The Sisters of Invention

Location: Adelaide, SA

Challenge: Various Disabilities

Website: facebook.com/thesistersofinvention

The Sisters of Invention are a girl group from Adelaide in South Austalia, with learning difficulties ranging from Foetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder, Cerebral Palsy, blindness, a mild intellectual disability and Williams Syndrome.

These women want the world to know that they are adults, not children. "Sometimes people treat us like we are little kids. We wanted to say we are not; we are more than disabled people. The video goes to show we are not novelties," says Aimee. "We are here to change opinions of disabled people in general," she adds.

"This isn't Disneyland, I'm not a novelty, this is as real as it gets," sing The Sisters of Invention in unison on their energetic debut song.

These five talented women met in 2010 when they sang together in a choir run by Tutti, an organisation which supports disabled artists. Tutti saw they had talent and invited them to form a group. Now they perform together two or three times per month, mostly at conferences, and this is how they make a living.

"We started to write our own original songs with the intention to record them instead of just singing covers," says Caroline. She adds "The group became totally different. We want people to really like it and get something out of it."

Producer Michael Ross soon moved to Adelaide to work with the group. He has been working with the band for over four years, to get them to the point where their natural musical talents have created broadcast standard records. He recalls, "I first heard Aimee and Annika sing in 2010, during this very casual lounge room performance, my thinking literally just stopped. I experienced a sober sort of high and was taken into their stories instantly. From there, the songs that would eventually comprise their debut album (due for release in early 2015) sprung forth."

Michelle has cerebral palsy and a mild learning disability and explains, "We tell our story by talking about our ideas as a group and co-write those into original songs, some of us in the group experience anxiety and there are plenty of non-disabled people worldwide that go through that issue. As humans, we all go through some of the same stuff whether you're disabled or not. Us girls relate to each other because we're all in the same boat, in the same room, writing songs from a shared experience as women with disability."

She says they chose the name The Sisters of Invention "because we are like sisters and we support each other on and off stage. For the invention part, we are trying to change people's view of people with disabilities. We are reinventing the rules".

Poignantly, in light of the disability activist and comedian's recent death, all of The Sisters point to Stella Young's comedy as having spurred them on to change their own thinking about disability and in turn to attempt to do the same for their listeners. "You might mean well, but you're not seeing the real us if you don't see our talent, you're not seeing the real us if you look at us as objects of inspiration." says Aimee.

Crucially, they hope to be able to contribute to visibility in the media. Michalle adds "We don't want to be hidden away anymore, if you can't see or hear something, it doesn't exist in peoples minds. The person who is hidden away can be so unfamiliar that you don't how to communicate with them. That is just plain awkward and makes me feel like I don't belong. I'd feel like sinking down into the earth if I didn't mean anything [to] people".

Or, as the sisters put it: "When I turn on the TV, radio or read a news article, it would be nice to see something other than pretty, slim, airbrushed, non-disabled sex-kittens wearing bikinis running along the beach with their hair blowing back while she does sexy moves laying in the sand getting tanned as a wave crashes and washes her bikini off."

The Sisters of Invention - "This Isn't Disneyland"