Tea tree gully council - maybe my ensemble will become a reality!

Its been a super long time since i have written in this blog because i tend to write in my personal journal rather than making my medical problems on a public blog. However i have some news about my musical pursuits and wanted to share them with you all that is predominantly what i started this blog for anyway to write about all the musical stuff and how i manage to do it all despite multiple disabilities. Last year I joined the Tea Tree Gully Council (thats my local gov council) disability discrimination act (DDA) reference group. For those of you reading this from overseas Australia's parliamentary system basically works with three layers theres the federal (or national) government based in the capital of australia, Canberra. Then there is the state government (my state is South australia) and then there is the local council area which is tea tree gully. Without going into how it all works (cause i am positive i will tell you the wrong thing) thats basically how it works and tea tree gully is the local area that i live in. So anyways i joined the reference group and its made up of community members with a disability/carer of people with a disability/people from agencies that help people with disabilities and also members of the actual council as well called the internal group. In any case what we do is we are writing a action access plan for the next 4 years and it includes our input and input from the public and the document lists all the achievements in the area of disability access in the council (for eg better footpaths, ramps into shopping centres, council website being accessible for people with visual impairments, making sure the council can provide information in other formats such as braille or audio tape for events held in the council area in a timely manner before the event happens etc etc) and anyways its been a fantastic experience, all voluntary. My husband saw the advertisement in the local paper (the messenger) and told me that i should apply well i did and i got the job i had to have an interview and stuff. So anyways thats what we do and last week I went to a public consultation forum run by access consultants and one thing that happened at the meeting was that people who work in the council got up and spoke about all the achievements that had occured in the past 4 years (cause the plan is redone every 4 years) and one person was from the councils arts team and they have an interest in making the Golden Grove recreation and arts centre accessible for everyone and said they are always looking for more people to play/hold concerts etc because its all accessible. So I took that as the key and in the break i spoke to the lady and told her of my idea to teach viola/violin to people with disabilities and then form a group and play in an ensemble. She said it was a great idea but understood how i would need other people to become involved to make it happen and she also said she was willing and able to help me find and apply for funding as well. This may include funding for a support worker for me and the other participants, a mentor to make it happen, and all things in between. One day we may even be able to perform in the theatre at golden grove (about 10 min drive from my house!) On top of that she mentioned that sometimes they have visual arts exhibitions and often they want musicians to play at these exhibitions as background music provided its not too long I would LOVE to do this so much. She told me it would definately be a possibility in the second part of 2012 so stay tuned!!!! I was so excited about it all it was the first good thing thats happened to me in a super long time. Thats all my musical news for now.