Chronic illness – health conditions characterised by their long-lasting and persistent effects – impacts the lives, livelihoods and creativity of many artists.

Chronic illnesses can include conditions such as arthritis; asthma; cancer; diabetes; pain syndromes; cardiovascular, lung and kidney conditions; neurodegenerative and neuromuscular conditions; and mental/behavioural conditions (including alcohol and drug problems).

Artists with these and other chronic health conditions require a range of approaches to help them perform but many arts companies, cultural venues and festival operators don’t know how to provide appropriate support, leading to negative outcomes for everyone.

Join us for this FREE online panel discussion with leading artists from across Australia who live with chronic health conditions as they unpack what access and inclusion means for people with chronic illness and how the cultural sector can respond more effectively to their needs as artists.

Learn about:

• The barriers which can prevent artists with chronic illness from participating equitably in Australia’s creative industries.
• The opportunities and challenges for arts and cultural organisations in terms of improving access and inclusion for artists with chronic illness.
• Different approaches for supporting touring artists and festival performers.
• How the COVID pandemic has impacted artists with chronic illness and what COVID’s legacy will be for the arts and cultural sector in relation to people with chronic health conditions. 

Where & When

• Wednesday 31 March 2021
• 1:00pm – 2:30pm
• Zoom (link provided following registration)
• REGISTER NOW: https://atagonline31mar2021.eventbrite.com.au

Speakers

Katherine Wilkinson  | Program Director | Fremantle Biennale

Katherine Wilkinson is a creative producer and curator working across socially-engaged, site-responsive and live contemporary art practices. Alongside her role as the Program Director for the Fremantle Biennale, she is a Curator with DADAA and a Producer with Perth Festival. Her most recent projects centre place, water and creative access, and include Witness Stand (Perth Festival, 2021), Fair Isle (DADAA, Perth Festival, 2021) and the Proximity Lab (Proximity Festival x DADAA, 2020). Katherine gratefully lives, works and swims on the lands of the Whadjuk Noongar people. (Photo credit: Jessica Wyld)

Andi Snelling | Writer, Performer, Theatre-maker

Andi Snelling is an award-winning performer, writer and theatre-maker, specialising in physical storytelling. She has an MA (Acting) from Mountview Academy of Theatre Arts, London and her career highlights include: Edith in Picnic at Hanging Rock (BBC), Brinda in Neighbours (Fremantle Media), Inflight Voice for Qatar Airways, and her three critically-acclaimed solo theatre works #DearDiary, Déjà Vu (And Other Forms of Knowing) and Happy-Go-Wrong, with the latter winning numerous awards and receiving a slew of 5-star reviews. Andi is also a proud ambassador for the Lyme Disease Association of Australia.

Alison Paradoxx | Performance Poet

Alison Paradoxx is an Award-winning performance poet, producer, event host, and State Poetry Slam Champion. Representing the state at the National Poetry Slam at The Sydney Opera House in 2016, Alison has featured for a variety of literary performance bodies all over SA, and been involved in numerous collaborative projects statewide. Alison’s work has been published by Verity La, Access2Arts, Outlandish Arts, Paroxysm Press, and in LaTrobe University’s gender, sexuality, and diversity studies journal, Writing from below. Her first solo production, Floral Peroxide, sold out its 2019 Adelaide Fringe season, and an encore performance was staged at the closing of the festival.  Floral Peroxide was granted the huge honour of winning The Graham F. Smith Peace Foundation Award, at The Adelaide Fringe Awards Ceremony, 2019, and went on to show at Melbourne’s Butterfly Club.

Yasemin Sabuncu | Writer, Performer, Filmmaker

Yasemin is a multidisciplinary storyteller across performance, writing, visual art and TV/film. She aims to create stories that uplift, engage and promote diversity in innovative ways. Her works explore ideas of belonging, identity, liminality, spirituality, the environment, race, health and being “the other.” Recently Yasemin was selected as a Midsumma Pathways recipient for 2020/21, got selected into AFTRS Talent Camp, selected to observe in a TV writers room and for a diversity scholarship in improv and sketch comedy. She put on Adelaide’s 1st street art festival and was a part of the street art world. Her works have shown internationally and nationally at prestigious festivals. Yasemin was in LA this year where she was doing comedy, studying improv/sketch, and pitching TV projects

Access

 

This event will be Auslan interpreted and have live closed captioning.

If you have access requirements, please advise us when registering. We may need 24 hours notice to accommodate your requirements. Please take this into account when registering.

For more information or to specify any access requirements to participate in this event, please contact Daniel Jaramillo: djaramillo@aarts.net.au

About Zoom

Our ATAG Online will be using the Zoom online conferencing platform. We’ll email you the Zoom link the day before the event. All you have to do is click on the link, follow the prompts and you’ll be part of the event.

Zoom is an easy to use, reliable and FREE cloud platform for video and audio conferencing, collaboration, chat, and webinars across mobile devices, desktops and telephones. If you haven’t used Zoom before you can find out more here: https://zoom.us/

About ATAG

ATAG stands for Accessing The Arts Group. ATAGs are regular meetups for workers in NSW’s creative industries who want to learn more about including people with disability in their professional practice. ATAGs are an initiative of Accessible Arts, NSW’s peak arts and disability organisation. Accessible Arts works with artists, arts organisations, cultural agencies and festival/event operators to create opportunities that enrich the lives of artists, arts workers and audiences with disability or who are Deaf. www.aarts.net.au

Presented by: Accessible Arts

Programmed by: Hanna Cormick

Key Image: The Chronic Diaries – Fix Me by Tyler Grace

ENDS

Image Description: Promotional image for ATAG Online with event text, various logos, and colour head shots of four women below a black and white photo of a male body covered in bandages with arms outstretched.