Crip News v.110
Lots! Today's post will be clipped, so click through at the bottom for the full issue. Thanks for being here.
NEWS
International Day of Persons with Disabilities
Yesterday, December 3rd, marked another year of events organized around the globe, first commemorated in 1992 at the United Nations General Assembly.
This year’s theme, “United in action to rescue and achieve the Sustainable Development Goals for, with and by persons with disabilities,” was the focus of a 3-hour program at the UN headquarters in NYC.
New Works
This week, Sony releases its “Access controller” for PlayStation, “a round, customizable gadget that can rest on a table or wheelchair tray and can be configured in myriad ways.”
Playwright and disability activist Vici Wreford-Sinnott writes about changes in disability theatre now that, for the first time, 3 different shows in Newcastle, U.K. will have live captioning for every performance.
For Refinery29, Hannah Turner writes about the therapeutic links between chronic pain and tattoos.
“Disabled Domesticities and the Politics of Bathrooms: Architectural Enactments of Interdependence” by scholar Ignacio G. Galán has been published in Architectures of Care: From the Intimate to the Common
edited by Brittany Utting.
The Squeaky Wheel: Canada is coming to TV screens in 2024. The show is “a satirical, half-hour news format which pokes fun at the ableist society people with disabilities face every day,” based on Steven Verdile's popular web publication The Squeaky Wheel.
UCLA recently announced its Disability Studies undergraduate major, the first at a public institution in California.
STIM CINEMA, “a new touring exhibition and moving image installation exploring repetitive actions and autistic experiences, tracking back to the earliest forms of moving image, and the birth of cinema and cinematic language,” is at Nottingham Castle Museum & Art Gallery through April 14, 2024. The show is by The Neurocultures Collective (Georgia Bradburn, Benjamin Brown, Sam Chown-Ahern, Robin Elliott-Knowles, Lucy Walker), with artist and filmmaker Steven Eastwood and an accompanying commission by Sam Metz.
In honor of the UK’s Disability History Month (Nov. 16 - Dec. 16), Lucy Webster pays tribute to disability icon Rosa May Billinghurst:
New Honors
The Shorty Awards, an award show focused on the best of social media, recently named the winners of its 8th annual Impact Awards, an international competition “dedicated to honoring the most purposeful and impactful work organizations are doing to make the world a better place.” In the “Disability Awareness” category, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts won the top prize and the Audience Honor for the access ecologies designed for the Summer for the City Festival, including Kevin Gotkin’s work as Disability Artistry Guest Curator.
The Media Access Awards, a celebration of disability in media, was hosted by Oscar winners Marlee Matlin and Troy Kotsur in early November. Now, the recording from the awards’ first-ever broadcast is available on PBS. The show’s honorees include Simon Cowell, Oscar winner Davis Guggenheim (Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie), Lauren Spencer (The Sex Lives of College Girls), Emmy winner Paris Barclay (Station 19), and the series New Amsterdam.
Unlimited has announced its 2023 shortlist for the UK and International Open Awards. The list features 11% of the total entries, meant to boost a wide range of projects that demonstrate the vibrancy and depth of disability artistry in the UK and in partnerships abroad. Shortlisted artists will now submit their second stage applications and winning artists will be announced in March 2024.
Disabled scholar and curator Amanda Cachia is among the new cohort of Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grantees for a book project called Hospitable Aesthetics: Rescripting Medical Images of Disability.
The Holidays Moment
Disability Scoop reports that malls across the U.S. are hosting “Caring Santa” and “Sensitive Santa” events for disabled kiddos with lower lighting, reduced music volume, and better line management.
If you’re looking for disability-related gift ideas, check out…
Emily Ladau & Kate Caldwell’s 2023 Disability Holiday Gift Guide
Kendra Winchester’s list of the Best Disability Books of 2023
Last year’s Crip News holiday gift guide I assembled with Louise Hickman.
Across Asia, some customers at a wellness brand called LAC will receive umbrellas with works by disabled artists, a partnership with Arts & Disability Singapore.
CALLS
Sins Invalid is hiring a part-time Program Manager. More here.
As UCLA’s National Arts & Disability Center transitions into a “California-focused center that will continue to provide valuable resources, advocacy, and support to artists with disabilities and arts organizations in the state,” the organization is seeking survey input on how to best serve its communities. More here.
EVENTS
Revisiting Corpus: A World AIDS Day Celebration
TODAY, Dec. 4, 5 - 7:30pm ET, on Zoom
2023 marks the 20th anniversary of Corpus, an HIV prevention publication supported by AIDS Project Los Angeles. Between 2003 and 2008, seven issues were developed with guest editors and distributed bi-annually for free across the United States in a circulation of 5,000. Corpus was a creative act of defiance against an industry intent on defining and containing with little say from those people living with and most affected by HIV. Corpus was a strategy for retaking HIV discourse, a discourse that was otherwise conspicuously and ironically silent about sex. Corpus was a pre-social media, printed object of beauty meant to be held, handled, studied, caressed, and come back to again and again for renourishment. Corpus was both censored and held, much in the same way that our bodies have been. Now, nearly 20 years since the first publication, Corpus’ importance is worth revisiting.
Addressing Our Histories: Disability & LGBTQ+ Communities on the Path to Solidarity
TODAY, Dec. 4, 6 - 8pm ET, on Zoom
The history between the LGBTQ+ community and the disability community is often at odds with each other. Historically, LGBTQ+ identities were viewed as mental illnesses, and many within the LGBTQ+ community rightfully rejected this. However, debility and harm from LGBTQ+ oppression and discrimination leading to worse health outcomes can cause disability. In fact, despite trans and non-binary people being explicitly listed within the ADA as unable to qualify for ADA protections, developing legal precedent finds that gender dysphoria can be considered a disability under the Americans with Disabilities Act. There is much to unpack within these histories, and our panelists will thoroughly explain how these communities have been pinned against each other. Panelists will also speak to how these histories have led to the anti-LGBTQ+ and ableist legislation we are seeing today passed in Florida and across the country. We want to uplift the experiences of disabled & LGBTQ+ identifying people and discuss the often-unspoken history between these two communities as a way to regain power and comfort in these identities.
Autistic Utopias: Disability Justice and the Shaping of Utopian Drives Through Drama Therapy
Sunday, Dec. 10, 12 - 1:30pm ET, on Zoom
What would it look like to imagine or conceive of an autistic utopia? How can drama therapists who work with people on the autism spectrum support the creation of spaces that are not allistic in values, intention and aesthetics? Our panel, consisting of all neurodivergent identified therapists and non-therapists, will consider the idea of autistic utopias in drama therapy and how they can potentially support the goals of disability justice.
I was wondering why the elevator picture with red dots and lines didn't have a description that I could mouse over like the other images?