Strong Voices

Awhi Ngā Mātua is a community of parents who Emily Writes wishes she had known in those long nights when she felt alone and overwhelmed with the responsibility of caring for a sick child.

Every person portrayed in this multimedia exhibition has a story to tell, but their pictures alone are worth a thousand words. More than a thousand.

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Tom Russell has just finished a day’s work at the Te Tuhi Training Café in Pakuranga working at the till, taking orders and baking a batch of almond friands.

David Snelgar doesn’t say much when he’s concentrating on art. But during the 10 years he has shared Bruce Maunder’s art studio the men have come to an understanding about a few important things.

The countdown has started for the IHC Art Awards with the naming of this year’s judges.

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New Zealand’s minimum wage is $21.20 an hour – but for 900 disabled workers that doesn’t apply. A quarter of them earn between $1 and $2 an hour.

When some old tree ferns were removed from a Mosgiel backyard in November last year, they left behind a bare fence line and empty spaces. That provided a blank canvas for the creative types among the staff and residents at an IDEA Services home.

On a summer day in January, Caitlin Fleming built a large sandcastle on the beach in the remote Te Kainga Bay in Queen Charlotte Sound. She sat in it, looked out across the sea and told a story – “it’s about a beautiful Queen Elizabeth”.

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Lynda Young-Kennedy knows the gravel roads, the steep tracks and the dead-ends of Southland’s back country better than most people.

Dame Denise L’Estrange-Corbet is the new Patron of IHC, an organisation she committed to long ago when she was asked to judge the IHC Art Awards in 2009.