The launch was held at the Bicentennial Creative Arts Centre on Monday morning, with clients of Gunnedah Sunnyfield Disability Services joining the fun, creating art and enjoying morning tea. 

Enabling Community Creativity: A Regional Disability Resource Manual is the result of a partnership between Arts North West and Accessible Arts NSW, and aims to help organisations and individuals create an arts and disability community within their town.

Kristine Tito from Accessible Arts, and Caroline Downer and Steph McIntosh from Arts North West attended the launch to promote the manual which is the result of two years of work.

The manual is available online and contains project development, marketing and accessibility plans with step-by-step processes, templates, resources and case studies.

Ms Downer said the project was funded by Arts NSW, which has been renamed, Create NSW.

“It was the fact that this manual doesn’t exist, or didn't exist until now. And it was a way of really building a network, particularly around our area, which is the New England North West, and really seeing how we could collaborate on different and start more different projects and what that looked like,” she said.

“So for us this is quite exciting because it also shows a lot of the case studies of what’s been happening in our region.”

Fellow Arts North West employee, Steph McIntosh was the arts and disability officer throughout the project.

“This is just the final celebration of all the hard work that's been put into the past two years,” she said.

“And I think we can also say how proud we are of how it’s happened and what we’ve produced in the manual.”

Gunnedah Shire Council’s arts and cultural officer, Lauren Mackley, said she was excited that Gunnedah was chosen for the launch.

“It’s quite an honour that we’ve been asked and it to come to Gunnedah and for it to be launched here,” she said.

“We have a really good strong forum in our community.”

The event was also supported by Gunnedah GoCo and Gunnedah Working Access Group.

Ms Mackley will be placing a hard copy of the manual in the Gunnedah Shire Library.

“It’s a good opportunity for anyone in the disability sector to have access to the manual,” she said.

For those who have the Internet, the manual is accessible at http://www.artsnw.com.au/s/ANW-Arts-Disability-Manual.pdf