Access Tourism NZ TOURISM FOR PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES, SENIORS, AND AGEING BOOMERS IN NEW ZEALAND AND WORLDWIDE

Burnet Thorne Cultural Group, a tourism planning and development company in Ontario Canada, has been advising Canadian regions such as Whistler about the development of cultural tourism.  Cultural tourism is “tourism that is motivated by an interest in other peoples, other places, other cultures and in Canada, the total domestic spending by Canadian cultural tourists now exceeds Can$3 billion p.a.  What is driving the market demand for cultural tourism experiences? According to Steven Thorne, the aging Baby Boomers top the list.  Although cultural tourists are distributed across all age and income cohorts, well-heeled Boomers drive the cultural tourism market. Culture-consuming Boomers earn more, spend more, travel more frequently, and stay longer than other tourists in the destinations they visit. They are the tourism industry’s best friends.   The  best salaried and educated generation in North American history, they ”seek learning and enrichment when they travel – the precise travel rewards that cultural tourism provides”.  This is a growing demographic. By the year 2020, the combined Canadian/U.S. population between the ages of 55 and 74 will swell to 83.5 million – a 39 percent increase from 2008.  Women are another factor in the growing popularity of cultural tourism. Key players in travel decision making, women typically have a greater interest in arts and culture than do men.

Guest article by Veroniek Maat, Intern, NZ Tourism Research Institute, Auckland University of Technology, and Masters Student, Leisure, Tourism, and Environment, Wageningen University, The Netherlands

Regional festivals, art and culture exhibitions, food tasting events, and markets are planned in anticipation of the Rugby World Cup 2011 to be held in New Zealand.  During the six week event, locals and visitors will be keen to explore more of New Zealand, enabling the regions to showcase their industries, people, arts and culture.  As the regions get ready to host overseas tourists and Kiwis, events have been listed on the Festival Programme 2011, an official RWC2011 site. Welcoming visitors means welcoming all ranges of potential visitors, including children, youngsters, adults, seniors, men, women, foreigners, locals – and people with disabilities. 

The events presently listed on the Festival Program give very little or no information about access, whether access for visitors with a visual, hearing or mobility impairment. Parts of this  website are still under construction but few of the events listed at the time of writing have taken into account  visits from the disabled. Outdoor events such as festivals and markets state nothing about disabled parking lots, paved paths, ramps, Braille trails, or audio tours. Regrettably, out of the 49 events listed, only one of the theater performance group shows engagement with less mobile visitors by describing on their website ease of access to their shows.  

The museums and galleries of New Zealand will also open their doors for RWC tourists. The Museum of New Zealand, Te Papa Tongarewa in Wellington has included visitors with a disability in their strategy. Disabled parking, adapted guided tours, education programs, wheelchairs, a scooter, audio guides, captions on videos and hearing loops are provided in this venue and people with disabilities will feel welcomed. Govett Brewster Art Gallery is also pro-active in welcoming disabled guests.  It was actively involved with New Plymouths District Council’s Disability Strategy, offered its first Sign Language-interpreted exhibition tour during the Sign Language Awareness Week in 2009, and altered the size of text on wall labels. Besides providing access for the visually impaired, mobility- impaired visitors are encouraged to visit, knowing the galleries’ space lends itself for wheelchair access and wheelchairs are for hire (website). Extensive search for disabled access at other significant museums and galleries throughout New Zealand shows that their websites lack access information about their premises. If New Zealand event producers, museum, and galleries want to offer an “unforgettable RWC experience”to all visitors, they will need to catch up with the access strategies of Te Papa Tongarewa and Govett Brewster Art Gallery.  They should invest in accessible experiences and information provision for people with disabilities because lack of attention for the fastest-growing, largest-spending segment of Baby Boomers (who will have more disability with age), seniors and people with a disability will result in loss of revenues and decline of New Zealand’s destination image.

“Work in Progress” is the annual report from the Ministry for Disability Issues to the House of Representatives on the implementation of the New Zealand Disability Strategy.  In it, the New Zealand Minister For Disabilities Issues Tariana Turia has acknowledged that many in the (NZ) disabilities sector “have expressed impatience at the pace of the (NZ) Disability Strategy’s implementation”.    She goes on to say that “The Ministerial Committee on Disability Issues believes we can make better progress through focusing our actions on the three major influences on what disabled people can do: their personal circumstances, and those of their whānau (family) and friends who support them; the accessibility of the world we live in; and the degree to which specialised disability supports work for them.”

In the same report, Gary Williams, CE of the New Zealand Disabled Persons Assembly states that “We are keen that our position is not made worse by an under-enthusiastic approach to the New Zealand Disability Strategy’s implementation.” Williams goes on to report that The World Bank estimates it costs the global economy between $US1.3 and $US1.9 trillion a year to exclude disabled people. For New Zealand, the Disabled Persons Assembly estimates this cost to be about $10 billion a year. This is a huge lost opportunity for New Zealand, and it is a good illustration of what can be gained – both by disabled people and the country as a whole – by implementing the New Zealand Disability Strategy.

Williams sees a further opportunity to see progress in an international context when New Zealand presents its first report to the Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities next year (2010). The report on the implementation of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities is likely to be substantially informed by progress reports such as the “Work in Progress”. “We are”, says Williams, “like the Ministerial Committee on Disability Issues, keen to see further actions. We are also keen to see more participatory or partnership initiatives. We want the New Zealand Disability Strategy’s implementation to be the best it can be.  However, for the last eight years it has been evident the implementation of the New Zealand Disability Strategy has lacked direction. It seems that, while the very essence of the Strategy was to have a whole-of-government approach, most agencies act in a mutually exclusive way with no discernable end goal.”

Williams called on government agencies to have budgets and timelines for the successful implementation of the Disability Strategy.

Mary and Max

Out of Australia comes a brilliant movie about diversity, difference, and friendship.  “Mary and Max”, a multiple award winning  film directed by Victoria’s  Adam Elliot and produced by Melanie Coombs has just been released on DVD. The story, told through claymation, shows the progression of a friendship as it develops through writing letters over a number of years.  This film will make you laugh and cry, all at the same time.  You will leave the theatre or your lounge seat fully challenged, and totally satisfied. 

Mary Dinkle, a chubby lonely eight-year-old girl living in the suburbs of Melbourne, and Max Horovitz, a 44-year-old, severely obese, Jewish man with Asperger’s Syndrome living in the chaos of New York, strike up an extraordinary bond.  Spanning twenty years and two continents, Mary and Max’s friendship survives much more than the average diet of life’s ups and downs.  All the characters in this movie are drawn with depth and display a range of real human experience, strengths, and weaknesses.   The film stars Philip Seymour Hoffman (Doubt, The Boat That Rocked), Toni Collette (The Black Balloon, TV’s United States of Tara), Barry Humphries (Dame Edna) and Eric Bana (Star Trek. The Other Boleyn Girl).

Writer/Director Adam Elliot’s previous short films, Harvie Krumpet, Uncle, Cousin, and Brother are amongst the most successful short films made in Australia.  They have won 5 Australian Film Institute awards, as well as many international awards including the Oscar.  The shorts continue to screen at festivals around the world, on the internet at http://www.atomfilms.com and on various DVD compilations, where they continue to entertain and move audiences.

Divine reports that 37-year-old Elliot says he is fascinated by human nature. “I’m also fascinated by the crazy idea that we are all striving for perfection… Everyone has a flaw that they may not want, that some people embrace, some people ignore, some people try and cure it, some people label it as a disability, some people label it as an advantage.”

Elliot says he “gets annoyed when people say I make films about disability”. “I just make films about people around me. Basically what I’m saying is that everybody is unusual and that everybody is unique and everybody has imperfection. It’s all about perception and how you can forgive yourself and others.”

Mum

 Read more about Elliot here

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The recently released “Step Up Auckland” report (see 6 November, below) outlines some of the key aspirations and issues of PwDs in Auckland city.  A joint research project by the Auckland City Council, Auckland District Health Board, Waitakere City Council, and Auckland University of Technology Institute of Public Policy, the report was launched in September 2009.

A video of Aucklanders with a variety of disabilities is available on You Tube.  They discuss transport and other aspects of getting around the city, social participation, work, support, and their aspirations of how Auckland city could be.

Arts Access Aotearoa

Those New Zealand artists and arts organisations around the country who are already welcoming people with disability audiences and gallery visitors are profiled in a practical guide on the arts and disability launched today by Creative New Zealand in partnership with Arts Access Aotearoa . Arts For All | Ngā toi mo te katoa (pdf or Word doc. available on the website) provides low-cost and long-term ways to increase access to the arts, market events to the disabled community and build new audiences. Among the organisations profiled are Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, Touch Compass Dance Trust, Fortune Theatre, Te Papa, City Gallery Wellington, Jolt Dance Company, The Court Theatre, Govett-Brewster Art Gallery and WOMAD.

Such a publication can only speed the development of access tourism in New Zealand by providing accessible tourism products that are inclusive for all.  People with disabilities are a large group that have so far been poorly catered for in all walks of life.

Stephen Wainwright, Chief Executive, Creative New Zealand, commended arts organisations already adopting accessible practices and said Arts For All has been published to encourage more artists, organisations and venues to improve their access and build new audiences and visitor numbers.
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The need to provide disability access and the pastoral desire to welcome all visitors has presented a challenge to St Albans Cathedral.  The shrine of St Alban was, until recently, only accessible via a flight of steps. So a wheelchair lift was added to create access into the Saint’s Chapel, and has been praised for its elegance and dignity, and for providing both spiritual and physical access.

Greg Luton, English Heritage Regional Director in the East of England, said that “Cathedrals are inspirational places, but they need to be forward thinking and constantly review how they use these wonderful spaces. At Norwich Cathedral, development manages to be emphatically modern while keeping its roots deep in the past. At Ely and St Alban’s, two projects have improved access and helped to open up the cathedrals to a wider public.”

A news release on 3 September 2009  reports challenges to a number of leading Auckland organisations to tackle barriers that get in the way for 77,000 disabled Aucklanders.  The report shows that disabled people could play a bigger part in the city if barriers were removed in public spaces, services and buildings, transport and communications, work and study.
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