Artists and Festivals Down Under
By Robyn Hunt
New Australian Web site for professional disabled artists
Salubrious Productions
lists over 60 professional disabled artists from Brisbane and throughout Australia. Categories include bands, musicians, singers, speakers, workshop facilitators, actors, visual artists, with artists' pages including biographies, photos and recordings.
The site belongs to Salubrious Productions: Australia's only entertainment and production agency specialising in professional artists with a disability has been launched with the assistance of a business development grant from Arts Queensland.
Salubrious Productions was established in late 1999 by Janelle Colquhoun, a disabled artist. Before going blind as a result of diabetes, Janelle worked as a professional opera singer with the Australian Opera and Opera Frankfurt. While Vice-president of Access Arts Inc. Janelle met many artists with a disability performing at a professional level, unable to find work or an agent.
"I was so annoyed that agents and mainstream companies had pre-conceived ideas about an artist's ability based on their disability, without even giving them a chance," Janelle said. " While I still could sing as well as previously, suddenly nobody wanted to employ me any more, and I discovered the other artists had similar stories." With a long history in the arts industry and well-networked, Janelle decided to make a difference.
The work has been steadily growing over the past few years, with a healthy portfolio of contracts and regular bookings.
"I do not exclusively represent artists with a disability" Janelle said, "My policy is that the best artist for the job is sent out. However, often the best person also happens to have a disability."
Salubrious Productions aims to find artists work in the mainstream industry as well as at disability related functions. Information on the web site emphasises the ability rather than the disability. Most biographies do not include the disability unless it is part of the act.
Last year Janelle applied for funding from Arts Queensland to develop her business to make artists more visible and to give them a space to display their work on-line.
Ross Barber, a disabled visual artist, designed the site.
Contact Janelle Colquhoun at:
janelle@salubriousproductions.com
Tel +61 7 3855 3048 or +61 414 3855 30
Asia Pacific Wataboshi Music Festival
Living the Dream
Brisbane 16-23 November 2003
The international disability Wataboshi 2003 Festival comes to Australia for the first time this November.
Brisbane is the setting for the Asia Pacific Music Festival that will showcase music, performance and visual arts from 13 countries in a week long celebration of the creative expressions of artists, including soloists and bands from around Australia.
The Brisbane Powerhouse (http://www.brisbanepowerhouse.org) on the banks of the Brisbane River and its theatre and courtyard venues will be home to the festival. The Powerhouse is a friendly, accessible venue. (The venue may be accessible but the web site isn't)
The Powerhouse is also the home of Access Arts, Queensland's Arts and Disability organisation, which is hosting the 2003 Wataboshi Living the Dream Festival.
Neal Price, Executive Director of Access Arts said that Access Arts is deeply honoured to be the first Australian Arts and Disability organisation to receive the invitation from the Tanpopo-No-Ye Foundation to host the Wataboshi Festival.
The Brisbane Wataboshi joins Singapore (1991), Seoul (1993), Shanghai (1995), Bangkok (1997), Nara (1999), and Kaohsiung (2001) in the international biennial version of the event that began in the ancient Japanese city of Nara in 1976. Developed by the Tanpopo-No-Ye Foundation, this one off event has grown into an annual festival in Japan (with performances in over 50 cities) and a biennial international event.
Wataboshi (pronounced what-ah-boshi) is Japanese for the seeds of the dandelion flower and like the seeds carried by the wind, the festival seeks to share and convey a message of peace and harmony throughout the world.
With each festival the Wataboshi movement has grown, attracting people from the wider community as well as the disability sector in a celebration of creativity of all abilities.
Internationally known Australian musician David Helfgott is the International Ambassador of the Brisbane Wataboshi.
Brisbane Wataboshi Festival Director, Ludmila Doneman said "We look forward to welcoming all to Wataboshi - performers and spectators - to share new insights of our individual stories and through Wataboshi create environment for ongoing exchanges including movement, theatre, visual arts, and writing - with music being the strong original force," she said.
"What begins to develop as a theme of the festival is the expression through first hand experience of performers who have been displaced, labelled or dis-empowered and have discovered a committement to the arts as a way of expressing personal and political messages to the general public."
"Much of the work and ideas presented to us centres around the politics of difference - and diversity" added Neal Price." While some work might develop from the experience of having a disability, or centre around the issues that performers are experiencing, the artistry and musicianship expressed by performers living with disability, ongoing civil unrest or concerns about social justice issues is the major preoccupation of many of the performers."
Many Australian and international performers and artists have already expressed interest in participating in the festival.
More information can be found at http://www.accessarts.org.au/wataboshi.html
British Disability Film Catalogue Launched
White sticks, wheels and crutches: Disability and the moving image
SBN number 0-85170-962-1.
Published 2003 by the British Film Institute
This volume has 132 pages of information about films concerning disability or featuring disabled characters, as well as specially commissioned essays written by Dr Paul Darke.
The front cover and a contents page can be viewed at www.outside-centre.com
The A4 format catalogue costs £5 - £10 - yet to be confirmed from the British Film Institute (including in Large Print - text only).
BFI - sales, distribution and archive - Marketing
21 Stephen Street,
London
England
W1T 1LN
Telephone: 0207 957 8905
or E-mail: marketing.films@bfi.org.uk
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