Quick Trust and Slow Time

• DOI: https://doi.org/10.13169/intljofdissocjus.2.1.0074
• Pages: 74-94
• Published date: 29 June 2022
• Date: 29 June 2022
• Author: Bree Hadley,Eddie Paterson,Madeleine Little
• Subject Matter: Disability arts,disability culture,inclusion,cultural safety,trust

International Journal of DISABILITY AND SOCIAL JUSTICE 2.1 June 2022

Quick Trust and Slow Time

Relational Innovations in Disability Performing Arts

Practice

Bree Hadley

Professor, Faculty of Creative Industries, Queensland University of

Technology

Eddie Paterson

Associate Professor, School of Culture and Communication, The

University of Melbourne

Madeleine Little

Disability Artist, Producer and Researcher

ABSTRACT

In the last decade, the field of Disability Arts has been recognised as a power-

ful source of aesthetic innovation. Yinka Shonibare has described it as ‘the

last remaining avant-garde movement’ (Bragg, 2007), where artists with lived

experience of disability produce new combinations of form, content and poli-

tics, which engage spectators in provocative reflections on the way we relate

to each other in the public sphere. Despite a range of policies, plans, proto-

cols and funding programmes to support disabled artists and collaborations

between mainstream producers and disabled artists, the statistics – at least in

our context in Australia – suggest most disability art still occurs outside and

alongside an industry that struggles to include these artists. In this article, we

draw upon findings from a series of workshops with disabled artists around

Australia, conducted as part of the ARC funded Disability in the Performing

Arts in Australia: Beyond The Social Model project – known colloquially to its

collaborators and participants as ‘The Last Avant Garde’ project (https://

lastavantgarde.com.au) – to propose a new approach. We find that while pro-

vision of logistical access (ramps, hearing loops, interpreters) and ideological

access (stories, characters, discourse and language) is critical, so is method-

ological access, which embodies disability culture in training, rehearsal and

production processes. Disabled artists use crip culture, along with relational

space and time to negotiate what happens in disability arts and culture pro-

duction practices and work through desire, fear, vulnerability and reciprocity

to rapidly establish trusting collaborations. It is inclusion of disability culture

relationships and concepts, as much as ramps and inclusive language, that

DOI:10.13169/intljofdissocjus.2.1.0074

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF DISABILITY AND SOCIAL JUSTICE 75

International Journal of DISABILITY AND SOCIAL JUSTICE 2.1 June 2022

makes a practice feel safe for disabled artists – and this, we argue, is what

the mainstream sector has to learn and what the disability arts sector has to

teach about improving the inclusivity of the creative industries.

KEYWORDS

Disability arts; disability culture; inclusion; cultural safety; trust

1. Introduction

In the last decade, disability arts has been recognised as a powerful source of activ-

ism and aesthetic innovation – what British visual artist Yinka Shonibare described as

the ‘last remaining avant-garde movement’ (Bragg, 2007). This recognition reveals

how artists with lived experience of disability are producing new combinations of

form, content and politics and engaging spectators in provocative reflections on the

way we relate to each other in the public sphere. Yet, even as the critical impact of

disability arts has grown, current mainstream approaches to policies, plans and pro-

tocols to increase access and support of Australian disabled artists are failing to have

a similar impact.

Prior to the events of the global pandemic in 2020, which saw a stunning lack of

support for the entire arts sector in Australia, including performing artists struggling

to ‘pivot’ their practices to online platforms, increased funding to support disabled

artists was becoming available (Hadley, 2017a). Coupled with calls to open historically

exclusionary mainstream Australian theatre and theatre-training institutions to dis-

abled artists, many producers, directors and performers are now working with disabled

artists for the first time. Key companies like Back to Back Theatre and Restless Dance

Theatre are celebrated, programmed in major events and venues and invited to par-

ticipate in training of new generations of performers (Hickey-Moody, 2009; Grehan

and Eckersall, 2013; Hadley, 2014). This celebration of selected companies notwith-

standing, the majority of disability arts practice occurring in Australia – professional

practice by independent companies and practitioners and community, recreational

and therapeutic arts practice – occurs outside the mainstream. Australia Council,

Census and other data consistently show that disabled artists remain underrepre-

sented in the mainstream (Hadley, 2017a).1 This raises the question, as Amanda

Cachia has said, as to whether there ‘is room for a revision of art history and entirely

new representations and art experiences through the funnel of the ghettoised disabil-

ity label within alternative spaces?’ (Cachia, 2013: 258).

Indeed, while leading arts organisations voice commitment of the right to make,

speak back to exclusion through and enjoy the arts – as articulated in the United

Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disability (Article 30) – less than

40 per cent of Australian arts organisations have a Disability Action Plan. As such,

the overwhelming majority of organisations do not formally articulate a commit-

ment to disability awareness training, employment, participation or access (Arts

Access Australia, 2019, 2020). Industry-wide, few arts organisations employ disabled