Cultural strategy for people with disability in Australia

ABSTRACT

This paper analyses the first cultural strategy introduced in Australia for people with disability and its evaluation reports. For an in-depth understanding of the cultural strategy, it reviews the literature on disability in historical and socio-political contexts, and on human rights for people with disability. It also discusses three key recommendations identified from the evaluations of the cultural strategy: first, to develop an information hub for the arts and disability sector; second, to facilitate collaboration between Australian governments, including arts agencies and national disability support agencies; and third, to revisit and renew the existing cultural strategy. The paper assesses the desired goals and strategies of the cultural strategy, and examines ways in which outcomes can be measured to achieve social inclusion for people with disability in three dimensions of social inclusion: ‘access’, ‘participation’ and ‘empowerment’.

KEYWORDS:

• Cultural strategy
• disability policy
• social inclusion
• cultural and arts engagement
• cultural rights for people with disability

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. The introduction of the Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) in 1992.

2. The introduction of the National Arts and Disability Strategy (NADS) in 2009.

3. The introduction of the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) ACT in 2013.

4. The National Arts and Disability Strategy was evaluated twice between 2009 and 2015.

5. Renewal of the National Arts and Disability Strategy by focusing on three areas, ‘practise’, ‘expression’, and ‘connection’ in 2019.

6. The scenario-based guideline, ‘My Art Goals’, was introduced in 2019 to facilitate the collaboration of the NDIS and arts and cultural participations of people with disability.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jung Yoon

Jung Yoon works at The Australian Alliance for Social Enterprise (TAASE) in Centre for Markets, Values and Inclusion in UniSA Business, University of South Australia, Adelaide, Australia.