When you 'don't look disabled' 🎭
Plus: Calling changemakers in Tāmaki Makaurau 🏗️
Mauri ora e hoa mā ꩜
In this week’s delicious edition 🍭
Kim Anderson shares how she manages the chaotic, unpredictable ways of freelance creative mahi as a disabled person 🎨
What do disabled leaders think of Budget 2025? 💰
Emma Cooper-Williams and Naomi Vailima share their intersections of creative arts and social justice
We’re so pleased that Kim Anderson (Ngāti Maniapoto) has been announced as the recipient of the 2025 Whakahoa Kaitoi Whanaketanga Creative New Zealand Deaf and Disabled Artists Fellowship. If you love the bold, colourful graphics that go with The D*List articles, then Kim is to thank! 💜
Kim also does a lot of creative work for other organisations and kaupapa and describes herself as a multi-hyphenate: someone with many passions and interests who won’t be defined by a single occupation. 🤹
I sat down with Kim to learn more about what her life looks like and the project that she’ll be embarking on as part of this fellowship. We spoke about many topics ranging from navigating work and energy to career influences. One topic we both resonated with was the sense of imposter syndrome that is felt as a disabled person when you have an invisible disability.
I did not think of myself as disabled until I started working at the The D*List. So it's been very recent, and I think it's really interesting how you can have these different experiences and find life really hard, but you don't necessarily make that connection with disability. Because I think there's such an ingrained idea in society of what disability looks like and what it means, and who could have that label and who can't.
But identifying with the disabled community has been transformative. Kim generously shared a very relatable kōrero:
ET: What has identifying with the community afforded you in your life?
KA: Honestly, I think a certain amount of grace towards myself, I think… You know rather than being like, “oh, I'm just a bit shit at life”, you know, “I'm just a bit crap at this,” rather than kind of framing it as how you're deficient or in a deficit or just a bit shit at this whole living business, thinking about it in more terms of access and needs and how actually, maybe society needs to be changed to better accommodate everyone.
There’s so much goodness from Kim’s kōrero, so give it a watch or listen if you haven’t already! You can also read the transcript of this video or listen to it wherever you get your podcasts. 🎧
🚦On Monday, “non-financial sanctions”, including money management and community work experience, came into effect for the traffic light system which aims to ensure those on Jobseeker Support stay on track with their obligations to find or prepare for work. RNZ interviewed National Policy Advisor for the Citizens Advice Bureau, Louise May on concerns of the sanctions, particularly with some communities digitally excluded.
While they’re being framed as non-financial options, they actually do have financial consequences.
🤏 The ACT Party is making their 4th attempt to pass the Regulatory Standards Bill. Later last year, the Government received 23,000 submissions on the bill with only 0.33% supporting the bill.
Te Ao with Moana’s segment explains what the bill means. In the interview, Professor Jane Kelsey explains that, “the goal [of the bill] is to narrow down the scope of the purposes of what governments do to a very limited ACT style set of purposes, and those are basically about individual freedom, about markets ruling and protection of private property rights.”
They want it to be ACT style, what we call libertarian and then people who have power do what they want to do, and get the state out of their way.
🧑🧑🧒 From 2027, 18 and 18 year olds will be means-tested against their parents’ income if they apply for a benefit. Cindy Kawana who manages E Tipu E Rea Whānau Services, told RNZ that the policy overlooks complex realities young people face and assumes a level of family support that often doesn’t exist. Kawana is concerned that this will ultimately lead to rangatahi living on the street.
It's just another way of denying their place in society. They're adult enough to join the army, they're adult enough to vote, but they aren't adult enough to get financial support from the government when they need it…
💬 Wordsmith, Emma Cooper-Williams, told me about how she found spoken word as a tool to advocate and process her lived experiences and observations. She said that all the power sits with the person who’s communicating the words and that spoken word has not been about finding the right words or the perfect words:
The reality is, it’s so imperfect, and I think being perfect is probably an offence to the arts.
🤔 What do disabled people think of this year’s budget? We found and compiled whakaaro from Prudence Walker (Disability Rights Commissioner), Kera Sherwood-O’Regan (President of the DPA), Trish Grant (IHC’s Inclusive Education Lead), and Juliana Carvalho (Access Matters Aotearoa Trust Project Manager). Among general disdain of the allocations, there are some beckons towards the additional investment in student learning support.
💗 Naomi Vailima writes about how she’s becoming the person her younger self needed. She works alongside young people with disabilities in the social justice and creative arts space.
From not knowing anything about the disability sector, to being a director and youth worker has been such a fluke, but so rewarding. It hasn’t been an easy ride, but in all honesty, if I didn’t have the support of my friends and the drive to step out of my comfort zone, my journey would have looked completely different. Everything I started doing was just for the experience, but then it slowly became something I was passionate about: to be the voice for others like me…
🏳️⚧️⭐️💜 Counting Ourselves invites disabled trans and non-binary people of Aotearoa to an online event next Thursday 5 June at 1-2pm following the release of their report, To Be Ourselves. Researchers will present the findings and read selected poems and invite community conversation about the issues raised.
Register for the online Zoom discussion here. NZSL interpretation will be provided.
🗳️ This one is for the JAFAs. Local elections in Tāmaki Makaurau are coming up and candidate nominations are open on 4 July and close midday on 1 August. If you dream of an accessible Auckland, this is your chance to make change. Nominations can be done in-person or electronically. Check out the Vote Auckland website for more details.
💚 Auckland Council has a one-off grant of $100,000 to kickstart disabled-led projects that support disabled people to prepare for and respond to climate disruption.
But wait there’s more. Auckland Council is also looking for people with lived experience of disability who want to support disability-led funding and decision-making to attend four Grant Advisory Panels. You will be paid $130/hour for your attendance and preparation time with accessibility costs reimbursed.
Find out more or express your interest on either of these kaupapa here. You can also email projects@communitythink.nz.
Noho ora mai 🌿
Eda
