WE had a festival and DJ Anna was there
1500 people from the local community came to our annual Soup festival and DJAnna played right in the middle of it as the main act and she was fantatstic.
There were are so many good and talented musicians who played on the day. But there is no doubt that DJ Anna is the act the people are going to remember. She had the crowd dancing and cheering for 40 minutes, and screaming for more at the end, walking off to a standing ovation. We provide some support to Anna and have done so for a number of years but that is not the story here.
The story here is how earlier in her life, as a young adult, Anna and her family were assured by service providers who invited Anna into their service, which maybe we will call a box, that Anna and others had to fit into, that she had very limited prospects given her capacities. They should have stepped out of the box and had a look at what the world looked liked and offered to someone who was ambitious and surrounded themselves with the right people.
Anna now works in four part time jobs, lives in a shared house with a house mate, who doesn’t have a disability, and is living her dream of being a DJ , at parties and events. A lot of things that Anna needs support with are still there and they are important, but they are not the things that give her life the shape that makes sense to her. It her jobs, DJ gigs, her friends, housemate and neighbours who she invites to dinner that create the shape of her life.
Annas life is a great reminder of what can happen when you have a dream, and surround yourself with a family and other people who listen to you, and let you lead the way, rather than spending the time just looking after you.
A Bit About The Festival
Sometimes I get asked why we have this festival every year. It is very reasonable for people to ask this, after all we are a disability service. We don’t do it to make money and we don’t do it to attract more clients. We do it for a few different reasons, we are proud of our Milparinka community and the different parts of us; our participants, our families, our garden club members, our volunteers, our friends and our garden and we want people to see and know that. We do it because when we bring community together, with no expectation other than to share friendship and joy we are helping our world to be a more welcoming place, but most of all we do it because it creates opportunity. When we are more known by our community (rather than networks of disability services), when we talk to more people, when we create more movement that encourages people to accidentally and purposefully bump into each other, stuff happens, people talk, interests are shared, people have ideas, friendship develop and new opportunities are created for the people we support and love. That’s why we do it.
