Awakening Aotearoa’s disabled-led arts sector

If disability culture and disabled voices were brought onto a level playing field in the mainstream arts sector, we would see us permeate through all parts of the sector including museums, galleries, music, screen, gaming, fashion, architecture and design. Our books would be sold at Whitcoulls and our films would screen at Event Cinemas. 

But the collective voice has been unsurprisingly quiet, if not absent. And the latest draft of the Creative and Cultural Strategy for New Zealand has made no explicit mention of disabled people or their communities. Meanwhile, there’s amazing disabled-led arts organisations like Touch Compass, and kaupapa like Arts Access Aotearoa, who are busting a gut to create pathways for disabled artists. 

This week in Tāmaki Makaurau, Te Ahurei Toi o Tāmaki (Auckland Arts Festival) has begun to dazzle and delight the town. A notable feature of this year’s festival is its accessibility guide which provides a one-stop shop for festival goers with access needs. 

Overseeing the festival is Bernie Haldane who has over 25 years’ experience under her belt in the arts sector. I wanted to know what Bernie has observed in disability arts sectors internationally, and what the opportunities are here in Aotearoa to uplift the presence of disabled-led arts.

Behind Bernie’s unassuming demeanour is a Dylan Alcott fangirl and someone who has for years, advocated for the live performance and arts sector in both Australia and Aotearoa. Living with a long-term injury which impacts her mobility, Bernie’s interest in disability arts is both professional and personal.

Bernie says that disability-led arts is key to challenging the status quo, seeding ideas, to advocating and elevating. “Through art we build conversation, we build trust, we build advocacy. And so the best people to tell the stories are those with lived experience.”

“It feels like there’s no framework for us in New Zealand to navigate, so everyone’s just kind of out there and trying to do as best as they can. We’re geographically isolated in the disability arts space. We are super isolated in comparison to those who are creating works right across the world… and we don’t know what we don’t know.” 

“In the Australian context, there’s so much more government funding to support kaupapa that elevate and equalise the space. You’ve got local government, state government, and federal government.” 

“There’s a level of maturity and understanding of those experiences, whereas we’re still having to navigate what is disability from an arts perspective. Who do we focus on? Is it audiences, artists, venues or compliance?" For Bernie, it seems many spaces are still focusing on compliance.

Bernie tells me about a time when she wasn’t able to book tickets online for her and a wheelchair-user, even though it was for a show at a venue that she managed and facilitated. After ringing through Ticketmaster and being on hold “for an excessively long time”, she finally got the tickets, but learnt that she wasn’t allowed to add on a VIP experience. 

“It’s an oversight, it’s the speed at which people create these mechanisms over the arts and not being able to think about the whole experience for everybody… How do we start at the beginning and create a pathway for audiences that are as independent as possible?”

Bernie explains that many spaces and venues will look at compliance and think, ‘all I need to do is put a lift in’. But that’s not enough, she says. “The reeducation and the guidance to get to a point of independence takes years and it takes resources beyond the structural.” 

Bernie is keen on enabling audiences to independently access the heart that is storytelling in the arts and look at connecting artists from Aotearoa to those abroad which may provide opportunities for mentorship from disability-led arts companies and kaupapa. 

While Bernie moves through her long to-do list over the next four years in her term as artistic director, she says it’ll take collective effort. “A national platform for conversation is critical. There is commercial art and there are subsidised things that you fund through Creative New Zealand and other avenues, and then there’s genre-specific art and everyone has their own sectors and their own advocacy, yet nothing is being pulled together.” 

“If there is a national advocacy for arts where disability led arts can sit in there firmly, I think we will actually get somewhere in terms of progressing conversation and understanding who is around in the ecology and what voice we are pushing forward.” 

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