Crip Resistance: Holding space, Building Community
Ort Gallery are thrilled to announce Resting Up Collective’s biggest programme to date!
Join Resting Up Collective (RUC) and Ort Gallery for Crip Resistance: Holding Space, Building Community, an online programme of events exploring disabled, sick, mad, and crip modes of resistance and remote community care.
From February to May 2025, this interdisciplinary collaboration will feature a series of online events including creative workshops, artist talks, live performances, and film screenings.
The programme will include a print and online publication documenting and expanding on the programme's themes. Finally, RUC will curate a book collection for Birmingham Resistance Library.
20% of the event and publication proceeds will support Gaza Sunbirds.
This programme will be running on Crip Time. As a result, we endeavour to reschedule events should any of our contributors not feel well / experience a change in capacity in the lead up to and / or on the day of the event itself.
About the Organisers:
RUC—resting up collective is an interdisciplinary group of chronically ill and disabled friends practising slowness/crip time to create, think, and interrupt neoliberal pressures and expectations on the body. We offer workshops and spaces for the crip community. We are running our second iteration of Postcards from Flaresville, a slow mail chain of care-full postcards from one resting space to another. We are slow works in progress, open to all who wish to join and help dream/organise.
Ort Gallery is a visual arts and poetry organisation based in Birmingham. We are on a social mission to redefine contemporary visual arts by rejecting the sector’s exclusivity, centring access and equity, and providing inclusive high quality art experiences. We support this mission with a care-centred approach (aka Warmth) and give artists, team members and participants autonomy over their projects.
Ort believes everyone should have access to high quality art experiences and aims to meet this standard by providing exhibition and professional development opportunities to artists, creatives and community members across all backgrounds.
We place Warmth at the heart of all our work. We recognise that galleries can be sites of oppression which centre and reproduce white normative and elitist ways of “being’ under the supposed guise of neutrality. We are interested in challenging this head on; whilst also committing to creating space for local artists and marginalised community groups across Birmingham and beyond to play an active role in shaping such practices, in the hopes of transforming ourselves, our city, and the wider arts ecology.
Programme of Events 〰️
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Saturday 8 February 2025, 13:00 - 17:30
To celebrate the launch of Crip Resistance: Holding Space, Building Community, Resting Up Collective have curated a selection of books on themes of disability, care and resistance which will be available for loan during the upcoming Browse, Borrow, Return session (13:00 - 16:30) held by Birmingham Resistance Library. To view full collection click here
We invite you to join us for this Read and Reflect Circle (16:30 - 17:30) as facilitated by Lucy Lopez and Sahjan Kooner of BRL, where they will be leading a discussion on an extract from Care Work: Dream/ing Disability Justice by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha.
All registered participants will receive a pdf version of this extract via email.
About the book
In this collection of essays, Lambda Literary Award-winning writer and longtime activist and performance artist Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha explores the politics and realities of disability justice, a movement that centers the lives and leadership of sick and disabled queer, trans, Black, and brown people, with knowledge and gifts for all.
This event will be the only in person event as part of this programme.
BSL interpretation will be available for the duration of the Read and Reflect Circle.
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Thursday 20 February 2025, 18:00 - 20:00
Partners in art and life, Charlie Fitz and Oscar Vinter will discuss how their relationship of interdependent care has influenced their collaborative and independent art practice, specifically their filmmaking. This discussion will be followed by a screening of several of their short art films. The films explore dancing, masking, ableism, medical bureaucracy, care, the body, identity, hysteria and the occult. The session will end with an informal Q&A discussion.
Content warning: some of the films contain flashing images and may trigger those with photosensitive epilepsy. There are also mentions in the films of medical trauma and gaslighting.
Films to be screened
COL5A/FBN2 (2019) (8 minutes 36 seconds) by Oscar Vinter
Dance the Body Electric (2024) (5 minutes 40 seconds) by Oscar Vinter
I do nothing (2019) by Fitz & Vinter (1 minute 55 seconds)
Honey, it's my Hindbrain by Fitz & Vinter (2018) (1 minute 26 seconds)
Hysteric Witch short, by Fitz, work-in-progress (timings tbc)
Access
This event will include comfort breaks throughout its duration as well as live BSL interpretation. This programme will be running on Crip Time. As a result, we endeavour to reschedule events should any of our contributors not feel well / experience a change in capacity in the lead up to and / or on the day of the event itself.
TicketsIn order to ensure this programme is accessible to all, we have implemented a three tiered ticketing system: Pay As You Feel, Standard tickets priced at £5.00 (plus eventbrite fee) as well as Solidarity Tickets priced at £10 (plus eventbrite fee).
If you would like to attend this event but cannot afford to purchase a paid ticket please get in touch with us directly at info@ortgallery.co.uk
About the Artists
Oscar Vinter (he/they) is an afropean neurodivergent artist, composer and filmmaker. www.oscarvinter.com
Charlie Fitz (she/they) is a sick and disabled artist, arts practitioner, writer and member of Resting Up Collective. www.CharlieFitzArtist.co.uk
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Tuesday 8 April 2025, 16:00 - 17:30
‘The world and the living are nothing but a halo, an echo of the relation that binds them together.’ - Emanuele Coccia (The Life of Plants: A Metaphysics of Mixture, 2018)
Prompted by their experience of visiting landscapes in recurring dreams, Sop invites participants on a ‘walk/shop’ – where you don’t have to move, and which you can take part in from your bed, sofa or living room floor.
Using sound, somatic exercises and herbal tools, and prioritising comfort and autonomy, you will be guided into a liminal state in which to take a walk through a landscape from your own memory or dreams.
Reflecting on your experience, you will then be invited to note down features, sensations, emotions and any narrative from your ‘walk’, and share this with your fellow walkers, if desired. In doing so we can attempt to collectivise the individual experiences, travelling together between our dreamed or remembered landscapes.All participants will receive materials via post.Upon registering, please email your postal address to the following email address alongside email confirmation of your booking:
REGISTER HERE
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Wednesday 16 April 2025, 18:00 - 20:00
In this online workshop, Phoebe will guide you through a short history of the importance of charms, and her own work ‘Endometriosis Charms’, before you can make your own. You will use embossing and engraving techniques to create your own hanging charms or mobiles out of foil metal and ribbon, inspired by your own identity. Materials will be provided and delivered via post.
Content warning: the workshop involves using sharp objects and points, like scissors, maths compasses, participants must feel comfortable using sharp objects for craft purposes independently.
About the Artist
Phoebe Kaniewska (She/Her) is a socially engaged artist, facilitator and curator from South London, who uses her lived experience working in healthcare, chronic illness and disability to shape her artistic practice. She strongly believes in the therapeutic benefit of art, both for the maker and audience.
Kaniewska also facilitates workshops and art practices in a variety of settings, including galleries, charities and hospitals; the young V&A, the Foundling Museum, CW+, Create and Bow Arts. She is interested in creating and caring for spaces that support, excite and interact with communities and individuals alike. Currently, Kaniewska is developing a commission for the gynaecology department waiting room at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital, including 'Endometriosis Charms' - a charm necklace representing stories from 10 people with Endometriosis.
Instagram: @phoebe_kaniewska
AccessThis event will include comfort breaks throughout its duration as well as live BSL interpretation. This programme will be running on Crip Time. As a result, we endeavour to reschedule events should any of our contributors not feel well / experience a change in capacity in the lead up to and / or on the day of the event itself.
Tickets
In order to ensure this programme is accessible to all, we have implemented a three tiered ticketing system: Pay As You Feel, Standard tickets priced at £5.00 (plus eventbrite fee) as well as Solidarity Tickets priced at £10 (plus eventbrite fee).
If you would like to attend this event but cannot afford to purchase a paid ticket please get in touch with us directly at info@ortgallery.co.uk
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Wednesday 30th April, 6 - 7:30 pm
Join Olivia Spring for a relaxed writing workshop on themes of resistance through the lens of chronic illness and disability. We will start with a simple exercise, then read and briefly discuss excerpts of text by disabled writers such as Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, which will lead into further prompts that build off each other.
No writing experience is required, and there is no requirement to share writing during the session. Participants will also come away with writing of their own and a recommended reading list relating to these themes.
About the Artist
Olivia Spring is the founder and editor of SICK, a magazine exploring chronic illness and disability. Her work has appeared in It’s Nice That, the Guardian, An Encyclopedia of Radical Helping, and rekto:verso, among others. She has been awarded residencies at Monson Arts and Hewnoaks and has hosted talks and workshops for Edmonton Poetry Festival, College of the Atlantic, League of Canadian Poets, Colby College, and more. She lives a slow life in Maine with her dog, Black Bean. @OliviaLSpring / @aSICKmagazine
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Wednesday 7th May, 6 - 7:30 pm
Join Olivia Spring for the second iteration of this relaxed writing workshop on themes of resistance through the lens of chronic illness and disability. We will start with a simple exercise, then read and briefly discuss excerpts of text by disabled writers such as Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, which will lead into further prompts that build off each other.
No writing experience is required, and there is no requirement to share writing during the session. Participants will also come away with writing of their own and a recommended reading list relating to these themes.
About the Artist
Olivia Spring is the founder and editor of SICK, a magazine exploring chronic illness and disability. Her work has appeared in It’s Nice That, the Guardian, An Encyclopedia of Radical Helping, and rekto:verso, among others. She has been awarded residencies at Monson Arts and Hewnoaks and has hosted talks and workshops for Edmonton Poetry Festival, College of the Atlantic, League of Canadian Poets, Colby College, and more. She lives a slow life in Maine with her dog, Black Bean. @OliviaLSpring / @aSICKmagazine
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Tuesday 13th May, 6 - 7.30 pm
Join resting up members Char and Jen to write and reflect on disability justice manifestos as tools for organising and creativity. Through a series of short readings and writing/art prompts, this session aims to inspire participants to demand and dream alternative futures through a crip lens.
About the Facilitators
Char Heather is a writer, researcher and workshop facilitator interested in crip narratives and narrative cripping. They are the founder and steward of the remote body, a project that hosts online workshops that centre chronically ill and disabled folk. Their work has been published in The Polyphony, Lassitude, Futch and others.
Jennifer Brough is a queer, disabled slow writer and workshop facilitator based in Nottingham. She writes poetry and short stories exploring the body, pain, and horror using a magical, surrealist lens and has been published in Ache Magazine, Lassitude, SICK Magazine, and others. Jennifer founded resting up collective, an interdisciplinary group of sick creatives offering workshops and projects that centre disability as a creative tools.
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Thursday 22nd May, 2 - 4 pm
Dolly Sen wants you to join them in a zine workshop like no other, where Crip Resistance takes centre stage in all its unruly glory. With their trademark wit, radical tenderness, and punk spirit, Dolly will guide participants through the art of zine-making as a tool of rebellion, survival, defiance, and joy with just one A3 sheet of paper to start off with.
Participants will receive materials via post but feel free to bring anything you want to subvert to the workshop, such as nhs leaflets, medical notes, etc.
Content Warning: This workshop may include discussions around triggering subjects.
About the Artist
Dolly Sen (she/they) is an internationally renowned writer, filmmaker, artist and activist. She disrupts systems producing oppression, not through trojan horse viruses but with my little ponies on acid with a little sadness in their hearts.
Dolly lives in Norwich with her partner and dog.
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Thursday 29th May, 19:30 onwards
Join Resting Up Collective and Ort Gallery for the final event in the programme Crip Resistance: Holding Space, Building Community for a one-off remote performance of Braidings.
Long-term musical and literary collaborators CN Lester, Miss Jacqui and Jamie Hale come together in an interwoven night of songs and poetry. This richly textured show combines original and unheard music, spoken word, and poetry with covers and reimaginations of work by the disabled, black, queer and trans ancestors who sustain us. Braidings is an evening to uphold and acknowledge, to uplift, inspire, and reclaim our power.
Run time: 1.5 hours approx. with duration of performance roughly around 60 - 80 mins. Please notethis may be subject to change.
Content warning: Some of the spoken word and song lyrics refer to adult themes that may be upsetting for viewers. References to death, illness, violence, discrimination, sex and sexual violence.
About the Artists
Jamie - Jamie Hale is an award-winning poet, performer and director whose work explores physical embodiment in nature, fragility, queerness, and mortality. They write “arresting, heart-stopping poems lit with a rare intensity”, and were awarded the Evening Standard Director/Theatremaker of the Year award in 2021 for their first poetry play, NOT DYING. They’ve performed at venues including the Barbican Centre, Tate Modern, Southbank Centre, HOME Manchester, and Theatre Royal Stratford East, and founded the award-winning CRIPtic Arts. They are currently developing a new adaption of Romeo and Juliet and completing their first full poetry collection.CN - CN Lester is a singer-songwriter whose music combines piano, voice, and lyrics to form an intimate, arresting whole. They’ve performed extensively throughout the UK, bars, galleries and coffee shops, and at venues including The Arts Club, HOME Manchester, Tate Modern, Barbican, The Royal Exchange, RVT, Dalston Superstore, and Prides from Bath to Brighton, Manchester to Happy Valley. As well as an alternative musician, they are a classical singer and composer and are working on their next album, Fellow Travellers, a novel, and a follow-up to their critically acclaimed book Trans Like Me.
Miss Jacqui - Miss Jacqui is a poet and songwriter who knows a great deal about working with the cards that you are dealt, as a black woman who uses a wheelchair. In her 15+ year career of fusing poetry and spoken word, she has performed at the 2012 Paralympic Welcoming Ceremony and Opening Ceremony, the Southbank Centre, the Barbicam and the Roundhouse. Her first EP, Perception, was “soulful and spirited”, a punchy and poignant reclamation of space. She is preparing to release her first album.