Strong Voices

Photography has always been a feature of the mixed media IHC Arts Awards, with strong images competing for attention among hundreds of paintings, drawings, sculpture and textiles. Last year IHC launched a separate competition – Capture the Moment – to give photographers their own platform to showcase their art.

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Young Kāpiti Coast artist Max Hinds-Brown has won the IHC Art Awards for 2023 with a beautiful retro painting of a red chair. There was a strong showing by Kāpiti artists in this year’s awards, with them winning first and third prizes.

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IHC’s game app to help young people with intellectual disabilities learn to manage money – and life – is being put through its paces by students in some Wellington secondary schools.

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With the General Election only two months away, IHC is turning up the heat on election candidates to commit to fairer treatment of disabled students in schools.

IHC is hosting a public meeting with election candidates to find out how they intend to make lives better for disabled people if they are elected.

Researchers working for IHC are now finalising a report that for the first time in years presents a much clearer picture of what it means to have an intellectual disability in New Zealand.

It might have been Lorde’s Solar Power tour, but the sun was shining on Emma at the Western Springs concert in Auckland in March.

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Philip Poulton was 10 years old when he went to live in Kimberley Hospital in Levin in 1967. He was the second eldest of five children from a family farming at Rangiwiu Station at Kumeroa, near Dannevirke, and he had Down syndrome.

Sometimes when life is hard, it can be good to spend time with people who make things look easy.

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Gwen Kirkwood always gave credit to the people of Matamata – a town with a huge heart for people with intellectual disabilities. But the truth was that no one had a bigger heart than Gwen herself.

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