Crip News v.220

New works, other news, calls, and events.

NEWS

New Works

• The Disability Justice Initiative at the Center for American Progress recently released a toolkit to support organizers ensuring states comply with an updated 504 rule that is supposed to bolster disability discrimination.

• Last week, New Disabled South released a report called “Project Eugenics: The Rollback of Disability Rights,” authored by Chief Research Officer Kiana Jackson and Associate Director of Data and Research Shannon Stubblefield. Per the plain language summary, “The harm comes from:

  • slowly removing civil‑rights protections

  • cutting accessibility programs

  • making benefits and care harder to get

  • Long delays, denials, and confusing paperwork are policy choices that cause real suffering”

• Denarii Grace, Editor of Rooted in Rights, recently published an essay called “Living Disability Justice and Fat Liberation in Such a Time As This.”

Works by 2025 Turner Prize winner Nnena Kalu.

• We Contain Multitudes, up at Dundee Contemporary Arts (Scotland) through April 26, 2026, features artistry by Andrew Gannon, Nnena Kalu, Daisy Lafarge, and Jo Longhurst, “each of whom makes work from a position of disability if not necessarily directly about it.”

Carbon Movement performance by Invisible Practice, created by Ainsley Hillyard and Connor Yuzwenko-Martin (2023). Photo by Darin Gregson.

• The newest issue of Performance Matters, edited by Pil Hansen and Jessica Watkin, features 14 articles exploring “Dramaturgies of Accessibility.”

• Singer-songwriter Sophia Yau-Weeks released a single off her upcoming album called “Nobody’s Laughing” about the “great grief and self-reflection” from feeling isolated with Long Covid on her 26th birthday.

In Other News…

• Ai-jen Poo and Lydia Storie, executive producers of the feature film Take Me Home that recently premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, have announced Give Not Take Media, a production company for “film and TV projects that touch upon themes of care, aging and disability.”

• France has extended its disability employment rules (6% employment objective for employers with 20 or more staff) to cover all hotels.

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CALLS

• Disability Culture Lab invites disabled writers and creators to submit essays and illustrated work that reflect disability culture, community, and resistance for a new publication called Disability Culture Currents. Submit by Feb. 20 for publication in launch week (March 2).

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EVENTS

• Neuroqueer Lyric Workshop with heidi andrea restrepo rhodes [waitlist]
  Friday, Feb. 20, 2:30pm ET
  Presented by The Remote Body. How can we turn toward neurodivergent modes of sensing and relating to space and time as openings for cultivating our poetic writing and artistic expression in ways more vibrant, strange, surprising, and transformative?

• Disability Rights, Education, Activism, & Mentoring Group for College Students with Disabilities (DREAM) Town Hall
  Wednesday, Feb. 18, 6 - 7:30pm ET, on Zoom
  The DREAM Town Hall is an opportunity for disabled students, educators, advocates, and community members to come together to share updates, reflect on our collective work, and engage in open conversation about DREAM’s priorities and future direction. Your voice and presence matter.

• Vis/Ability
  Thursday, Feb. 19, 7 - 8pm ET, on Zoom
  A conversation with Vivien Hillgrove (Director: Vivien’s Wild Ride), Sheridan O’Donnell (Director: Rising Phoenix: A New Revolution), and Eric M. Ivey (Editor: Vivien’s Wild Ride) about film directing with a visual disability, working with a mixed-ability film-team, and the importance of care-work before, during, and after the film is made. Moderated by award-winning filmmaker James LeBrecht (Co-Director with Nicole Newnham: Crip Camp). Presented by BAVC Media, Mom’s Head Films, and Mu Films. Co-presented with FWD-Doc.

• Introduction to Disability Justice and Accessible Pedagogy with Sami Schalk
  Tuesday, Feb. 17, 6:30 - 8:30pm ET, on Zoom

  The Southern Connecticut State University Critical Disability Studies program is hosting a series of 5 webinars this spring, starting with a talk by Prof. Sami Schalk, author of Bodyminds Reimagined: (Dis)ability, Race, and Gender in Black Women’s Speculative Fiction (2018) and Black Disability Politics (2022).

• Hospital Aesthetics: Disability, Care, and the Medical Imaginary
  Thursday, Feb. 19, 4 - 5:15pm CT, in-person at the University of Illinois Chicago
  Join Bodies of Work, UIC Disability Cultural Center, Access Living, Department of Disability and Human Development, and Disability Culture Activism Lab for a conversation exploring the concept of hospital aesthetics—how medical spaces, technologies, and systems shape embodied experience, representation, and care—through the lens of contemporary disability art. The event will feature a presentation by Amanda Cachia, introducing key ideas from her book Hospital Aesthetics, followed by responses from artists Riva Lehrer and Sandie Yi, both of whom are featured in the publication.