Supporting disability arts programs enables employment pathways (Individual advocacy)

Submission 741

+61 8 8363 5970 admin@nostringsattached.org.au https://nostrings.org.au 29 May 2026

RE: Feedback on the Securing the NDIS for Future Generations Bill 2026

Dear Hon Mark Butler, Senator McAllister, Minister Bourke and Special Envoy to the Arts Susan Templeman.

No Strings Attached Theatre of Disability (No Strings) writes to express our deep concern regarding the recent changes to the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS), including reductions to social and community participation supports.

WHO WE ARE

No Strings is the premier disability theatre company in South Australia. For more than 30 years we have been supporting disabled actors to create bold new theatre works that value the disability lens, challenge the barriers associated with disability, and bring diverse voices and stories to Australian and international audiences.

The broader arts and cultural sector understands that the development and presentation of new work by artists living with disability remains essential to the vitality and integrity of our cultural sector. Such work expands the language of theatre by bringing lived experience, sensory difference and alternative modes of perception into the dramaturgy of performance. In particular, No Strings’ work actively reshapes how audiences listen, how narrative is structured, and how meaning is communicated in theatre. As Petra Kalive, Artistic Director of State Theatre Company South Australia, has identified, “Supporting artists with disability is therefore not an act of access alone – it is an investment in artistic form, innovation and the future grammar of performance.”

No Strings has demonstrated sustained leadership in this area over many years. The company creates artistic environments where disabled artists are positioned as authors, collaborators and decision-makers. Through No Strings’ work disabled artists are supported to build professional pathways and develop long-term artistic practice. In turn, this work fosters audiences who recognise disability as a creative identity rather than a limitation. No Strings develops artists, diversify audiences and broaden the aesthetic possibilities of contemporary theatre.

In order for disabled artists to be ready to take up those professional opportunities, they need to have supported access to professional training and that training needs to be tailored to their individual needs and capacities within organisations that value the disability lens and support disabled artists from a strengths-based approach. Most mainstream (non-disability-specific) arts organisations are not well placed to support disabled artists who often live with physical, intellectual, and/or mental disabilities, or even multiple and intersectional layers of lived experience of a range of disabilities. This complexity excludes most disabled artists from accessing professional training and skills development offered by mainstream performing arts organisations.

Therefore, supporting disability arts organisations that offer specialised, tailored, and disability-specific programs is not an act of access alone – it is an investment in the “reasonable and necessary” supports required for disabled artists to pursue employment pathways in the performing arts.

No Strings is one such strengths-based disability arts organisation that values the disability lens, that tailors all workshops, rehearsals, and creative engagements to the aspirations, capacities, and challenges of each individual actor engaged with our disability-specific programs. In addition, as a professional disability theatre company, No Strings engages all actors with disability at full professional rates for major productions.

Submission 741

OUR WORK WITH GOVERNMENT

Over the last 30+ years, No Strings has worked closely with successive State Governments through portfolios of employment, the arts, and disability. Most recently we have made submissions to the Duckett Review in the NDIS space, and we welcome the opportunity to meet with the government to support the co-design of future participation models for disabled Australians affected by these reforms. No Strings is well positioned to participate in industry consultation with the NDIS on how to safely ensure continuity of services for disabled participants whose involvement in the arts sector is central to their wellbeing and independence.

NO STRING’s CONCERNS WITH PROPOSED REFORMS

No Strings’ central concern with the proposed reforms is the increasingly narrow interpretation of what constitutes a “reasonable and necessary” support under the NDIS. As the premier disability theatre company in South Australia, we argue that supported disability-led companies and arts/ performance environments are structured, relational and community-based support systems that enable disabled participants to build sustainable pathways into social, cultural and economic life. These activities clearly meet the principles of reasonable and necessary support because they directly contribute to:

• social and community participation;
• increased independence and agency;
• capacity building;
• skill development;
• vocational readiness;
• economic participation;
• employment pathways; and
• improved mental health and wellbeing. NDIS funding functions as a critical pathway into professional arts participation and employment outcomes for No Strings actors. No Strings disability-specific group programs are specifically designed to provide training and skills development in performance for aspiring artists living with disability wishing to pursue employment in our professional production program. In 2026, 100% of participants in No Strings’ disability-specific group programs funded their participation through NDIS funding, with participants claiming supports primarily through Social and Community Participation Core Supports line items.

Over the last 32 years, No Strings has supported more than 300 people with disability to develop core competencies and capacities to prepare and support them to take on paid employment in the arts. The work of No Strings is clear evidence that NDIS funding not only supports disabled participants into sustainable career pathways, it also contributes to economic infrastructure that supports a more accessible Arts industry with ongoing employment opportunities. Our work also contributes to inclusion and social cohesion by enabling disabled artists to share their stories in their own words, challenging how audiences listen and engage with issues that would otherwise remain largely hidden.

No Strings’ disability-specific group programs are designed to support participants in developing communication, confidence, social participation, teamwork and community engagement through structured theatre-based activities delivered in a supportive and inclusive environment. Outcomes from these disability-specific programs include:

• Increased confidence participating in group and community activities
• Improved communication and expressive skills
• Development of social interaction and interpersonal skills
• Increased confidence engaging with peers and unfamiliar situations
• Strengthened teamwork and collaboration skills
• Development of independence and participation within structured environments
• Increased creative expression and performance skills
• Development of professional creative skills;
• Building social and peer networks;
• Participation in exhibitions and performances;
• Creation of new employment pathways; Page 2 of 6

Submission 741

• Contribution to Australia’s cultural industries; and
• Building long-term independence and confidence. No Strings currently supports 45 core artists all of whom rely directly on NDIS funding to access the disability related supports that enable participation in creative practice, mentorship, community participation and professional development opportunities aligned with their individual NDIS goals around independence, communication, social participation and employment pathways. Over the past year alone, No Strings’ performances, workshops, public programs, and local, national, and international film screenings have engaged thousands of audience members, demonstrating the broader cultural impact of disability-led artistic practice. No Strings also engages professional practicing artists for both our disability-specific group programs and our major productions, further contributing to the broader cultural industries and economy.

In 2023, No Strings partnered with Military and Emergency Services Health Australia (MESHA) and with State Theatre Company South Australia, to create and present MY WAR - a unique collaboration drawing on the lived experiences of military veterans (who had acquired disability as a result of their service) and actors from the No Strings community who were born with disability. Together, we created a new theatre work exploring our shared experiences of battle and bureaucracy in a world that sometimes is nothing less than absurd. All involved in this project were engaged at full professional rates.

In 2024, another new theatre production, created in collaboration with disabled artists, brought to life the story of Rachel High – the first person with Down Syndrome in Australia to graduate with a bachelor’s degree from university. The production highlighted the isolation and discrimination that a disabled student faced on campus, and the long hard struggle to pursue the dream of higher education. In Rachel’s own words, “I want to share my story because if I can do it, others can too. You can be whatever you want to be, just taking it one step at a time.” Rachel High has been supported to pursue her career through “reasonable and necessary” training and skills development such as No Strings’ disability-specific group programs.

Between 2023 and 2025, No Strings created the ‘My Stories Matter’ ‘fictional documentary’ film trilogy. This film project engaged 25 No Strings artists and over 40 extras and crew, to bring 19 disability stories to the big screen as created and told through lived experience. Those three films have already been screened around the world, with more screenings booked throughout 2026 and 2027. In addition to the trilogy project, in 2024 No Strings worked with Flinders University to create a film called Listen with all text based on school student responses within academic research into the supports that neurodiverse students identified they required in order to feel safe at school. This film engaged more than 50 artists, including No Strings performers and extras, all of whom live with disability. Disabled artists were engaged to tell these important lived-experience stories from neurodiverse students, using their own words. Hundreds of students and educators who have seen Listen, have identified the imperative for these stories to be shared within school communities and with pre- and early-service teachers.

All of these new No Strings works present important disability stories, and required tailored, targeted support for each of the cast members, to ensure the works were both artistically excellent and socially transformative. All cast members relied directly on NDIS funding to access the supports required to enable participation in the creative practice, mentorship, community participation and professional development opportunities afforded by involvement in major theatrical and film productions. All of these projects aligned with their individual NDIS goals around independence, communication, social participation and employment in the arts.

None of these projects could have been created if disabled actors had not received supported training and skills development in the performing arts. To tell authentic stories with lived-experience representation to a professional standard, disabled people need professional training.

Importantly, No Strings’ support of disabled artists is not an “add-on” to arts participation, but part of the infrastructure that makes communication, authorship, decision-making, leadership and contribution possible for people with intellectual, physical, and mental disabilities. The organisation warns that reductions to flexible participation funding risks destabilising the trusted relationships, communication supports and long-term

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Submission 741

collaborative environments that have allowed disabled artists to sustain participation in community and professional life over many years.

No Strings’ work highlights a much larger issue underpinning this review that is neither being acknowledged by the government nor reported to the public: what is the long-term economic cost to taxpayers if disabled Australians no longer have access to the support systems and community infrastructures that disability arts organisations such as No Strings currently provide? If the economic value of social and community participation funded by the NDIS is undermined, the burden does not disappear. It simply shifts elsewhere — onto already overstretched health, mental health, disability and social support systems.

Without access to supported creative participation, many disabled artists may require:

• increased mental health intervention;
• greater reliance on acute health systems;
• increased social care and crisis response;
• higher levels of long-term support dependency;
• reduced employment participation;
• increased disengagement and isolation; and
• reduced community connection and wellbeing. At the same time, the evidence demonstrates that arts participation already produces measurable social and economic outcomes. No Strings supports disabled Australians not only to participate in community life, but to develop vocational skills, access paid employment, build professional networks and contribute to Australia’s cultural economy. Without access to these community-based ecosystems, current and potential future No Strings artists risk being pushed away from professional and cultural participation and back toward isolation, crisis-based support systems and segregated employment pathways.

In this context, No Strings’ programs should not be understood as optional cultural activities, but as preventative social infrastructure that strengthens long-term participant outcomes while reducing pressure on health, disability and social support systems. Since the establishment of the NDIS, No Strings has been operating within a system that was not originally designed to support creative practice. However, the NDIS has become the primary mechanisms through which disabled Australians are able to participate in creative, cultural and community life. No Strings therefore urges the NDIS to ensure reforms both protect continuity of participation within these existing grassroots ecosystems and ensure future funding models strengthen — rather than replace — the community networks, creative pathways and support structures that disabled artists currently rely upon.

These ecosystems play a critical role in upholding the commitments outlined within Australia’s Disability Strategy 2021–2031, particularly in relation to inclusive communities, employment and financial security, personal and community support, health and wellbeing, and community participation.

They are also essential to ensuring Australia continues to meet its international human rights obligations under Article 27 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 15 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, and UNESCO’s Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity, which collectively recognise the right of all people to participate fully in cultural life and the arts.

RECOMMENDATIONS:

No Strings recommends the development of a protected “Creative Participation and Pathways” framework within the NDIS.

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Submission 741

1. Ensure that reforms do not disproportionately reduce access to social and community

participation funding for disabled Australians participating in arts, culture and community based creative practice. This can be done by establishing a “Creative Participation and Pathways” Framework that recognises arts participation as preventative social infrastructure contributing to long-term participant wellbeing, independence, workforce participation and community inclusion.

2. Safeguard Participants During Transition

Implement clear transition safeguards for participants likely to lose access to the NDIS or experience substantial reductions in funding, particularly neurodivergent participants and those with psychosocial disability.

3.  Protect Continuity of Community Infrastructure

Recognise disability arts organisations and mentorship programs as essential community infrastructure that reduces isolation, supports social cohesion and prevents greater pressure on health, mental health and social care systems.

4.  Include Arts and Disability Organisations in Co-Design Processes

Ensure disability-led arts organisations and disabled artists are directly involved in the co-design of future participation frameworks, including the Inclusive Communities Fund.

5. Dedicated Funding for Arts and Cultural Participation

Ensure a dedicated portion of the Inclusive Communities Fund is allocated to arts, culture and creative participation initiatives supporting disabled Australians.

6. Ensure that Access to the Inclusive Communities Fund is equitable and geographically

distributed. Design funding models that do not disadvantage smaller grassroots organisations that may have limited administrative and grant-writing capacity.

7. Recognise Employment and Economic Outcomes

Acknowledge the role disability arts organisations play in:

• employment readiness;
• creative industry participation;
• leadership development;
• skills development; and
• long-term economic participation for disabled Australians.

8.  Align Reforms with Australia’s Disability Strategy 2021–2031

Ensure proposed reforms uphold the commitments outlined within Australia’s Disability Strategy 2021– 2031, particularly in relation to:

• inclusive communities;
• employment and financial security;
• personal and community support;
• health and wellbeing; and
• community participation.

9. Uphold Australia’s International Human Rights Obligations

Ensure reforms remain consistent with:

• Article 27 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights;
• Article 15 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights; and
• UNESCO’s Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity, which collectively recognise the right of all people to participate fully in cultural life and the arts.

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Submission 741

10. Engage in Ongoing Sector Consultation Establish ongoing consultation mechanisms with the arts and disability sector to ensure future reforms reflect lived experience, fluctuating support needs and the realities of community participation across Australia.

No Strings is well positioned to be an active participant in this ongoing sector consultation. We welcome the opportunity of meeting at your earliest convenience to discuss next steps.

Yours sincerely

Dr Kari Seeley

CEO

No Strings Attached Theatre of Disability

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