Chocolate wheel at the ready

We’re in the process of putting the finishing touches to our first ever Gig Buddies Sydney stall, appearing this Saturday at North Sydney’s Shoreshocked Festival.

In addition to preparing the chocolate wheel and Instagram pop up cards pictured below (thank you, Libby), we’ve been doing the rounds recently, calling gig buddies and volunteers asking them to join us on the day. We’ve had an amazing response and, should you be free this Saturday, we encourage everyone to come along. Apart from our stand there will be market stalls, buskers and a bill headlined by Art of Sleeping, Hockey Dad, E^ST and ADKOB.

The free all ages event starts at 11am and it all goes down at St Leonards Park, North Sydney.

In other news, the Gig Buddies team in Brighton have released the findings from their “State of Stay Up Late 2016 survey”.

Of the 195 people surveyed, made up of support workers, parents, carers, managers, local authorities and people with a learning disability, “72% of respondents said that most of the people they knew with a learning disability couldn’t get out in the evening….”

Of the staff and local authorities questioned, it is evident that work is in progress to ensure people with learning disabilities are leading active social lives. However, 28% of people with a learning disability said they weren’t and 24% of staff said they weren’t able to provide assistance.

The report concluded: "(The survey) tells us that there’s probably an awful lot of people with learning disabilities who don’t know their rights..... there’s sadly no big surprises in this survey and what we really want to do is find out what is getting in the way of support staff working more flexibly.”

The full findings of the survey are available here.

Do the findings resonate with you or someone you know? Please feel free to contact the guys in the UK, or get in touch with us: info@gigbuddiessydney.org

Matthew Collins

Gig Buddies Sydney Social Media Coordinator

matt@assistcom.org

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All donations are gratefully received. If you would like to revel in legendary status please support us in our cause to get more people out to live events in Sydney.