Meet Your Australians - 2025 ACT Young Australian of the Year Daniel Bartholomaeus. ACM is proud to be media partner for the 2025 Australian of the Year Awards.
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00:00I am an artist, a visual artist in fact, and I am a neurodiverse and autistic person.
00:10I had a bit of an English language delay growing up and I wasn't able to express myself very
00:18well and so what I would do if I had a stressful situation or something that upset me, I would
00:24draw it.
00:25I think art has the power to be able to express how you feel, but it's also, art is also being
00:32able to showcase all different sorts of talents and abilities.
00:37So my dream is to be able to hero people with a disability and to be able to show what they
00:44can do, not what they can't do.
00:47Being able to champion that and showcase that through visual art and also music as well.
00:57So I've been able to work with the National Gallery, so I've been doing the Sensory Sunday,
01:03which is an art program where we just get young kids at a time when the gallery is quieter.
01:10Usually neurodiverse people who have a disability or have someone with a disability come together
01:14and they do art, they come look at the new exhibition that's open.
01:19Yeah, I really enjoy that.
01:22I've also been able to work with the United Nations, I've been a young mentor with Daydream Machine.
01:29We've got Studio And, Studio And is an art program actually for neurodiverse people or
01:36people with a disability.
01:37I believe neurodiverse people, they tend, neurodiverse people love hanging out with
01:41neurodiverse people, so being able to bring them together there has been really awesome.
01:46I've been able to mentor so many amazing young kids who live with a disability or are neurodiverse
01:53and they are some of the most intelligent, most talented, most amazing people I've ever met.
02:00Being autistic is okay, being strange is okay, being weird is okay.
02:07Having a disability to me is like an ability and being able to showcase that is my dream.