Disability fest.

Emma Myers 0:00

So Hannah, can you tell me a bit about yourself and what you do and who you are?

Hannah Solomons 0:05

So my name is Hannah. I'm the president of disability pride Sydney. I am a PhD student at UTS when I'm not doing Disability Pride Sydney, which is, you know, not a lot of the time right now, because that's what I'm doing with most of my time. Yeah, and I'm disabled, which is pretty important, because disability pride Sydney is totally disability LED.

Emma Myers 0:33

And what is your disability? Yeah, this

Hannah Solomons 0:36

is always fun, because I get a lot of, I get that question, you know it's, it's like, the only time that it's, like, polite to ask that question is, like, when you're interviewing me as the president of disability pride Sydney, and like, um, so I'm autistic. I was diagnosed when I was 11. Um,

Speaker 1 0:58

I am epileptic. So

Hannah Solomons 1:03

currently in the law boardroom, I met the Dean of Research at law in my underwear in the middle of a seizure. So it was fun, sort of great way to meet your boss. And

Emma Myers 1:14

so tell me a little bit about Disability Pride festival. What is it and why does it matter?

Hannah Solomons 1:20

Disability Pride is a global movement about people with disabilities taking up space and refusing to be ignored and celebrating who we are. So as one of our committee members says, pride is the opposite of shame, and that's the way pride has always operated. We're actually proud of who we are, and we're going to take up space. So we're taking up Sydney Town Hall. It started in 1990 in Boston. Was the first Disability Pride Parade. So it's a global phenomenon. We didn't have anything until 2015 in Australia. So there was one attempt in Adelaide in 2015 and then there was the Disability Pride mural in Canberra. And then there was us, and we're still the only recurring Disability Pride event in Australia. We've been around four years running, and we refuse to apologize for our disability. Some of the lines that I think are really the opposite of disability pride are things like, you're more than your disability. I don't see your disability. You're great despite your disability, whereas people with disabilities are a part of human diversity, and we're amazing, and we're not amazing despite our disability, we're amazing including our disability.

Emma Myers 2:31

What's happening within the festival this year?

Hannah Solomons 2:35

So much, so much. But the main stage, which has an all star lineup, Ellie Mae Barnes a Deb roach. We've got banks down Poetry Slam champion doing a poem about his cane. It's called What's it for? I'm really looking forward to that. We've got Jeremy Padilla doing Auslan inspired dance. We've got Rosemary Ks on the panel to discuss employment. We've got Allison McEwen giving a speech, and this is all just on the stage. You head off, and you've got workshops. So Ollie, the poetry guy, and his partner are running a workshop. I'm running an activism workshop. My friends are running an autism workshop. We've got markets with all sorts of disabled businesses, from a disabled wood turner to peer support, and then we've got the arts and crafts contest and the bling so show off your accessibility aid contest. You're actually not allowed to participate in the stalls unless you are either disability run so like a disabled micro business, or you're doing a free thing for disabled people on the day. So legal aid are allowed to come because they're providing free legal advice, but we're not allowing, you know, service providers to come, because this

Emma Myers 3:55

is not what we're about. When is this running?

Hannah Solomons 3:59

On the 26th of July, 10am to 4pm Sydney Town Hall. It's fully accessible. Audio description, which is fairly rare at live events, although becoming better. Auslan interpretation, we've got an accessible venue. We've got a sensory space, all sorts of things.