AlterNarratives: Disability Culture Conversation & Makerspace — Chosen Family / Family of Origin

RSVP: https://go.uic.edu/AlterNarrativesDCC_DCAL

Event Description:
We encourage the evolution of our own narratives.

AlterNarratives is a play on alternatives and narratives — alternative modes for telling our stories, and alternatives to the stories that others tell about us.

Join DCAL + DCC for conversations and a makerspace where you can spend creative time doing what you enjoy: eating, writing, artmaking, reading, cooking, chatting, resting, anything! You are invited to enter the space, enjoy the company, and create art in response to prompts/ themes or create your own projects — all in community with others.

• 4:00-5:00 Makerspace
• 5:00-6:00 Conversation

Access Information: CART and ASL provided. Please request other access measures as needed! Contact person: Sandie Yi <cyi@saic.edu>

Who can participate? Anyone is welcome! This space hopes to center the experiences of UIC and SAIC students who identify as disabled, but all members of our communities are welcome– people exploring disability identity, nondisabled allies, faculty, staff, or community members.

Organizers:
This program is a collaboration between the University of Illinois Chicago’s Disability Cultural Center and the School of the Art Institute at Chicago’s Disability Culture Activism Lab. This program is co-sponsored by the Arts and Culture Project at Access Living, an independent living center for people with disabilities.

The UIC Disability Cultural Center is one of the first university centers organized around disability community, identity, and culture. The DCC offers programs to highlight disability as a core aspect of our lived experience, exploring intersectional identities; DCC facilitates conversations and community spaces for building belonging and developing disability culture; and through collective inquiry and skill-building, DCC is committed to empowering the UIC community and beyond in recognizing and resisting ableism.

Disability Culture Activism Lab (DCAL) is housed under the department of art therapy and counseling at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. DCAL is a platform for creative advocacy projects and disability allyship training. In partnership with Access Living’s Arts and Culture Project, DCAL provides teaching and hands-on learning guided by disability justice–a framework that examines disability in connection to other forms of oppressions and identities. Using a peer support and collective care model, disability community members and art therapy graduate students collaborate as disability culture makers for social change.

This program is partially supported by a grant from the Illinois Arts Council Agency.