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Disabled queer of color activist Mia Mingus coined the term “access intimacy” to describe the feelings created when others understand and readily work within one’s access needs regarding illness and disability.[1] All too rare, Mingus notes, access intimacy can take place among disabled folks and/or between disabled and abled people, in a variety of spaces, and creates a sense of relief and community for people who typically face the insidiousness of ableism. Further, Mingus described “crip solidarity” as the feelings and connections manifested when someone resists ableist ideas and activities in favor of love and community; crip solidarity posits that life is better when we value disability in all its messy glory instead of attempting to conform to an ableist world.[2]

This session seeks to put Mingus’ ideas into action by asking arts professionals from all realms what might be possible were we to fully embrace access intimacy and crip solidarity. What could physical, conceptual, and ethical access intimacy and crip solidarity look like in a wide variety of arts spaces? How might universal design be physically and philosophically possible in the arts? What might happen were we to embrace disability justice as a foundation toward artistic equity and to build upon it to remake and revolutionize ideas of inclusion?

[1] Mia Mingus, “Access Intimacy: The Missing Link,” Leaving Evidence, May 5, 2011. Accessed March 13, 2019: https://leavingevidence.wordpress.com/2011/05/05/access-intimacy-the-missing-link/

[2] Mia Mingus, “Wherever You Are is Where I Want to Be: Crip Solidarity,” Leaving Evidence, May 3, 2010. Accessed March 13, 2019: https://leavingevidence.wordpress.com/2010/05/03/where-ever-you-are-is-where-i-want-to-be-crip-solidarity/