L Morris

Scholarship/Research:

Cultivating Community Care: Perspectives from Queer and Disabled Communities. 

Description:

A six-part, art-based workshop series which invited mad/Deaf/disabled and/or 2SLGBTQ+ emerging artists ages 18-29 from the GTA to explore community care. Co-facilitated by Lauren “L” Morris, with the help of Emily McMillan and Katie “Dee” Luu, other queer and/or disabled identified artists, the workshop series draws on L’s experience with social justice scholarship, workshop coordination, community resource development, and active art practice. 

Drawing on co-facilitators’ experience in collage, acrylic painting, and sculpture, each week a series of creative prompts and guiding questions was used to facilitate participant creative exploration and group discussion. All workshops will be held at the Disability Publics Lab at Toronto Metropolitan University, a barrier free and wheelchair accessible space equipped with audiovisual recording and projection capabilities to facilitate remote participation if needed.

L’s scholarship engages in social innovation by challenging dominant care discourses and the exclusion of mad/Deaf/disabled and 2SLGBTQ+ perspectives by engaging in knowledge co-creation and digital dissemination that seeks to transform how we understand care. Speaking back to biomedical models of care and historical legacies of institutionalization and psychiatrization that frame mad/Deaf/disabled and 2SLGBTQ+ communities as unable to care for ourselves, this project is an invitation to imagine care differently, from our own perspectives at mad/Deaf/disabled and 2SLGBTQ+ communities. In doing so, this project seeks to visualize what systemic change around community care practices might look like through arts-based practices by engaging mad/Deaf/disabled and 2SLGBTA+ participants in collaborative, participatory art-based knowledge (re)creation around community care. Rather than positioning mad/Deaf/disabled and 2SLGBTQ+ communities as research subjects, this project seeks to engage in reciprocal and mutually respectful relationships with participants, where rather than simply extracting information from participants through a research study, participants are invited to actively co-create knowledge and engage in community knowledge dissemination. 

As a free, arts-based workshop, this project created opportunities for emerging artist and other mad/Deaf/disabled and/or 2SLGBTQ+ community members interested in the arts to engage in a series of art workshops and skill development, removing barriers to participation by providing supplies and access accommodations such as a barrier free workshop, facilitator supported activities, live transcription, and other access needs (such as a transportation fund). The project also created opportunities for participants to publicly display their work through and receive an honorarium for their participation, intervening in the under-representation of mad/Deaf/disabled and 2SLGBTQ+ artists. 

Funding:

$5,000 towards participant honoraria and workshop expenses (e.g., face masks and hand sanitizer, art supplies, snacks, etc.).