Avatar in the Dreamhouse:

The National Arts and Disability Strategy in Focus

Bruce Maguire

Policy Officer, Australian Human Rights Commission

Presentation to Arts Activated Conference
March 26 2010

Good afternoon everyone. I begin by acknowledging the traditional owners of the land on which we're meeting today.

About six weeks ago I had a dream in which I was about to give this presentation. As I was walking up to the lectern, I suddenly realised that I had forgotten to include anything about the National Arts and Disability Strategy. Not only had I forgotten to include it in my notes, but I couldn't remember a single thing about it. I started to imagine boos and hisses from the audience, projectile tomatoes, and (the presenter's worst nightmare) loud snores. But then, in the dream, I somehow knew that I could end it all by waking myself up. And that's what I did.

  So here's the first question in today's quiz: what haven't I forgotten to include in my presentation this afternoon. If you answered “I don't know”, then you probably need to get out more. But I should say at the outset that I don't intend to go through the Strategy point by point, paragraph by paragraph: that's a recipe for loud snores, a boring presentation, and a strategy that stays on paper rather than shaping your hearts, minds and experiences.

But I'm using the verbal equivalent of an SLR camera, and I want to spend a few minutes turning the focus ring to see what's around the strategy – to contextualise it, if you like.

Thinking about dreams reminds me that some psychologists, such as Susan Anderson, have developed a wonderful visualisation based on the idea of a dreamhouse as a way of helping us regroup and grow after experiencing a psychological trauma such as abandonment, or conference presentation nightmares. The dreamhouse harnesses the limitless power of our imagination to help us create healing energy.

In creating our dreamhouse we start by assuming that money is no object: we have unlimited resources to make our house whatever we want it to be. It can be a 30-room mansion surrounded by a moat and 3-metre walls, or a one-bedroom cave in the bush. Some people build their dreamhouse close to the sea. I'm rather ambivalent about the sea: I certainly prefer to be near it rather than in it (it's never been quite the same since I saw Jaws at a cinema in Gosford). Sometimes I find the sea comforting in its cycles and rhythms, other times I imagine it as some kind of impersonal god whose eternal vastness helps me put my own problems and concerns into perspective; but sometimes, too, I feel the sea as a siren that is seducing me to oblivion in its dark, icy depths. So, on balance, I think I'll build my dreamhouse in the mountains overlooking a valley and backed by peaceful fragrant Zen gardens, and have a little dream weekender that I can visit when I'm feeling rhythmic and cyclical.

Once you've decided on the location, the next step is to design the house: do you want it sprawling like a rabbit-warren, or compact. Being a Jungian, I'm going for a mandala design, to suggest completeness and integration. Then it's time to furnish your dreamhouse: each room can be the same, or you could have theme-rooms; you could have a gym room, or a sp room. I'm going to have a disco room. Not the kind of disco that has strobe lights and billowing non-toxic smoke, though: I'm thinking of a room with glass walls that mirror the text of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, which we call the Disability Convention, or DisCo. I'd have the text in braille of course, and as a looped Auslan video, and displayed in the languages of every country that has ratified the DisCo. Reclining in the Disco room in my dreamhouse, I can start to think about the National Arts and Disability Strategy (see, I really haven't forgotten), because it's the DisCo that energises the Strategy and those of us who believe in it.

Now that the dreamhouse is furnished, it's time to fill the rooms with the objects that will enhance our energy, promote mindful awareness, and create an environment from which we can confront and subdue our demons of fear, insecurity, abandonment, grief, or whatever ours happen to be. At this point, the writers who have developed the dreamhouse visualization invite us to bring our favourite artworks into our dreamhouse: remember that we have unlimited resources, so if you want the Mona Lisa to remind you of The Da Vinci Code, that's not a problem; if you want Rembrandt's Warrior, it's yours.

But what art am I going to have in my dreamhouse: I'd like to put braille wallpaper on the walls. One or two artists and designers claim to have made some, but you can't get your hands on it (literally) and once the grant money ran out, nothing further was done. If I lived in the UK , I'd be much more experienced as an appreciator of visual art, because there's a much more developed culture of audio description at live arts events. If the Masterpieces from Paris exhibition were in London rather than Canberra , it's a good bet that there'd be some conveniently-timed audio-described sessions. One of the 8 underlying principles of the National Arts and Disability Strategy reads as follows: ”participation in and access to arts and cultural activity are integral to supporting and maintaining a society which fosters creativity, innovation and community enrichment”. The provision of audio description, captioning, Auslan interpreting, accessible venues, and accessible information, are all essential – non-negotiable – to that access and participation.

There may not be much visual art in my dreamhouse, but there would be some sculptures. Last year the organisers of the 2009 Sculpture by the Sea exhibition in Sydney provided an audio-tactile tour of some of the key exhibits. I wasn't allowed to touch the sculpture of the little boy with his bathers on the beach (not sure if they thought it would cause more damage to the sculpture or me), but the Hansel and Gretel house covered with toys, the torn and folded $5 note, the lawn-mower, and many other sculptures were accessible to me in all their sculpted tactility, and it was great to be able to talk to one of the sculptors about his work and have him guide my hand around it. By far the most resonant exhibit, and the one that I would put in a prominent place in my dreamhouse, is Time and Tide, by May Barrie . It is a celebration of touch – in fact, if you don't touch it, you can't unfold the multiple layers of meaning that pulsate within its granite monolith. When you explore its contrasting surfaces with your fingers, you connect with a universe of experience that is timeless and without barriers. I think about that sculpture, and my experience of it, almost every day. I congratulate the organisers of Sculpture by the Sea for introducing the audio-tactile tour – just make sure you do it again this year.

On December 3 2008 I attended an audio-described tour of the Monet exhibition organised by the Art Gallery of NSW as part of that year's International Day of People with a Disability events. This was the first time I'd been to such a tour in Australia , and I hope it marked the beginning of a growing awareness of the need for audio description to support the National Arts and Disability Strategy's principles and goals. What I remember clearly about that tour is a comment, made almost by chance at the end, in front of Water Lilies. “When I look at this painting, it's as if I'm looking into the depths of the pond”. Why do I remember that rather than the technical details about colour and perspective? Because that comment was about an individual experience, and through it I could make a connection with the person and the painting.

The National Arts and Disability Strategy refers many times to “arts activity”, and one reason is that art is always active – in motion, as it were – even (and especially) when it is hanging on a wall or bolted to a plinth. When the artist's work is done, the work of hermeneutics takes over, and we start to participate in a co-creative act that embeds the artwork in our experience, first in our individual experience, but then, as we share and connect with others, in the collective experience that shapes our society and culture.

How would you caption the 1 st movement of Mahler's 4 th symphony to make it accessible for someone who is Deaf? You could write, “the flutes are playing a trill-like melody now, and the strings have just started with a rhythmic lilting tune, and now there are some sleigh-bells in the background.” But descriptions like that don't capture that co-creative act of experiencing and sharing that happens whenever we listen to the music. Or how would you caption the piece by John Cage called “433” which consists of 4 minutes and 33 seconds of silence? If you were to just write, “the piano is completely silent” you would be right, but impoverished. It's what happens to us – what we experience during and because of the silence that gives this piece its participatory quality.

If you only remember one thing from this presentation, then may it be this: the reason that Article 30 of the DisCo asserts the right of people with disabilities to participate fully in the artistic and cultural life of the community, and the reason that that the underlying principles, focus areas, goals and strategies that form the National Arts and Disability Strategy refer constantly to activity, access and participation, is that the arts are ultimately and irreducibly about experience and co-creation. We are all, whether we have a disability or not, human beings that experience the world in one way or another, and so the more we can share our experiences, and the more we can participate in that endless process of creation and re-creation, then the more our society will be enriched.

Of course, the National Arts and Disability Strategy doesn't operate in a vacuum, and it alone will not bring about full inclusion and participation in arts and culture by people with disability. It's only part of a picture, albeit an important part. It's one instrument in the ensemble of mechanisms for removing barriers to full social inclusion for people with disability. The DisCo is the overarching frame of reference, or the conductor of the ensemble, which establishes the rights that people with disability have, and the obligations that signatories to the DisCo undertake to meet.

In Australia we have the Disability Discrimination Act 1992 (DDA), which is the key piece of Commonwealth legislation that aims to eliminate discrimination against people with disability in key areas of community life, including access to premises (including heritage-listed buildings I might add in parentheses), access to public transport, education, and the provision of goods and services. Think of the DDA as the baton that the conductor can use to help the music flow.

The DDA applies to many arts-related activities. Yesterday, for example, Blind Citizens Australia issued a press release announcing that six of their members have lodged DDA complaints against the four major cinema chains for failing to provide audio description services in their cinemas. Over the years there have been quite a DDA complaints relating to the arts. The majority of those complaints have been successfully conciliated (as, indeed, is the case for the majority of DDA complaints generally).

The DDA continues to be an important tool for bringing about change, but it is limited in what it alone can do. So there are a number of other instruments that are being developed to help advance the Government's Social Inclusion Agenda as it relates to people with disability, and to help achieve full compliance with the DisCo. The National Disability Strategy (NDS) is currently being developed. Think of it as the principal violinist that helps the other strings play in sync under the overall direction of the conductor. The National Arts and Disability Strategy is one of a number of whole-of-government initiatives that complement the NDS, and it seeks to give effect to the aims and goals of the NDS in the context of arts and culture.

The Strategy is guided by the principles of the DisCo, and it's important to understand that DisCo is about the rights that people with disabilities have. So if you organise an arts event in an inaccessible venue, then not only are you being discriminatory, but you're also violating the rights of people with disability; Similarly, if you arrange an art exhibition (including an exhibition by an artist with a disability) but make no provision for audio-described tours, then you're involved in a rights violation. While the Government has primary responsibility for meeting obligations under DisCo, the change in focus from discrimination to rights is becoming central to the discourse and policymaking about disability, and it has implications for the whole of society.

So now that we have the context and understand how the National Arts and Disability Strategy fits into the “big picture”, let's zoom in on the Strategy itself. It is a framework that can be used by both the Commonwealth and the state and territory governments to assess their current arts-related programs, consider new opportunities and directions, and identify new partnerships and directions. The Strategy has a simple but powerful vision: “people with disabilities participate fully in the arts and cultural life of Australia . The artistic aspirations and achievements of people with a disability are a valued and visible part of Australian culture”. Although the Strategy is designed primarily to assist government, this vision is one that should inform all arts activity, because it encapsulates the aspirations and expectations of people with disability.

The Strategy was developed through a process of public consultation, and by analysing the submissions and feedback that was received, the Cultural Ministers Council identified four areas that could be used to describe the many and significant barriers that people with disability face if they wish to participate in the arts. The Strategy is organised around these four focus areas. They are: Access and Participation, Arts and Cultural Practice, Audience Development, and Strategic Development. Within each of these focus areas, specific goals are identified, and strategies for achieving them are outlined. I obviously don't have time this afternoon to discuss all these goals and strategies – I'll leave that to you as a homework exercise to be handed in next period in a range of accessible formats. So I'll just touch on a couple to give you an idea of the breadth of the strategy.

Goal #2 in Focus Area #1 (Access and Participation” is: “information on access to arts and cultural facilities is widely available and in a variety of accessible formats”. Unfortunately, many people with disability still cannot book tickets online, access program information, and details of access features, because websites fail to meet endorsed standards of accessibility, and information is published only in PDF. So it's good that one of the strategies identified for achieving this goal is, “Promote the web accessibility standards developed by the Worldwide Web Consortium and encourage all arts organisations and cultural facilities to review the accessibility of their online information in relation to these standards and to adopt the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0”. It's very pleasing that the Government has recently adopted WCAG2.0, and the Commission will be releasing an updated version of our Web Accessibility Advisory Note in the near future that will include recommendations for transitioning non-government websites to WCAG2.0. The technologies of cyber-space, including the websites, and social networking such as Facebook and Twitter, are becoming increasingly important for promoting the arts – in fact, some websites are seen as artworks in themselves. Technology is changing rapidly, and it's tempting to use whatever's hot and cutting edge to demonstrate that our exhibitions, installations or events are hot and cutting-edge too, but if we don't think access first, access second, and access all the way down, then the response from people with disability will be cold, and the barriers will be raised even higher than they are now.

Goal #3 in the Access and Participation focus area is: “people with a disability have access to quality arts and cultural experiences”. One strategy for achieving this is, “encourage and assist arts organisations and cultural facilities to review policies and programs to improve the experiences of people with a disability to provide more equal access”. It's true that access for people with disability to major arts and cultural events in Australia is still relatively undeveloped, and certainly we lag behind countries such as the UK and the US . But as we develop policies and strategies, the emphasis must be on those “quality experiences”. If a major arts event that extends over several days, weeks or months only has one or two so-called “access events”, then this is likely to be regarded as tokenistic and not a quality experience. It makes people with disability feel ghettoized, demeaned, and angry, when they are herded into the “disability corner”. Every day should be an access day, every work should be made accessible to everyone, and every time we make the effort (and for many people with disability it can be a very considerable effort) to visit a gallery, theatre, cinema, museum, or other cultural space, we should be able to leave feeling included, valued, and affirmed. Sure, we have to start somewhere, and we can't make everything fully accessible all at once; but where we start shouldn't be where we stop.

The Strategy emphasises the importance of collaboration and partnerships between government and the non-government sector. In this sense, the Strategy is an avatar – a messenger or herald that points the way by setting an example so that others may follow. While the Government may be the director, we all have a personal responsibility to play our role with sufficient passion and commitment that we could win the nomination for best supporting actor or actress.

I will conclude by inviting you back into my dreamhouse: let's go into the Disco room. You'll notice that there's a lot of unfinished construction at the far side. The builders are making special luxury suites where I can accommodate guests from the arts and cultural sector who are leading the way in disability access. There's the Sculpture by the Sea suite with its May Barrie room; and of course there's the Accessible Arts suite, along with a few others. And the architects have designed the mandala so that there's room for many more. You'll also notice some other construction further away across a barren expanse of thorny weedy ground. That's the dank, roach-infested coal cellar where the barrier-makers and the arts excluders and discriminators will be housed. I won't read the nameplates above the door - I'm sure you'll know if yours is there.

As the National Arts and Disability Strategy becomes increasingly understood, and as its goals become those of the arts and cultural sector, I hope that the name-plates over the door to the coal cellar will become smaller and smaller. In time, I hope we can replace the coal cellar with a dreamspace where all the films are captioned and audio-described, all the artworks come with audio description and Auslan interpreting, and where artists who don't have disability share with and learn from those who do. And above all, I hope that this dreamspace will be a mirror of realspace.

I encourage you all to study the National Arts and Disability Strategy, to assess its relevance for you and your organisation, to discuss and comment on the annual reports about the implementation of the Strategy, and to participate in the review processes that will take place every three years. I also strongly encourage you to develop a Disability Action Plan for your organisation if; you don't already have one, or to assess your current Plan against the goals in the National Arts and disability Strategy.

So, will the National Arts and Disability Strategy be a part of the solution rather than part of the problem? Will it be an avatar in my dreamhouse? The answer is that it's up to you, it's up to me, and it's up to us.