Abstract
This interdisciplinary study asks what barriers to the arts and artistry exist both on the ground and online in Canada for people with disabilities and examines creative, pedagogical, and technological interventions aimed at expanding access both structurally and epistemologically. The first paper draws on long-form interview research with artists to describe the day-to-day lives of Deaf, disabled, and mad culture-makers surviving and thriving through “under the table” work amid the structural constraints of neoliberal ableism (and other oppressions). The second paper focuses on the implementation of disability justice-driven Relaxed Performance curricula across three university programs (theatre, fashion, music) in the Canadian province of Ontario and its impact on accessible performance building within and beyond the institution. Following a cultural pivot online due to COVID-19, the third paper examines the creation of a Canada-wide open data arts listing directed by Deaf, disabled, and mad people who must now engage with the arts entirely online. Paired with this radical shift toward online disability art and culture creation, the fourth presentation theorizes TechnoAccess—a concept working against the universality that “techno-ableism” (Shew, 2017) implies—to explore the proliferated ways disabled artists hack, tinker and repurpose technology in order to centre diverse and expansive disability experiences in the creation of and engagement with artworks. Building on linkages across creative, pedagogical, and technological strategies for action, this colloquium attends to the critical, and often urgent, ways in which disabled people are developing new, creative tools and critical research approaches to sustaining themselves, and disability arts, in Canada.
Presenters
Fady ShanoudaSocial Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Postdoctoral Fellow, School of Health Sciences, City, University of London, United Kingdom Chelsea Jones
Assistant Professor, Brock University, Canada Kim Collins
Student, PhD student , Dalla Lana School of Public Health University of Toronto, Canada Eliza Chandler
Ryerson University Carla Rice
Full Professor, College of Social and Applied Human Sciences, University of Guelph, Canada
Details
Presentation Type
Theme
The Arts in Social, Political, and Community Life
KEYWORDS
Disability arts, Deaf arts, Mad arts, Technoaccess, Livelihoods, Relaxed Performance
