NAVA: The National Association for the Visual Arts acknowledges the Gadigal peoples of the Eora nation where our office is located, and all custodians of country throughout all lands, waters and territories. We pay our respects to Elders past, present, and future. DANIEL SAVAGE: My name is Daniel Savage, I am a disabled artist, activist, curator, and advisor. QUESTION: How do you survive as an artist? I think, like a lot of other artists, I survive by doing multiple jobs in multiple spaces and switching multiple hats. For me, I have a day job that I got very lucky that I fell into that space and then I was supported to be able to get that in the first place. They accommodate my arts practice as well. But, you know, I don't necessarily make an income necessarily from my visual arts. So, I do do some curating and I do do advising. The efforts that I put in earlier, when I was younger, and the kind of the amount of shouting I did at people to make changes, we're at a point in time now where people are acknowledging those changes need to take place, and they need to take place from a lived experience perspective. So, all of a sudden, people are now coming to me to ask me to help make those changes. And they're often coming in with a little bit of cash, which is very helpful for myself. QUESTION: Is there anything you would like to see reshaped in the arts sector? There's so many different spaces that I think need to be reshaped. It's not reshaped from one form into another, it's actually shifting the mindset to be, to have the outset to be more evolving constantly, that we're trying to shift us away from that static-ness of this exists here and in this way, and for this audience, and think about kind of breaking down those barriers. QUESTION: What brings you joy in your work? Sometimes when I'm making the work it's kind of a slog and I'm tired and I'm sore and I'm not really sure why I'm doing it. And I'm not sure if other people are going to enjoy the experience. And I think the joy in my practice and the joy in arts for me is that space for play in new ideas. And being in an industry or a space that encourages that. If you can do stuff that no one's thought of before, that's what kind of really sparks things in people and sparks things in myself. So, it's probably a detriment to my arts practice, but the things I find enjoyable is always trying something new and going in a different direction when maybe people might have been interested in the thing I was doing before and want me to do more of that. For me, I always want to try the new thing and play around with it. And sometimes that means a year of going in circles and coming back to where I started and realizing it's not gonna turn into anything but at least I kind of had a lot of fun doing it.