Celebrated disability activst Carly Findlay will join a host of creatives with disability this weekend for the launch of one-day digital arts festival Platform Live.
Wagga Wagga-based institution Eastern Riverina Arts will host the online festival this Saturday. Featuring some of Australia’s funniest, thrilling and most provocative artists and performers with disabilities, it's driven by the people who actually know what they’re talking about,
Curated by Hanna Cormick and Daniel Savage, both artists with disability, the line-up is designed to entertain while dispelling malingering misconceptions. The highly accessible digital festival is also a fab way of flagging Eastern Riverina Arts’ Platform. A six-metre shipping container decked out as an accessible multi-sensory mobile art installation, it can be hired by any major festival as a means of reaching the one in five Australians identifying with disability.
Performance artist Cormick will lead the Platform Ideas panel asking why it took a worldwide crisis to make the world digitally accessible, if that push has truly reached everyone, and how long it will last. She’ll be joined by award-winning playwright, screenwriter and author Anna Barnes, ”Geek-Creative-Disabled-Bedridden-Internet Citizen” Ricky Buchanan, writer and multimedia artist Michelle Roger and sometime radio broadcaster and marriage celebrant Jenny O’Keefe.
Artist and curator Savage will host Platform Screen, a digital tour of the diverse video work of six exciting contemporary creatives, showcasing Sue Jo Wright, Romily Alice Walden, Riana Head-Toussaint, Prue Stevenson and Marion Conrow.
Literary event Platform Words showcases story and poetry readings will feature prominent disability activist and author Carly Findlay alongside Wongaiibon writer Gayle Kennedy and poet Andy Jackson.
Kennedy, a member of the Wongaiibon clan of South West NSW, will read from her book Me, Antman and Fleabag, which won the 2006 Queensland Premier’s David Unaipon Award.
"Too many people think of arts practice by persons with disability as nothing more than some kind of therapy or hobby and, while this may be true for some, for most of us it is how we make a living and that includes some amazing arts administrators,” Kennedy says. “I’m also hoping that curators of other festivals will be tuning in and taking note and making offers to artists to appear at their festival. The idea that our careers may grow from appearing at this festival is something I find very exciting.”
The action-packed day wraps with Platfrom Stage, a live performance showcase led by stand-up comedian and creator of Crips & Creeps comedy club Madeleine Stewart. She’ll be joined by differently abled musicians Tralala Blip, the vocal power of Liz Martin, sensual dancer Katia Schwartz, and slam poet Alison Paradoxx. You can also check out Platform Gallery on Instagram from 2pm Saturday.
Platform Live producer Scott Howie says: “Everyone has the right to participate in the cultural life wherever they live. Platform has been our way of increasing inclusivity and accessibility for events in regional NSW.”
Howie notes that the rush to move events online quickly and cheaply has occasionally been at the expense of accessibility and inclusivity. “With Platform Live, we want to put artists with disability out there, and make sure the event can be enjoyed by everybody.”
Kicking off at 2pm on Saturday and running until 8.30pm online, Platform Live will be supported by audio description, closed captions and Auslan.
This article is supported by the Judith Neilson Institute for Journalism and Ideas.
