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Different Focus
The Focus on Ability Festival recently wrapped for its second year and we spoke to the festival’s founder and this year’s winner.
With film festivals a dime a dozen these days, it's rare that any stand out from the rest of the herd. But Focus on Ability, now in its second year, is a short film festival that not only attracts a vast array of new talent, it is also for a good cause: raising community awareness about people living with disabilities.
An initiative of NOVA, a government-funded Disability Employment Service, the festival offers cash prizes of up to $5000 in three different categories: individual school students, school groups and members of the public.
NOVA assists those with hearing problems and intellectual disabilities find jobs at award wage, and was founded twenty years ago by CEO Martin Wren and several others, all of whom were "frustrated" by the lack of employment opportunities for those with a disability.
"Before NOVA, I worked for the disabilities unit at TAFE, training people that were about to leave school and getting them ready for the big, wide world," Wren tells FIMINK. "But unfortunately very few of these students got jobs because of their disabilities. We founded NOVA so we could get our students into work."
Focus on Ability began last year as an extension of NOVA's public education program. "The biggest thing we do is carry out education in the community. The festival is about finding another way to raise awareness," says Wren. The shorts submitted all reflect the competition's theme: ability rather than disability. "These films show what people with disabilities can achieve," says Wren.
Entry to the contest is free, and winners are decided internet public voting. This year's films attracted international attention, with tens of thousands of votes submitted from more than seventy countries. "Our webserver crashed under the strain," says Wren with a laugh.
With tens of thousands of views from all over the world, Focus on Ability winner Lucy Ricardo is amazed and appreciative of the positive feedback she has received - and of the $5000 she and her team were awarded with for their efforts.
Ricardo founded dance company DanceAbility in February 2009 in order to provide the Eastern Suburbs with a service similar to The Merry Makers, a dance troupe for children and adults with additional needs based on Sydney's North Shore.
The mother of a ten-year-old boy with Down Syndrome, Ricardo felt that her son and other differently-abled children and adults in the Eastern Suburbs should have the opportunity to participate in extracurricular activities. DanceAbility classes are held at Waverley Bowling Club, conducted by a team of dedicated volunteers. "The first year was financially hard," says Ricardo. "But DanceAbility is now a registered charity and people have been very generous with private donations."
Making the film It's All About Ability with DanceAbility for the festival has been, says Ricardo, "fantastic." Community awareness of DanceAbility was raised significantly during the public voting process. "It's really helping," says Ricardo, who is now trying to secure more space for classes as local demand outstrips the current class schedule. "It's wonderful."
For Wren, It's All About Ability and its moving message to not judge a book by its cover truly reflects the values of Focus on Ability. "The theme came about because most people can't look past what they see first," says Wren. "They don't see the individual under the exterior. The biggest hurdle is always perception; people are often afraid of what they don't understand or don't know."
For more information and to watch the finalist videos from this year's Focus on Ability Festival, visit the website. To find out more about DanceAbility, click here.