<aside> <img src="/icons/groups_gray.svg" alt="/icons/groups_gray.svg" width="40px" /> Facilitators: Nish Doshi, Anu Priya

Collaborators: Tove Vrbnakova, Zoé Miniconi Bouhassira, Dee Woods

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How can we create spaces where disabled people can feel present, loved and belong? How can we build disability justice and liberation into the ‘sustainable future’ we’re dreaming of? How do we centre liberation, deep connection and “life-affirming infrastructures” into our practice of changemaking?

In conducting the Sustainable Future review for the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust, Anu Priya and Laura Miller heard how activist and campaigning communities and organisations often created disabling spaces. At best, they found that access was an afterthought; at worst access was seen as “too costly”. Despite disabled people being on the frontline of climate chaos across the world - and climate change is a disabling process - disabled people are often not allowed a space within movement organising.

There has been a strong cry for spaces of community, connection, healing, rest, joy and radical visioning for a future that lies outside our current paradigms. For this to happen, these spaces need to be created and people need to be well-resourced to attend. This will allow communities to dream together, vision for the future, find commonalities and support each other. This not only serves as a function of safety for communities but also moves beyond reform and towards liberation. - Voices from the Ground, Anu Priya and Laura Miller

Processes of exclusion are also processes of isolation. As access needs are so often not met, disabled activists and community organisers find themselves left out of spaces, and therefore unable to build community and/or connections. Existing within movements is a struggle, and we are constant asked to adapt and adjust in ways which do not meet our access needs - resulting in more harm and therefore more isolation.

We wanted to show that organising can be different. We wanted to dream into life a space for disabled people to meet, connect, heal, learn and feel able to participate as their “full selves”.

Following on from the Voices from the Ground report’s recommendations, Sustainable Disabled Futures was born; a gathering space for disabled activists and changemakers to connect and convene without a pre-defined purpose or set of outcomes - guided by emergence and embodying compassionate abolitionism.

Participating in the Sustainable Disabled Futures gathering was an invitation for disabled people to build the future we dream of into the present. And the result was liberatory.

“When I see disability justice flourishing, it comes from years of relationship building and building trust, from fucking up, making repair, learning from mistakes, and showing up for each other.” - Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha

Guiding Principles

Underlying our entire approach was the Disability Rights motto “Nothing about us without us”. We shaped our gatherings around these principles:

• We understand and believe in Disability Justice (as defined by Sins Invalid).
• We respect and follow the Social Model of Disability (that we are disabled by society and not a sum of medical deficits).
• We understand and appreciate that all Disabled people have had different struggles and successes, and we reject any form of disability hierarchy.
• We understand this convening space is a place for sharing difficult and uncomfortable experiences, and therefore that we respect each person’s right to privacy and do not ask or share any information publicly without consent.
• No-one has to declare how they are impaired to be included in this space; we trust that this space is by and for Disabled people.
• We explore multiple ways of participating in this space to allow for the many different ways we are able to express ourselves, sometimes with text, sometimes with conversation or music, sometimes with creative activities, sometimes with movement.
• Be curious, not judgemental. We appreciate that all of us coming to this space have had differing life experiences. Instead of presuming harm, we ask questions to help us understand better.
• We care for one another, and we celebrate each other’s joy.

Methodology