Resources and publications
This section aims to provide useful resources and publications. Please let us know about any resources you think others would enjoy reading on topics related to arts access.
Arts Access Aotearoa publications
Over the years, we have published a number of books about cultural community development, art spaces and programmes for marginalised people and communities, and creative business. These include the following titles.
Arts For All: opening doors to disabled people
The arts are for everyone. Creative New Zealand in partnership with Arts Access Aotearoa has published Arts for All: opening doors to disabled people. This guide provides practical and long-term ways for artists and arts organisations to enhance their access, market their events to the disabled community and build new audiences.
Click here to download a pdf of Arts For All.
Click here to download an accessible Word document.
Creative Spaces Resource Kit
This toolkit was produced in 2007 in response to the many queries we receive from community arts organisations in need of information, guidance and resources. It includes sections on starting up, planning a structure, governance, fundraising and marketing, staff and volunteers, and evaluation. It also contains general information about creative spaces. We are in the process of updating the kit and making it an online resource. We would like to hear from creative spaces about what they would like to see in an online resource. The kit is available as a Word document that you can download here, sections 1 to 6 here, and the feedback form here. To provide immediate feedback please contact Michelle Guest (T: 04 802 4356 E: ).
Creative Solutions and Social Inclusion
Written by Penny Eames and published in 2004, this book aims to encourage partnerships between social service organisations and the arts sector, building the arts and creativity into the organisations’ programmes and projects. It contains a wealth of information about the role of the arts in building inclusive communities. It also looks at the arts and creativity in the justice, health, disability and refugee sectors, along with the arts and children, young people and the elderly. Threaded throughout the book are sections highlighting the work of creative spaces throughout New Zealand.
Other titles
Art Solutions: Arts programmes in social and community settings (2003) by Penny Eames
Creative Business: Income generation for people on the margins of society (2004) by Penny Eames
Creative Spaces: Art spaces for people on the margins of society (2003) by Penny Eames (Note: only available as a photocopy)
Expanding Horizons: Encouraging creative opportunities for people with disabilities (1999) by Ginny Haynes
The ART and Health Partnership (1999) by Penny Eames
These books are free to community volunteers, groups and organisations. Please contact Arts Access Aotearoa (T: 04 802 4349).
Other New Zealand publications
New Zealand Dance and Disability Strategy
The New Zealand Dance and Disability Strategy – Would you like this dance?, launched on 4 December 2010 as part of the celebration for the International Day of Disabled People at Te Papa Tongarewa, is researched and written by Bronwyn Hayward, a mixed ability dancer. The strategy identifies areas, barriers and actions that a wide range of individuals and organisations can take part in to instigate change.
While the strategy is for dance, it provides a blueprint for how our environment can change in order that disabled people participate more fully in our society.
Dance Aotearoa New Zealand (DANZ) is a proud partner in this strategy and many thanks go to its funder, SPARC.
For a copy click HERE. For further information contact Tania Kopytko, Executive Director, DANZ (T: 04 801 9885 E: ).
A Vital Practice: the creative work of Spark Studio
Auckland creative space Spark Studio has produced this inspiring book, which documents its learning programmes in visual arts and creative expression. These programmes integrate art-making methodologies with self-development processes and have been funded through the Tertiary Education Commission. A Vital Practice also celebrates the artists who attend Spark Studio and records the experiences and beliefs of its director and four art tutors.
You can buy a copy of this book for $30 (plus postage and packaging). Spark Studio also welcomes your donation. Please conact Josie Maskell at Spark Studio (T: 09 845 5361 E: ) to buy a book and/or make a donation. Spark Studio is a division of Panacea Arts Charitable Trust, registered with the Inland Revenue Department as a donee organisation. This means that you can claim a tax credit on any donation over $5.
The Madonna in the Suitcase
This inspiring, heart-warming and well-written book celebrates the life of Miriam, an artist born with Down syndrome in 1962. It is written by Miriam’s mother, Huberta Hellendoorn, who has had several short stories and articles published or broadcast. The book is written as an address or letter to her daughter – a device that invites the reader to step into the lives of the Dunedin family. Miriam's growth as an artist is fostered by her family, teachers and friends. She is depicted as a child, and then a young woman, of courage and determination. She is both loved and loving.
In 2001, Miriam became physically disabled after she had a stroke. She now finds it difficult to paint, write and dance – three activities she loved doing before the stroke left her severely paralysed on the right side of her body.
To buy The Madonna in the Suitcase ($29.95, plus postage and packaging), please contact Huberta Hellendoorn (T: +64 3 473 7351 E: ).
My House Surrounded By A Thousand Suns
In 2008, writer and artist Jo Randerson curated an exhibition at TheNewDowse called My House Surrounded By A Thousand Suns, made possible by a 2007 New Zealand Mental Health Media Grant. In the accompanying essay, Randerson describes the exhibition as “a collection of local artists with unique mental states. While these conditions, illnesses and disabilities vary in intensity, the art featured here displays similar hallmarks of vision, energy, confidence, density and industry”.
Click here to download a pdf of the essay.
Flying with Touch Compass
Michele Powles’ Touch Compass: Celebrating Integrated Dance (David Ling Publishing, 2007) is a well-written and readable history of New Zealand’s first integrated dance company. Accompanied by fine images of the dancers in action, the book traces the beginnings of Touch Compass, its dancers and its growth over the past ten years. The story concludes that Touch Compass has “taught people to fly, and encouraged others to take off, quite literally. And for Rodney Bell, it’s even stronger. He says, 'I’m at one with my body now … dance has helped me discover new beneficial ways of moving and appreciating my functionally diversified body’”.
International publications
Without Borders
This is the catalogue of the exhibition Without Borders: Outsider art in an Antipodean context, which opened at the Monash University Museum of Art in Melbourne in April 2008 and moved to the Campbelltown Arts Centre in Sydney in August 2008. It includes essays by curator Glenn Barkley and Colin Thodes, professor of art history and theory and Dean of Sydney College of the Arts, University of Sydney. There's also biographical information about the artists and images of their artworks. New Zealand artists in the exhibition were Amy Szostak, Reece Tong, Colin Korovin and Rolf Hattaway. Click here to order a copy of the catalogue.
Access all Areas
For most people, the decision to be exposed to the experience of an arts event is a simple one. You go because you choose to go. Providing that choice to people with disabilities is the focus of this excellent publication, Access all Areas (1999). It was written for the Australia Council for the Arts by Accessible Arts (New South Wales) and Arts Access Australia, with some information from the Arts Council of England's Guidelines for marketing to disabled audiences. Published by the Australia Council, it’s a practical guide covering actions that are within reach of arts organisations, especially their marketing departments.
Marketing to people with disabilities is about equal opportunity, equal access and the recognition that people with disabilities are valuable members of your audience. Although it has been written for Australia, it still contains relevant information and useful tips. It can be dowloaded from the Australia Council website.
Making the Journey
Written by Mary Hutchison and edited by Emma Driver, this book was produced by Arts Access Australia in 2005. It showcases arts organisations in Australia that have made the journey towards including people with disabilities across all aspects of their programmes and activities. There are 12 case studies featured as examples of different approaches to art and disability. They describe initiatives that remove barriers to arts participation.
A useful resource for encouraging ideas to include people with disabilities in arts activity, Making the Journey can be dowloaded from the Arts Access Australia website.
