ANNE RIGGS

(She/her)
Artist and NDIS provider

15 November 2020
Boon Wurrung Country

I’m Anne. Anne Riggs. I’m a visual artist and a National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) provider. Like everybody, I think I was impacted quite greatly, but not as much as I thought I would be. It hasn’t been a terrible time. A few weeks have been a bit difficult, but I was able to work the whole way through it.

I have a studio in the back of my house, and I provide art programs for women, particularly women who have [a] trauma background and mental ill health. Before COVID, I had a group of maybe three or four people who would come each week, as well as people who come individually. The group had to stop. And everyone came individually. Because my participants are all on the NDIS, they were able to continue throughout and that was just fantastic. It was fantastic for them because they had somewhere to come and be creative and they had a relationship with me over that whole entire time. And I had a job which was wonderful, a job that I really love. And I had companionship every day too. I realised [for] the first time in my whole entire life that art was seen [as] an essential service. And [that] it is essential, it gives us purpose and meaning and [gives the] participants something to look forward to, something to do at home. I was hoping that some of this would filter into long-term thinking about the value of the arts. I work with people who have experienced trauma and who tend to isolate themselves anyway. Generally speaking, they are quite fearful of other people, of doing the wrong thing, of being hurt or saying the wrong thing. When COVID happened, some of that fell away, and it fell away quite significantly over time, which was just fascinating
to witness. A real sense of community was created through the studio – even with participants some women had not yet met. For example, there was one woman who loves to cook. She lives by herself, and she would cook and bring in all these little tubs of food ‘for the girls.’ Someone else was clearing out the bookshelves and she brought a whole heap of books that were then distributed around [to] the others. There [were] a lot of good wishes and inquiries about people, where in the past they [would’ve been] very reluctant to ask any personal questions about how the others are going.

The second lockdown actually felt quite different from the first one. It was the isolation that was really difficult and the unknowing of when it was going to end. There is a level of fatigue that comes with complying with all the rules and expectations and making sure you’re doing what’s needed. There’s a level of additional thinking involved in doing this – doing things that we’ve never had to do before. The endlessness of it – [it] just seemed like there was no end in sight – I think what was needed for everybody was a sense of care and compassion. When people had their moments, we needed to meet that need with care. I think, just generally speaking in the community, we did. Definitely in the studio, we did.