gimpled

I’ve never been more aware of the gap – really, a yawning chasm - between some areas of the disability sector as I am now. Last week, I went to a disability sector event in Sydney. It was accessible – accessible to the point of hilarity, because it was at the Human Rights Commission. Graeme Innes and a bunch of other advocates have redeveloped the lift car system, and consequently the under educated and sighted now fumble blindly for a familiar system that is not there, queuing like Pavlov’s dogs and wondering why the lift is speaking to us. There were a lot of disabled people there – and apart from a dearth of accessible toilets, everything seemed to go pretty smoothly. We worked together on a national plan against violence, people mostly had insightful and articulate contributions and there was a real sense of community and commonality shared by most of the attendees. The highlight for me was at the end – where people rejected what had been foisted upon them (a refusal by...

There has to be at least five, right? That confronting sea of white space isn't any less confronting if it's on an easel or in front of you in a brand new moleskin notebook. My art lecturer always told me to make the first mark, no matter how daunting it is - to draw big, wildly scrawling patterns and marks that made no sense at all. But it's somehow harder to do with words - you're tempted to go backwards, regurgitate thoughts and ideas you've had in the past, put them down for posterity. A stupid idea and the enemy of creativity. First resolution, then - to leave old things behind. And the second - to come up with five really good reasons to start a blog. Are you ready? One - There are important things that need to be said. They're the things I care about - injustice, especially around very vulnerable people, like people with disability. Left of centre thinking, because the way to build power is through creativity and reasoning. And art, bec...