Five things for your weekend binge list 🍿
d/Deaf and disabled excellence, shows, films and poetry 🌚
Kia ora e hoa mā,
In this week’s delicious edition:
The D*List celebrates the legends announced at this year’s Y25 launch 💐
Arts Access turns 30, an accessible fishing vessel, and disabled senior excellence! 🏍️
d/Deaf and disabled spoken word in the comfort of your home 🎧🍷
📣 Last Friday, the YWCA announced their 2025 Y25 list. The list celebrates 25 women and non-binary people 25 and under who are working hard for the betterment of their communities. With champions from disability communities, the list is hope that our future will be in good hands.
We were lucky to get to know one of these leaders, Annabel MacKay, a current law student in Te Whanganui-a-Tara. A staunch advocate of for equitable access and NZSL, she is the youngest person to present to a Parliamentary Select Committee, and a champion of NZSL. Annabel’s activism began at seven years old when she wrote to the New Zealand Prime Minister about the lack of captioning in media. 😤
It was awesome to get to know Annabel and hear just a little about all the other māreikura who are improving the lives of d/Deaf and disabled and adjacent communities.
🥳 Happy 30th birthday to Arts Access Aotearoa! Since its founding in July 1995, Arts Access has supported 65 creative spaces to deliver arts programmes, grown a community of 970+ individuals and organisations as part of the Arts For All Network, delivered over 300 accessible events and services, and supported the community engagement of 16 former prisoners who identify as artists. Hip! Hip! Hooray!
🏥 Should politicians only be able to use the public health system? A group of health professionals reckon so, RNZ reports. There’s also a petition for the cause. Their spokesperson, Marcus Lee, said:
"Essentially we want fair and transparent leadership with integrity. We want people who have skin in the game… If it's good for them, it's good for us. If it's not good enough for them, it shouldn't be good enough for anyone.”
🛥️ Northland’s first accessible fishing boat is on its way! Access to Adventure Charitable Trust has purchased a 16-metre catamaran to be refitted with adaptive fishing gear, a fully accessible bathroom and other facilities.
🚵 Stuff interviews Christopher Bennett who is on the way to being one of the first people over 65 with a disability to circumnavigate the world on his bike self-supported.
“I’m doing it for me. For my tribe people with disabilities, people over 60, people who think adventure ends when you get old…You may not be able to do everything. I can’t play squash any more but I can ride a bike. I can ride it very far…Either you master your disability or it masters you.”
🕰️ Public system autism diagnoses are taking longer and some families are turning to costly private assessments and interventions while waiting for a diagnosis. RNZ interviewed Yuan Fang, who waited more than 15 months for a diagnosis for her seven-year-old.
”During that time, we saw specialists several times, but there were long gaps between each appointment. On one hand, we were limited by financial constraints. I wasn’t sure if we could afford to go through the private system. However, we also had no idea it would take this long… Without professional guidance, I had no idea how to handle [my son’s] behaviour.”
Speaking to speech and language therapist, Yuchen Lin, and the Chinese Family Disability Support group, RNZ reported that culture and language play a part in delayed diagnosis, whether due to fear of stigma associated with an early diagnosis, lack of translation services, or lack of familiarity with the New Zealand health system and referral process. Fang said:
”My husband completely rejected the idea of getting an assessment. He stopped me from taking our son for a diagnosis because he felt it would label him for life.”
👀 The Government’s progress with addressing the 63 UNCRPD recommendations to further the implementation of the convention is now public on the Human Rights Monitor. Disability Minister Louise Upston adds that the Ministerial Disability Leadership Group has been re-established to “drive action for disabled people across government and to oversee the work to implement the UNCRPD recommendations.”
🎤 If you missed last week’s Deaf and disabled spoken word night, do not fear! Ella Sargison has published the words of all of the performers and their performances so you can read, watch or listen to your heart’s content. Here’s an excerpt from one of the masterful pieces: [unlisted and unexpected side effects of becoming chronically ill and disabled] by Theo.
i know medical texts for hard-to-pronounce weird diseases better than most general practitioners
and i can sleep through the machines at the hospital like a baby falling asleep to lullabies, i know
what to say to the doctors in emergency care... approach it like trying to talk to your extended
family about politics; speak with caution, and be mindful of the details you choose to include.
do not to raise your voice and always focus on the facts;
i can do an injection without flinching. i can experience constant pain without flinching. most of
the time i won’t claim ten on the pain scale. i keep the ten as my golden ticket, i save it for when
i need to translate just how bad it is. a ten gets their attention.
disability is saving for the worst, and learning to gamble. take this medication and you might be
able to walk again, but in ten years you could get cancer.
🎭 Siblings opened last night and we spoke to some of the cast members in the show. Cast member (and also one of the above poets) Jordan Kareroa hopes audiences will feel inspired “listening to our stories through talanoa”.
🛞 Season 2 of This is Wheel Life with Sophia Malthus and her cousin and carer, Indy Henman, returns to screens. Episode one launched this week and a new episode will come out every Monday afternoon via the TAHI YouTube channel or RNZ. In the mean time, you can catch all of the first season here.
🙆🏽♂️ Our very own Will Sangster features in Poly Will & Grace, a series launched today about being part of a Pasifika disability community in the face of ableist systems in government and workplaces. And of course, knowing Will, there’s a good helping of fun, roasts and goofy stuff!
🫱🏾🫲🏼 Learn about the new insights from a two-year, disability-led research project that reimagines our national response strategy to violence against wāhine whaikaha, D/deaf and disabled women. The Donald Beasley Institute will be hosting a Zoom webinar next Thursday 31 July 10.30am-12pm, ahead of the release of the research report. You can register here.
🗳️ It’s time to vote on your favourite film for the Focus on Ability Short Film Festival. Check out the 5 featured films from Aotearoa and cast your vote!
Hei tērā Rāmere! 💪🏽
Eda
