Media Releases
Sydney Writers Festival - Puts Access On The Page
Can you feel writing? As revealed at the launch, the program shows clear large font and access symbols, in both their hard copy program and website, for each venue and individual sessions, including a Braille-inspired poetry performance. Much-praised writers with a disability will also make a strong literary showing this year with the inclusion of Ryan Knighton from Canada and Ruby Langford-Ginibi, a proud elder of the Bundjalung people in New South Wales.
Accessible Arts, the New South Wales peak arts and disability organisation, is commending the 2008 Sydney Writers’ Festival for their incorporation of writers with a disability, disability sessions, and displaying clear access information for all audiences.
Ryan Knighton, poet, fiction writer and journalist, is described by some as “a man with a bad, bad attitude but with the guts and the style to back it up”, is in his final stage before total blindness. He was diagnosed on his eighteenth birthday with retinitis pigmentosa (RP), a congenital disease marked by a progressive pathology of night-blindness, tunnel vision and eventually total blindness. His book entitled "Cockeyed: A memoir" is an insightful look into his slow descent into blindness with a rollercoaster ride of black comedy that makes you laugh out loud.
Ruby Langford-Gibini was born in 1934 in northern New South Wales. She has lived a remarkable and inspiring life as an indigenous woman, and a wheelchair user. Ruby has powerfully documented issues of dispossession and resilience throughout her literary career.
The first book of memoir, Don’t Take Your Love to Town, was originally published in 1988, and republished in 2007. It won the Australian Human Rights Award for Literature and the Pandora Books Women Writers’ Award in 1989. Her fifth book, All My Mob, was published in 2007.
Nightwriting Live Performance
Poetry is not for your eyes only. Festival-goers can bring all their senses to an exploration of poetic language, tactility and sound in this session. Nightwriting draws attention to an art that requires few materials to exist. Four poets have been commissioned by The Red Room Company to write a poem for installation and live performance. At this nocturnal event, the poets will read their work from memory in the dark, full text versions of the poems will be revealed by body-powered wall projections. Not to be missed!
"It is wonderful that the Sydney Writers Festival is incorporating more accessible features in their program and have selected writers with disabilities on merit to be part of the line up.” (Sancha Donald, CEO, Accessible Arts)
Sessions that are either free or low cost include:
1) Ryan Knighton in Conversation
2) As Slow As Possible
3) Not Another Misery Memoir (with Judith Lucy and Imran Ahmad)
4) Macquarie PEN Anthology of Aboriginal Literature
5) Nightwriting Live Performance
To find out more about the program contact SWF on (02) 9252 7729 or visit the website www.swf.org.au select your preferred event and click on ‘Venue and Transport Information’ to find the ‘Accessibility Notes’ in the right-hand column.
Access: The Sydney Theatre at Walsh Bay is wheelchair accessible, with hearing loops for the hearing impaired. Pier 2/3 is wheelchair accessible. Bangarra Theatre is wheelchair accessible.
Sydney Writers’ Festival Shuttle Bus: Wheelchair accessible buses will depart from the stop outside the Galleria Shops on George St (opposite First Fleet Park) every 15 minutes from 9am to 7pm for transfer to Walsh Bay. The last scheduled return service to Circular Quay will depart from Walsh Bay at 7.15pm. Tickets cost $2.50 flat rate on boarding. Travel10s, concession cards and Pensioner day tickets not accepted.
About Accessible Arts
Accessible Arts is the peak arts and disability organisation across New South Wales. Accessible Arts promotes and provides opportunities for people with disabilities to participate in arts and cultural activities either as audience members; through attending galleries, theatres, museums and festivals; or as participants in art, drama, music, dance and multimedia activities; and by developing as professional artists. Over the years Accessible Arts has worked in assisting arts organisations such as Sydney Opera House, Sydney Art Fair, Biennale of Sydney and Sydney Film Festival. To keep up to date with upcoming news and arts events subscribe to the free Accessible Arts monthly newsletter at http://www.aarts.net.au.
For further information about access issues in the arts please contact:
Accessible Arts on 02 9251 6499
Alison McLaren: amclaren@aarts.net.au
Nadia de Ceglie: ndeceglie@aarts.net.au
Download Media Release Sydney Writers’ Festival - Puts Access On The Page