During 2025, DADAA worked in partnership with the sā Ladakh Biennale and local Ladakhi disability organisation PAGIR on a pioneering arts and disability project in Ladakh, India.

Following the success of this initial collaboration, we are delighted to announce renewed support through Creative Australia’s International Engagement Fund for the next stage of this work: Circular Lives. The title Circular Lives reflects both Ladakh’s traditions of resourcefulness and cyclical renewal, and the project’s commitment to regenerative practice: where knowledge, creativity, care, and participation create lasting social, cultural, and environmental impact.

Circular Lives is a long-term, community-based initiative that reimagines accessibility, dignity, and participation in Ladakh. Bringing together artists, cultural workers and advocates from Ladakh, India and Australia, the project centres co-creation with people with disability, ensuring lived experience shapes its narratives, materials, methods, and outcomes.

The recent announcement of renewed Creative Australia funding marks a significant step in sustaining this work, enabling deeper engagement with local partners, strengthening disability leadership within the sā Ladakh Biennale, and creating new opportunities for artists with disability to participate in and shape the region’s cultural future.

Drawing on DADAA’s expertise in disability arts and community cultural development, Circular Lives combines grassroots advocacy, artistic practice and collaborative learning to build a framework that is both locally relevant and globally connected. Over the past year, project activity has included mentoring, resourcing, strategic planning, project design and cultural exchange. Conversations and presentations in Delhi have also connected the project with the wider Ladakhi community, creating important opportunities to discuss disability inclusion and cultural development.

A key focus of the work has been supporting the development of Ladakh’s first disability policy and demonstrating the vital role arts and culture can play in building more inclusive communities and expanding opportunities for participation.

DADAA Executive Director David Doyle reflects: “One of the things I love about this project is observing the rigour of the project team’s work, with its commitment to research, documentation, deep listening, and slow-working.”

In Ladakh, people with disability navigate some of the most demanding geographical and climatic conditions in the world. Remote terrain, extreme winters and limited infrastructure can restrict access to education, healthcare, mobility and livelihoods, creating complex challenges in everyday life. David Doyle notes: “Here, the mudbrick cultural infrastructure is destroyed every winter – makes the challenges of arts funding and the ever-changing policy environment in Australia seem insignificant by comparison.”

As climate change intensifies these harsh conditions, accessibility is not simply a matter of inclusion but one of survival, dignity and resilience.

At its heart, Circular Lives is grounded in regenerative art practice, prioritising renewal over extraction and long-term sustainability over short-term gains. The project brings together ecological sensitivity, local material practices and interdisciplinary thinking to respond to both environmental and social challenges.

By embedding community cultural development and disability arts principles within a new cultural context, Circular Lives seeks to strengthen disability-led practice, employ local artists with disability, and create meaningful pathways for participation within one of the region’s most significant cultural festivals.

Reflecting on the successes of 2025, Raki Nikahetiya, co-founder of the sā Ladakh Biennale, said: “Thank you for your wonderful leadership in making this possible. It means so much to PAGIR and to us. With Smalika’s compassionate stewardship and commitment to PAGIR, together with Sagar’s and the sā network’s expertise, we truly feel this can be the starting point for something positive in the region — a support mechanism that is thoughtful, enduring, enabling self-sufficiency and potentially replicable elsewhere. This feels genuinely exceptional: meaningful support that is long-term, grounded in trust and guided by shared intent rather than short-term outcomes.”

In 2026, the project will be led on the ground by Krishna Tashi Palmo, a master Thangka artist whose lived experience of disability and deep cultural practice anchor the project. Her work and leadership challenge stigma while modelling pathways of dignity, artistic excellence and resilience, offering both representation and inspiration for future generations.

As Circular Lives enters its next phase, the project continues to demonstrate how disability-led arts practice can create lasting social, cultural and environmental change through relationships built on trust, collaboration, and shared learning.

About the project partners

sā Ladakh Biennale

sā Ladakh Biennale is situated at the intersection of climate, culture, and community. Unfolding at altitudes above 3,000 metres in the fragile landscapes of Ladakh, it is the world’s highest regenerative land art biennale. Founded in 2023 by Tenzin Jamyang, Raki Nikahetiya and Sagar Singh, ‘sā’ meaning ‘soil’ in Ladakhi, began as a land art exhibition in Leh before evolving into a biennale in 2026. The Biennale operates as a living, learning and evolving platform that brings together artists from Ladakh, across India and internationally, through residencies, workshops and educational programmes that engage deeply with its landscapes, cultures and ecological realities.

PAGIR

PAGIR (People’s Action Group for Inclusion and Rights), established in 2007 in Leh Ladakh, is a rights-based movement dedicated to advocating for the inclusion of people with disability in the community. Its core mission is to foster an environment that promotes equal opportunities and integration for people with disabilities.

Raki Nikahetiya 

Raki Nikahetiya is a Sri Lankan-born Austrian interdisciplinary artist and the co-founder of the sā Ladakh Biennale, the world’s highest altitude regenerative art exhibition.