Ryan has been with No Strings Attached Theatre Of Disability for 20 years. Long before he joined, anxiety made even the smallest tasks feel impossible. A trip to the local shop for his mum could stop him in his tracks.
Then he found a way through: he learned to become a character. As himself, the errand felt too hard. As a character, he could walk in, do what needed doing, and walk out again. Two decades on, it’s still how Ryan meets anything that challenges him. When life gets hard, he asks himself one question: who do I need to be right now?
It’s not a trick, and it’s not avoidance. It’s a life skill, the same skill any of us reaches for when we put on our “game face” for a big meeting or a first day at work. For Ryan, No Strings is where he learned to use it, and where he’s kept sharpening it for 20 years.
That’s what’s at stake in October.
A Vicious Slashing
From October, significant NDIS funding for social and community participation, the very funding that allows performers like Ryan to attend programs at No Strings, is set to be cut. What remains in that bucket will barely stretch to cover the essentials: transport to medical appointments, support to get to work. The capacity-building funding, the funding that helped Ryan build a skill he now uses to hold down a job and live his life, disappears.
No Strings CEO Dr Kari Seeley puts it bluntly: the original architects of the NDIS built a system with two functions. One maintained daily life. The other built capacity and capability, so people could grow, not just get by. What’s coming in October guts the second function and leaves only the first.
“They are saying, we’ll keep you on a life-support system, but we’re not doing any support (or ‘rehab programs’ if you will) to help you thrive,” Dr Seeley said.
It’s an apt analogy. Imagine a hospital that keeps a patient’s vital signs stable, then withdraws every support that would get them back on their feet. That is what’s proposed for thousands of NDIS participants nationally, including the 40 performers who attend No Strings workshops every week to build the social connection, confidence, and life skills that let them thrive, not just survive.
For someone like Ryan, whose skills are already established after 20 years, the loss is serious. For the next person, the teenager about to turn 18 and start their first year at No Strings, it’s the door closing before they’ve had the chance to walk through it. Twenty years of skill-building, gone before it begins.
Help for Everyone Except the People Who Need It Most
Compounding the problem, the government’s newly announced Inclusive Communities Fund directs support toward mainstream, non-disability organisations, funding things like accessible infrastructure and staff training in disability inclusion. On paper, that sounds reasonable. In practice, the expertise mainstream organisations need already sits inside disability-led organisations like No Strings, which have spent decades refining it. In this model, mainstream organisations will be empowered to plunder that specialised expertise. But to what end?
And even if every local club, gym, and community group in the country became perfectly accessible tomorrow, it wouldn’t matter, because the people who’d walk (or roll) through those doors won’t have the funding to get there, or to take part once they do.
A Fight Worth Having
Dr Seeley is part of a national coalition of disability arts organisations that has taken this concern directly to Canberra. The response so far has offered little recognition of the decades of expertise disability-led organisations bring, or of the outcomes they’ve delivered.
We understand governments need to be seen managing budgets responsibly, and that isolated cases of funding misuse have fuelled public pressure to act. But cutting capacity-building funding is the wrong lever. It punishes the vast majority of NDIS participants who use this funding exactly as intended: to build the skills, confidence, and connection that let them contribute, work, and thrive.
While the legislation has passed, elements of its implementation are still being finalised. There is still room to change course, but only if enough people understand what’s actually being cut, and why it matters.
This isn’t a story about frugality. It’s a story about whether people with disability are allowed to grow, or only kept alive.
If you believe funding that builds individual capacity deserves to be protected, contact your local MP and share this story. Learn more about No Strings.