Event report: Jessenia attended this great evening at the Lesbians Who Tech & Allies :: Queer. Inclusive. Badass. Mixer!! It’s always a good time when you’re surrounded by awesome people!! 🌈
Able Player is a free, open source HTML media player created with accessibility in mind by me, University of Washington technology accessibility specialist Terrill Thompson, and supported in part by AccessComputing. Version 4.0 was released in April and includes three important new features.
Claudia Alick had the pleasure of speaking with Emerge July 2023 Hybrid Disability Studies Workshop for Disabled Activists, Artists, Cultural Producers, Filmmakers, and Academics. The fellows are developing deeply exciting projects on topics of access, sex work, colonialism, anti-Blackness, Anti-fatness, cross-movement work and more. They are working in a variety of modalities producing documentaries, zines, and live performance. Claudia discussed their artistic practice, the messy spots they encounter and their tactics for working through them. They also discussed strategies for implementing disability justice in both your work and their organizational culture and what scholar-activism means to them. There was so much love and energy and excitement. It was accessible, disability centered and full of awesome people doing awesome things.
Calling Up Justice, a transmedia social justice arts organization, is dedicated to creating fair systems both internally and in collaboration with other institutions. We understand the increasing instability faced by our communities and partners due to the pandemic, economic uncertainties, and growing aggression against marginalized groups. Society often assumes specific abilities, and arts organizations demand non-stop work as if they expect superhuman abilities. To counteract these challenges, we prioritize crip time as a guiding principle in our scheduling and staffing. We also implement resilience staffing to ensure that multiple people can fulfill each role, which leads to shared leadership models and hiring backup individuals to step in if someone needs to step out, much like understudies in theater. We focus on growing and developing the skills and abilities of our team members, constantly recruiting and building new relationships to maintain a healthy pool of potential leaders. We recognize that everything is impermanent and plan accordingly, acknowledging that people’s presence cannot always be guaranteed. This is why shared leadership and developing leaders over time are essential.
The history of LGBTQ+ pride, starting with Marsha P. Johnson and extending to the present day, is a testament to the ongoing struggle for equality, visibility, and acceptance for the LGBTQ+ community. Let’s continue the timeline:
Claudia Alick held an empowering talk about disability identity with the BACKBONES Youth Summer Program. BACKBONES connects people with spinal cord injuries and their families with events and one on one meet-ups. The ten youth participants shared their stories about how they entered the disability community. Claudia shared history of disability movement, disability justice concepts, and accessibility vocabulary that allowed the group to talk about disability identity and their world. We closed with a conversation inspired by The Justice Producers Collaborative about how our disabled identities inform our work in the world and make us uniquely qualified. It was awesome to end reflecting on disabled innovation, resialance, perseverance, creativity, and advocacy. It’s a cool accessible program and we were honored to participate.
Today, I stand before you not only as an artist but as a fierce proponent of inclusion, equity, and justice in the arts. Each one of us has a role to play in reshaping the narrative, in dismantling the barriers that have held us back for far too long. Today, I invite you to join me on this transformative journey.
As Shakespeare said, All the World’s a Stage and we are all players on that stage. In the metaphorical theater of life, we each take on roles, navigating through the stages set for us. As we interact with the world, we encounter various scripts – some are written and explicit, while others are unwritten and implicit. These scripts define societal norms, expectations, and structures that can either facilitate or hinder access for individuals from diverse backgrounds and abilities. Just as actors collaborate to devise a performance, society must come together to devise access.
Calling Up Justice recommends texts for liberation and empowerment. These texts are recommended by Calling Up Justice participants in our online spaces. The following text was recommended during a session of Dis/Rep 2023.
Claudia Alick attended Vision Quilt’s student exhibition where youth address gun violence through art math and humanities studies. Founder Cathy Deforest introduced Claudia to teachers who helped design the curriculum and students showed off their art. She also introduced Claudia to Kenny Johnson an award winning athlete, victim of gun violence, and disabled community member.
Copyright © 2023 Calling Up! • Site Design by MULTO.com
Calling Up Justice is fiscally sponsored by Intersection for the Arts, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, which allows us to offer you tax deductions for your contributions. Please make checks payable to Intersection for the Arts, and write “Calling Up Justice” in the memo line. This ensures that you’ll receive an acknowledgement letter for tax purposes, and your donation will be available for our project.
