Crip News v.170

New reports from New York, new works, other news, calls, and events. Intensities at the end.

Feb 10, 2025

There are 3 covers of reports. One features rounded shapes that blend into the white background, like tests of spray paint in warm reds and oranges to cooler blues and purples. Text says, Deaf and disabled artist employment. Research on work from Creatives Rebuild New York. The next report is called Crip Coin. Disability, Public Benefits, and Guaranteed Income. The background has several dollar bills of different sizes. But the bills are abstract, recognizable from their green hues. Each one is transforming into something else. The edges that are usually straight are warped, like the bill is escaping itself. The last report is called Plain Language for Arts Organizations. A guide from Creatives Rebuild New York. There is a world of swirling blue and white vectors, an abstract chaos. Cut out, through what could be an escape hatch, is blank, clear, white space where the title information is. — Employment report design by **Yo-Yo Lin**. Crip Coin and Plain Language report design by **Kevin Gotkin**.

In the fall of 2022, I joined an organization called Creatives Rebuild New York (CRNY) to support the lives and livelihoods of New York’s artists and culture bearers with jobs, cash, research, and advocacy.

CRNY was established as a time-bound pandemic relief initiative. As we sunset our operations, I am releasing 3 new reports that document what I’ve been working on.

In “Deaf and Disabled Artist Employment: Research on Work,” I explain why work doesn’t work for everyone and present interview research about the successes and struggles of artists in the CRNY Artist Employment Program.
“Crip Coin: Disability, Public Benefits, and Guaranteed Income” addresses the vibrant histories of the movement for direct cash transfers in the U.S. I explain why we must increase and protect access to public benefits while using cash and other currencies to confront our interconnected chronic emergencies.
“Plain Language for Arts Organizations” is a guide for arts organizations. It was written with Isaiah Madison and Reid Caplan. This document will help you get started on making written materials more accessible.

A graphic has a blue background with faint gridlines that look like the canvas for a technical drawing and the words ACCESS ACCESS in the middle. One ACCESS is a dotted outline, the other is in large all-caps, solid white text with arrows flanking some of the letters suggesting future edits or movement.

Lastly, you might be interested in the recordings and resources from a program series I ran in 2023 called “Access Access.”

I hope these materials contribute to long-term economic justice work in nonprofit art worlds.

On a personal note, this is the most writing I’ve published since I left academia in 2021. These reports contain my latest thinking about the state of Deaf and disability arts, including the ways I notice the field is reproducing exclusions and stratifications that we can and must dismantle.

If you want to scheme or dream about the future of this stuff, feel free to drop me a line.

NEWS

New Works

Writer Ursula Brantley explains the social and political contexts of Black neurodivergence for AFROPUNK.

A disabled white woman is outside. Her grey hair is splayed out on a white pillow under head. She has sunglasses pushed up above her face and a book lies on her torso. She gives a middle finger to the camera with a severe look. — Photo of **Gunilla Sjövall** by **Rasoul Khorram**.

When I Grow Up, I Will Become a Coat Rack, curated by Clara Pallí Monguilod and Johan Gustavsson, is on view at 1646 (The Hague) through April 13. The show features work by disabled Finnish artist Jenni-Juulia Wallinheimo-Heimonen whose “glittering and futuristic worlds” invite us “to better understand the consequences of excluding disabled people from decision-making and technological innovation.”

Stacks of colourful drawings done on paper from the BEING Studio archive are arranged in rows. There are six stacks visible, some bound up with sticky notes, and some messily stacked on top of one another.

“It was a different world altogether”: A Trip Through BEING Studio’s Archive is on view at Tangled Art + Disability (Toronto) through April 11. The show explores the 23-year history of Ottawa-based BEING Studio. It was organized by BEING artists Analisa Kiskis, Jess Huggett, Claire Nedzela, Mike Hinchcliff, Anna Coloumbe, André Lanthier, and Christine Maveety, with Rachel Gray, fin-xuan, Esther Ignagni, Michael Orsini, Rana El Kadi, Lisa East, Drew McEwan, and Eliza Chandler.
Fo Disability Visibility, researcher and writer Aisling Walsh unpacks Sally Rooney’s 2024 bestseller Intermezzo as “Rain Man for millennials.”
Photo by Finnegan Shannon.
Building On Dana | Patterns In Space is on view through May 19 at the Dalton Gallery of Agnes Scott College (Decatur, GA). The show, curated by Anna Carnes, Nelly Ruby, and Katherine Smith, features work by Finnegan Shannon, Caitlin La Dolce, and Roxie Fricton.
A special issue of the Journal of Arts & Communities on “Transdisciplinarity in Disability, Art and Design” features work by Amanda Cachia, Emma Shercliff, Elaine Speight, Andrew David King, Paul DeFazio, Aaron Richmond, Elizabeth Sweeney, María José García Vizcaíno, Lisa Shawgi, Elinor Rowlands, Eliza Chandler and Megan A. Johnson, Rob Macaisa Colgate, Sara Hendren, Jillian Crochet, and Bree Hadley.
Nickelodeon, in partnership with Disability Belongs, has published an Educators’ Guide to Disability Inclusion and A Family Guide to Disability Inclusion.

In Other News…

Disability justice and inclusive arts organization Embraced Body has announced the artists in the How We Move dance intensive for multiply marginalized disabled dancers: Assaleh Bibi, kumari giles, Devin Hill, Hector Machado, Jackie Robinson, and Zen Spencer.

In a dimly lit church or castle, Lady Gaga and about 10 other dancers are dancing with ornate and freaky black canes.

Disabled pop star Lady Gaga’s new music video for “Abracadabra” features a sequence of cane choreography. In 2009, she first performed with a crutch at the MTV Music Video Awards. As one person on Reddit put it: “She’s really showcasing a diseased ‘jump!’ ‘How high?’ Way of thinking that a lot of people with c-ptsd develop in such a fascinating way.”
Disabled model Aaron Rose Philip was featured in Collina Strada’s recent Autumn/Winter 2025 show in NYC.
Jenna Bainbridge will be the first wheelchair-using actor to play the wheelchair-using character Nessarose in Wicked on Broadway.

CALLS

The LA Arts Community Fire Relief Fund is offering one-time unrestricted grants of up to $10,000 to artists and arts workers, including those with disabilities, affected by the wildfires. Apply by Tuesday, Feb. 18 at 5 pm PT. More here.
Women Enabled International is hiring a (Senior) Program Officer, Advocacy and Accountability. Apply as soon as possible before Feb. 26. More here.
Accessible Festivals is accepting applications for its Dan Grover Memorial Ticket Grant Program that grants free access to recreational experiences like concerts, festivals, and conventions for individuals with disabilities and their loved ones. More here.
Field Projects has announced its Alt Txt Open Call guest curated by Angelica Aranda and Tereza Chanaki for emerging and mid-career artists. Apply by March 2. More here.

EVENTS

Leave Sick Leave by Resting Museum

Wednesday, Feb. 12, 2 - 3:30pm CET, in-person at the Theory Stairs at Gerrit Rietveld Academie (Amsterdam)

“Sick” as an adjective so universally used for degeneration is also repurposed in English slang to mean, ‘cool’ or ‘amazing’. In this lecture, Resting Museum will be deliberating upon several interconnected ideas from their art and research practices, particularly of the term ‘sickness’ in contexts of culture, institutional labour, and protest. This also draws from Shreyasi and Priyanka’s experience as an archivist in a design archive, and pedagogue at a research university, respectively. Resting Museum is interested in ableisms, both linguistically and infrastructurally, and the formation of certain ‘publics’ physically and virtually through practices of sitting, resting, and participating together. Featuring a foreword by Pernilla Manjula Phillip and moderated by Menko Dijksterhuis.

Access to Work

Thursday, Feb. 13, 11:00 am – 12:30 pm GMT, in-person at Wellcome Collection (London) or online

When it comes to work, an accessible approach benefits us all. Join us for a panel discussion exploring the relationship between labour, art, disability, parenting and interdependent networks of care. The conversation will be rooted in disability justice and co-produced by artist Jamila Prowse in collaboration with the Art Working Parents Alliance.

“Making Our Stage: Disabled Artists at Work”

Tuesday, Feb. 11, 5 - 6:30 pm PT, in-person at UCLA

Join the Dancing Disability Lab for Alice Sheppard’s lecture. Alice Sheppard is visiting UCLA as a 2024-25 academic year Regents’ Lecturer.

Disruptions in the Present: Art Historians on Biennials, Ecology, and Ableism

Wednesday, Feb. 12, 6 - 8pm ET, in-person at Printed Matter (NYC)

Join us at Printed Matter for a conversation on art history’s assessment of itself in the present moment with writers Katie Anania, Amanda Cachia, and Paloma Checa-Gismero.

There’s a tilted horizon and thin lines that shoot out from a vanishing point like a sunset (the usual Crip News header) except the colors are inverted and it’s a black background with white lines, like nighttime. Big text floats over the land-line: INTENSITIES BELOW. Smaller text under: we could breathe, hold the breath and let it out slow, mist the plants, or notice a sensation, get water, leave the screen entirely, nap

CHAOS, ONGOING

As the Trump administration’s ‘shoot first, aim later’ approach to leadership continues to overwhelm the news, it’s becoming clearer that the ‘ideologies’ under attack include disability.

For years, disabled advocates have pressed for disability to be part of DEI work. It’s surreal that this is obvious to the ableist power-brokers making headlines:

Trump blamed the recent deadly plane crash in DC on the FAA’s diversity policies, claiming the agency is “actively recruiting workers who suffer severe intellectual disabilities, psychiatric problems, and other mental and physical conditions.” An array of disability and veterans’ organizations have strongly denounced the false claims.
The staff of the National Science Foundation are using a list of keywords to identify active projects that violate Trump’s early executive orders. “Disability” is on the list.
Kanye West, in his most recent tear against political correctness, tweeted “I TURNED DOWN 3 PHOTOS THIS WEEK WITH MAKE A WISH KIDS IN WHEELCHAIRS” last week.

White text on red says, Medicaid is under attack! Tell your elected officials “hands off our Medicaid!”

The prospect of deep cuts to Medicaid funding is prompting letter and phone call campaigns to elected officials. DREDF’s recent action alert has quick links for contacting your elected officials.

To briefly note some other news items from the chaos of it all…

For the first time in the US, a regional public health board in Idaho has banned its clinics from administering Covid vaccines to its 350,000 residents.
The H5N1 bird flu may be mutating into more dangerous forms, but the CDC is actively withholding data that it accidentally released and then retracted last week.
HIV/AIDS activists shut down a street outside the State Department last week to protest the funding freeze at PEPFAR, a program that provides global treatment and prevention. Also, the NIH has ordered researchers to halt a prevention program for trans youth of color.
Trump has disbanded the President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities. The Smithsonian has announced it will close its diversity office. And the NEA is scrapping its Challenge America grants program focused on small arts organizations working in underserved communities.

If you’re looking to keep closer tabs on federal political news…

Deaf author Sara Nović is publishing a weekly “Disability Rights Watch” where they keep track of dangerous new actions.
And DREDF is hosting a “Disability Community Briefing” about how to stop the attack on Section 504 this Wednesday, Feb. 12 from 9:30 - 10:45am PT on Zoom.