Caring as Practice: Balancing Art, Work, and Love
In this article, Janel Yau reflects on how the arts industry can better recognise and support artists and arts workers who are also carers and/or support workers.
Introduction
At some point in our lives, we will all care for someone. A family member, partner, friend, or elder, whether connected by blood or by choice. Care can take many forms: informal care offered out of love and duty, respite care, or structured support through systems like the NDIS. Whatever its form, caregiving often carries a deep emotional and mental toll for everyone involved.
As the only child of two disabled migrant parents with no extended family in Australia, I inhabit many roles: interpreter, driver, courier, secretary, emergency contact, and often the main point of communication for changes to appointments or referrals. I apply and do record keeping for their disability pensions, renew permits, administer and translate medical paperwork. Google Translate has been helpful at times with quick translations and making sense of medical jargon, which saves a lot of time and confusion!
I am also the person who asks the questions my parents cannot ask, or may not think to ask. Do I need to hire equipment to help my mother shower after knee surgery? Are there translated aftercare instructions? Should I hire a nurse to support her physically, or can I manage this myself? How do I explain options for cancer removal surgery to my father? What can we afford, and how long will recovery take? And perhaps selfishly, how long do I need to put my life on hold?
Then there are the everyday logistics: reminding them to take their medication when they can’t set smartphone alerts; booking interpreters and hoping they arrive at the right clinic; encouraging them to ask questions rather than quietly follow instructions. In many ways, to be a carer is also to be an advocate, a translator not just of language, but of systems, access, and agency.
Before long, your calendar fills with reminders to remind. Between your meals and theirs, do we have enough supplies? Routines are monotonous, but become essential, and so does the support surrounding the carer. I often imagine support as a circle around a circle: I need support to support my parents. Caregiving is not a single act, the intimacy and weight of caregiving is truly sustained by interdependence. My friends, my community remind me of this.
Yet, maintaining balance between work, health, and social connection can feel almost impossible. According to the Caring for Others and Yourself: Carer Wellbeing Survey 2024, “Australia’s carers consistently report much poorer wellbeing and quality of life outcomes than the average Australian.” What does this mean when we consider the additional layers of being an artist and an artsworker?
The Role of institutions
While NAVA continues consultation to inform future guidance in the Code of Practice for Visual Arts, Craft and Design, there is much that arts institutions and workplaces can consider to better recognise and support artists and arts workers who are also carers and/or support workers:
- Offer long lead times for deadlines and expectations so artists can plan appointments and establish routines in advance.
- Foster a workplace culture that recognises the realities of care and the identities of carers.
- Allow remote and flexible work arrangements that accommodate varied hours or weekend work.
- Explore job-sharing models for arts workers.
- Where possible, provide assistants or dedicate project producers for artists commissions.
- Support career re-entry for artists and artsworkers returning from palliative or aftercare responsibilities.
- Expand carers’ leave as a distinct entitlement separate from sick or annual leave.
- Include carers’ roles and budgets in contracts where relevant, for instance, recording companion card details for travel, accommodation, or event or gallery access.
- Offer accessibility rider templates.
Artists and artworkers (from my personal experience)
Ideas for artists and arts workers who are also carers and/or support workers may be:
- Let your employer know.
- Ask for flexibility and/or identify periods where you cannot work due to caring responsibilities.
- If you are a carer or a support person of an artist, draft an accessibility rider with the person you are caring for - the Code of Practice has a guide to write one.
- Establish a schedule of when you can dedicate time to create work and try to stick to it, for your own mental health. It’s important to maintain time for you. It does not matter if it is not productive and you end up not making work or doing work. A routine will slowly emerge.
Accessibility and visibility go hand in hand
These measures would be a meaningful start toward building a sector that values carers and their perspectives. To truly implement diversity and intersectionality in the arts is to recognise the many ways artist-carers and arts worker-carers balance professional practice with personal and cultural responsibility.
There is a “third space”, where care sits between work and personal life. It is where logistics meets love, where coordination and patience are constantly tested, and where the act of caregiving itself becomes a quiet form of creative practice.
Rewards and Impact
The relationships I built with the surgeons, specialists, GPs and medical teams while caring for my parents were one of most surprising rewards. It’s astonishing how a village can be so quickly built to care for someone, and it’s a village that takes effort and finances to maintain yet it is always met with warmth.
Most importantly, to be able to provide care is a privilege. To return love in this way, in this chapter of our lives wherever it may be, is a real gift. Isolating at times, I cherish these periods because this is how a lot of cultures reciprocate their love and gratitude, by unspoken service. It was also a time where I got to know my parents in a very different light. Where they were once my protectors, my caregivers, the roles have reversed.
Code of Practice Consultation on Carers and Support Workers
NAVA is conducting a survey on carers in the arts. This follows our Parenting in the arts consultation and will inform an upcoming update to the Code of Practice for Visual Arts, Craft and Design.
The survey will help shape new guidelines in the Code for working inclusively with artists with disability, particularly where artists have carers or support workers, or are carers or support workers themselves. These guidelines will include good practice recommendations for addressing barriers faced in the sector, recognising carers and support workers as part of artists’ working arrangements, and recommending approaches to establishing a support person’s labour, payment and acknowledgment in arts practice.
This work will also consider artists with broader caring responsibilities, including disability support, elder care, guardianship and community care. It will explore the kinds of flexible arrangements needed to balance caring duties with arts practices.
As part of this process, NAVA has sought preliminary input from members of our Disability Advisory Group and will host a closed consultation with key stakeholders to discuss these issues in greater depth. A summary of findings will be published on NAVA’s website.
Survey closes 11:59pm AEST Sunday 7 December.
By completing this survey, you understand that your responses may be used anonymously to inform new sections of the Code of Practice for Visual Arts, Craft and Design.
About the author
Janel Yau is a creative producer, arts administrator and now a General Manager at NAVA currently based in Gadigal Country. Born in colonial per-handover Hong Kong, raised in the unceded lands of the Wurundjeri, Kulin Nation, Janel worked in a wide range of cultural organisations from flagship institutions to small to medium organisations, festivals and multi artforms spanning over 15 years across Asia Pacific region. Previously she has worked for organisations such Creative Australia, Arts Centre Melbourne, Museums Victoria, Chinese Museum of Australia, Hong Kong Arts Festival as well as landslide of creative projects as a independent producer. She specialises in strategy, project management, organisational change and storytelling. She has a MA in Arts Management from the University of Melbourne.
Image credit
Image credit: Dr Danica I. J. Knežević, Life is a Waiting Room, installation view, with Waiting Rooms 1, 2 and 3. Xray Box and Digital Print, 2025. The Local at the McGlade Gallery, Sydney, 2025.
ID: Against a white wall, three monitors show X-ray boxes with small images of people in them. These monitors are attached to chords, and four chairs sit in front of the screens.
