Event Session - Performance: The diversity monologues

Day 1 - Tuesday 26th, 3:15pm - 3:45pm AEDT

The Wheeler Centre - Performance Space

Dr Paula Abood, writer, CCD practitioner, creative producer and educator

Aseel Tayah, artist and activist

Why are we still talking about diversity? How many words have been spoken and written about the political imperatives of racial equity, cultural rights and inclusion? Aseel Tayah and Dr Paula Abood reflect on their experiences in this space through a performative paper that tells a 30 year story.

Media Contributions

Key Points

  • disc
    Paula Abood: After 30 years working in diversity it feels like a monologue, like I've been talking to myself.
  • disc
    Paula Abood: Most of the changes we have seen have come from grass roots: artists, communities, social movements. We are the change.
  • disc
    Aseel Tayah: We are all different. The mainstream is us.
  • disc
    Paula Abood: Access and equality and rights were an official part of policy in the 90s. You wouldn't see that is policy now.
  • disc
    Aseel Tayah: White people shouldn't tell our stories. Why do you have to be part of everything we do.
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    Paula Abood: If we are talking about systemic cultural change we need to rethinking the majority of funding going to MPA when diversity is supported and flourishes in the small-to-medium arts sector.

We would like to acknowledge that we are meeting today on the traditional lands of the Kulin Nation, to pay our respects to their Elders, past, present, and emerging, and to honour their long lineage of creative practice.