Page 4235 - Week 10 - Wednesday, 21 September 2011
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ACT. I attended a performance of the youth dance festival and it was a great occasion. I thoroughly enjoyed the energy, the creativity, the teamwork and the high level of performance achieved by all the participants. I understand that the students and their teachers worked for about six months practising for this festival, so it meant heavy commitments in time and effort. The performance of the Black Mountain school students was particularly engaging.
This festival exposes new audiences to dance and exposes many young people to the art form, providing an important avenue for wider community engagement and growth of the dance sector. Dance is a vital and healthy form of artistic expression and contributes to the wellbeing of both mind and body. It is an art form that is rapidly growing in popularity amongst young people in the ACT and across Australia. The ACT government also supports youth dance opportunities through the directorate of education and training funding to Ausdance ACT and Kulture Break, to provide dance education in Canberra schools.
The artistic aspirations and achievements of people with a disability are an important and valued part of the Australian culture. The ACT government is committed to better outcomes for people with a disability and their supporters and has been working to support participation in arts and cultural activities. Music for Everyone, an ACT key arts organisation, provides award-winning programs for people with disabilities to ensure they can participate in music-making events. Music for Everyone’s program of activities for people with disabilities is a long-running project with excellent levels of participation that offers unique cultural, educational and social opportunities to this key sector of the community. Music for Everyone has worked in partnerships with the ACT special schools to develop a drumming performance troupe for youth, highlighting the abilities of students with special needs and raising awareness in the community.
The ACT arts fund communities working with artists category was specifically developed two years ago to support one-off community-initiated arts projects that engage professional artists. Projects promote the values of community empowerment and social inclusion. The category receives a number of applications for projects working with disability communities. For example, in 2011 the fund assisted the radiance dance project with the costs of a community performance project for women living with and without disabilities and mental illness education with a digital storytelling project.
The Belconnen Arts Centre opened in 2009. It was designed to maximise accessibility for people with disabilities. Over the last three years the centre has placed a particular emphasis on making its programs accessible to people with a disability, as audience members and as artists. Earlier this year I was invited to open an art exhibition at the Belconnen Arts Centre which was organised by a group called Paperworks. Paperworks aims to engage in activities that will increase the participation of socially marginalised people in our community. These people may be marginalised due to disability or social disadvantage. Paperworks facilitates several activities at Belconnen Arts Centre, such as an artisan studio which is run as part of a social enterprise to create handmade and other paper craft products for sale. It also offers paper making workshops at schools, community organisations and in the wider
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