Disability Art and Culture Project’s Community Listening Session and community survey helped us learn a significant amount about our community and its interests, including the following:
- identities and cultures of DACP community members
- ways that our community members think about issues of racial and disability justice and the arts
- information about how our community members would like DACP to move forward in intersectional justice work, DACP vision, and our programming
- contacts in the community.
Read our report by downloading the pdfs here:
What did we learn?
- We absolutely need to address the intersection of racial and disability justice, to make space for all of us to be our full selves.
- White disabled people’s racism is a problem in our community and disabled people of color often feel marginalized in both people of color and disability community spaces.
- Both white people and people of color, disabled and nondisabled, see a need for listening and communication between communities.
- There was enthusiasm for DACP’s intersectional work, in both the survey and the listening session.
- There is interest in supporting disabled people of color social space and organizational leadership.
- The community wants DACP to acknowledge and make space for the complexity of our experiences and identities.
- There are varying levels of comfort with and understanding of the complexities of intersectional race and disability justice, and future programming needs to take that into account.
- The community would like DACP to continue building relationships with other organizations interested in similar goals, i.e. racial justice and disability justice in the arts.
- DACP community wants DACP to continue the programming it has.
- There is strong interest in more frequent, regular arts programming.
- The community largely has a nuanced understanding of disability art and social justice, and wants DACP to continue to push the boundaries of art and disability culture.
What are we doing with what we learned?
DACP is committed to continuing our exploration of intersections of race and disability. We’re working on programming that addresses intersectional social justice issues. We’re working on ways to support our community’s leadership development, and especially the artistic development and leadership of disabled people of color in our community. Watch this space! Among other things, we will ask for your help planning and pulling off programming, developing you as leaders, and we’ll ask for your input as we develop our anti-oppression philosophies and policies.
We’re starting a life-drawing group!
We’re planning a Disability Studies reading group as a nonfiction and fiction, inclusive, intersectional community building and educational project, launching this spring!
One volunteer moved into leadership by planning a disability comedy movie night that drew over 50 people from multiple disability communities and nondisabled communities. Another volunteer is planning an academic symposium on race and disability in visual culture. Reflecting on the year’s conversations has led us to more action, both within the organization and in the programming we will offer the community.