How can disabled/deaf/neurodiverse voices be used as a political platform to make our world accessible, ableist-free, and inclusive? How can experiential knowledge be used to challenge pre-conceived notions, norms, stereotypes, and traditional medical rhetoric about disabled bodies and minds?

Our Voices: Conversations of Disability has officially been renewed for a second season. Your host, Andrew Letchuk, will be exploring in nuanced dialogue conversations around sexuality and body image, showcasing disability through art performances and markets, homelessness and poverty (applying an intersectionality lens), interpretations of neurodiversity through advocacy work, politics of mental health through a mad studies perspective, idealisms of interdependency and access intimacy, disability and 2SLGBTQA+ rights, and the fashion industry.

Season 2: Coming Spring 2025. Available on Spotify and everywhere else. Produced by Cafe Time Productions

Disability justice is a fundamental framework rooted in the development of grassroot movements that inform disability activism, social justice, and intersectionality. In this episode, I am joined by Felicia Byron, a Caribbean-Canadian disabled artist and photographer, in a critical conversation about making and respecting representation of disabled BIPOC communities. Our conversation focused on Byron's documentary film that follows her journey in the development of her photography project consisted with a series of interviews and photoshoots by disabled BIPOC artists. Byron then discusses the barriers disabled people experience in mainstream art institutions, the future of disability justice, and other projects she hopes to tackle in her career as an interdisciplinary artist.

Access to the transcript version of the episode can be found here. Link below

https://drive.google.com/file/d/134YUohT750KfHChRuOmr-JNOvssAHyqN/view?usp=drive_link

In this episode, I am joined by Dr. Keri Cameron, professor and faculty member of the Educational Support program at Sheridan College. Our roundtable discussion entails Keri's experience of using universal design for learning as her pedagogy to engage post-secondary students in critical disability issues. We've discussed about the possibilities and benefits of utilizing pedagogies to enhance student learning. This includes community advocacy projects for students to bring theories of disability into hands-on practice through series of arts-based projects, media and/or writing. We also talked about how current and future educators can open conversations around lived experiences with students as a way to build critical conversations around disability and intersectionality.

Book recommendation: Disability Politics and Theory - Revised and Expanded edition by A.J Withers. Foreword: Robyn Maynard. Afterword: Rachel da Silveira Gorman

How can disabled voices be used as a tool to encourage public audiences to avoid using ableist language in their everyday life? Language is the way we speak and write through metaphors, lexicons, phrases, and passages. In this episode, join me in the discussion about the historical and contemporary context of language within Disability Studies. This includes contemporary popular film, television, literature, and social media and tracing back to the historical period of eugenics in the early 20th century. I've discussed ways ableist language, such as euphemisms, is criticized by disability activists and scholars. I end the segment by discussing ways disabled/mad/deaf/neurodivergent people can come together to promote educational awareness on social media and seminar workshops that involve disrupting and challenging ableist language.

This 2-minute preview for episode 4 will focus on disability stereotypes and tropes in mass media. Stay tuned as me and Damian will be sitting down to address this common issue in the field of Disability Studies.

In today's episode, I'm joined by Kayla Besse in the discussion on making space for disability art. Kayla and I were immersed in an engaging conversation around the ways disability art acknowledges the voices of disabled artists, discussing accessible futures in the disability arts sector, research in the relaxed performance spaces using methodologies that involve relationship-building, and the recent Crip Rituals exhibit at Tangled Art. I also learned about Kayla's favourite passion in the disability arts movement amid pandemic times, Soft Office!  How does disability art challenge stereotypical ideologies of disabled people? Where do we go from here to build an accessible-friendly world? Find out in this new episode of Our Voices: Conversations of Disability.

To learn more about the Crip Rituals exhibit, the links provided below:

https://tangledarts.org/whats-on/cripritual/ (Tangled Art + Disability website) 

https://cripritual.com/ (Crip ritual website) 

In this episode, I interview our first two guests of the series, Stephanie Haft and Ghofran Alyass, in relation to their newly launched disability organization: BeyondAbilities. I asked them how this business is rooted through a disability justice perspective, challenges, and disrupt cultural barriers for Disabled/Mad/Deaf communities, and how it can open the possibilities to make disabled people's voices heard.

Join me as I introduce you to this brand-new, anticipated podcast series on disability. This episode focuses on who I am, what I like to do in my spare time, how I come to know disability through lived experiences and explaining the themes I will be discussing through each episode.