and enhance their access to leadership roles across the cultural sector."
• "Helena Grehan, Peter Eckersall (2013) ‘We’re People Who Do Shows’: Back to Back Theatre – Performance Politics Visibility. Wales: Performance Research Books."
  Reads, in part "This book gathers key perspectives on Back to Back Theatre including interviews, documentation and scripts selected by the company and here made available to the reader for the first time."
• "Katie Ellis, Gerard Goggin, Beth Haller, Rosemary Curtis ed. (2019) Routledge Companion to Disability and Media. London & New York: Routledge."
  Reads, in part "An authoritative and indispensable guide to disability and media, this thoughtfully curated collection features varied and provocative contributions from distinguished scholars globally, alongside next-generation research leaders."
• "David Throsby, Katya Petetskaya (2017) Making Art Work: An Economic Study of Professional Artists in Australia, Australia Council for the Arts, 2017."
  Reads, in part "Making Art Work: An Economic Study of Professional Artists in Australia by David Throsby and Katya Petetskaya is the sixth in a series carried out independently over thirty years by Professor Throsby at Macquarie University, with funding from the Australia Council. The series tracks trends in the lives and working conditions of Australian artists over 30 years and identifies challenges and opportunities for artists’ careers into the future."
• "Rachel Carling-Jenkins, Mark Serry (2014) Disability and social movements: learning from Australian experiences. Burlington : Ashgate Publishing Company"
  Reads, in part "This book provides the reader with a ground-breaking understanding of disability and social movements. By describing how disability is philosophically, historically, and theoretically positioned, Carling-Jenkins is able to then examine disability relationally through an evaluation of the contributions of groups engaged in similar human rights struggles. The book locates disability rights as a new social movement and provides an explanation for why disability has been divided rather than united in Australia.."
• "Kate Maguire-Rosier (2016). Moving “Misfits.” Australasian Drama Studies, (69), 29–55. https://search.informit.org/doi/10.3316/informit.590682266081795"
  Reads, in part "In Dianne Reid's recent work Dance Interrogations (a Diptych), performed as part of the 2015 Melbourne Fringe Festival by Reid and collaborating artist Melinda Smith, spectators had no seats but rather roamed, observing two mature dancers. In this article, I explore Reid and Smith's live performance, a combination of structured movement improvisation and screendance, as a provocation of the relationship between movement and agency. I address the theatrical event through the multifaceted lens of the performers' experiences, spectators' responses and my own observations."