Crip Café
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[Image Description: The graphic for Crip Café, featuring a dark blue background with snow drifting through the sky, reading “The Disability Collective, Crip Café” in white font. The text is above a cozy cartoon café with a brown and white striped awning topped with snow, brick walls, a window that peers in to reveal fairy lights and hanging pendulum lights, as well as a muted teal-coloured door printed with a white steaming coffee mug. To the left of the café is a small potted pine tree and to the right is an ornate black lamppost]
SOLD OUT
Tickets are pay what you can.
Patrons purchasing tickets at a higher price point can do so with the understanding that their ticket price is helping to subsidize the lower ticket prices, and in doing so, are making this show more accessible for others.
Join us for our first event of 2024, Crip Café, a space for disabled and queer folks to gather and connect after the hustle and bustle of the holiday season. Hosted at Glad Day Bookshop on Saturday, March 9 at 8 PM, this relaxed event will feature live performances including music, poetry, spoken word, and more.
Check out the incredible lineup for the show below!
Glad Day Bookshop is the oldest 2SLGBTQIA+ bookstore in the world, and we couldn’t be more excited to create a safe and inclusive space for queer and disabled folks in our community at Crip Café!
ASL Vlog
Access Measures:
ASL interpretation will be provided throughout the show. ASL volunteers will be available to assist at Front of House.
COVID-19 Policies:
The safety of our audience, artists, volunteers, and staff is our number one priority.
Masks are required for all audience members but may be removed temporarily for drinking and eating.
Masks should fit snugly against the face without gaps; cloth masks should have at least two layers of fabric. Neck gaiters and bandanas are not permitted. We thank you in advance for your cooperation.
Exemptions are always made for access or medical reasons.
AMY RAE
Amy Rae (they/them) a queer, nonbinary poet who is multiply disabled and chronically ill. Their poetry is deeply inspired by pain and lived experiences. Amy Rae aims to highlight the beaming pride they feel about being disabled, to the inner dialogue of moving through depths of things like chronic pain, ableism, and medical systems.
[Image Description: An image of Amy Rae who is pictured seated in a power wheelchair from the side view angle. They have short pink hair and a black dress with white shoes and tattoos on their forearm. They are pictured in an indoor setting speaking into a microphone. Audience members can be seen seated in the distant background]
ASHLEY T.
As a young, Black Biracial, Bisexual Woman with Bipolar Disorder from Toronto, Ashley T. has coined herself as “The BiFecta”. She is a multidisciplinary artist who creates within the realms of abstract visual, literary, and performance art. She works with diverse materials spanning from acrylic paints on canvas, to ink on paper, to her voice on the mic, to her body on the stage. Ashley T. uses art to ground and remind herself of the power she possesses to be a positive change in this world. Each piece she creates is a small chapter of her visual memoire.
[Image Description: Black woman with dark long hair facing left with her arms up and hands resting behind her head. Wearing a black satin robe and black bodysuit with lace centre on a yellow background]
Image Description: Pictured is Aspen, a nonbinary fem-presenting white person. They have short black hair cut in a bob style with bangs. They are wearing dark eye shadow, a black turtle neck shirt, a black and silver necklace, and silver dragonfly earings]
ASPEN
Aspen (they/them) is a queer disabled student, activist, and artist attending Trent University. They are based out of both Oshawa and Peterborough, Ontario. Aspen is a biology major who is also interested in visual arts and music. They play the flute, paint, draw, make and sell jewelry, and engage in disability activism on their university campus and surrounding areas. Aspen is a power wheelchair user who is also autistic with auditory processing disorder and low vision. They also engage in disability and a chronic illness activism online on both Instagram and Tiktok, and share their life as a student living with multiple rare progressive diseases and using a wheelchair and a service dog.
CALVIN PROCYON
calvin procyon is a queer, mad, chronically ill, and disabled musician from Hamilton, Ontario. Over the past few months, they have been quietly working on an EP exploring themes of queerness, madness, community, and loss through a lens of futurity. It will be released sometime in the future, when the time is right.
Image Description: A headshot of Calvin, a white person with eye-length blue hair, holding the neck of a classical guitar. They are wearing a blue shirt, black overalls, earrings, a septum ring, and gold eye shadow]
Image Description: Danila looks straight into the camera. They have brown eyes and short dark hair in a buzz cut, and are wearing a striped colourful hoodie with pink, green, yellow, blue, green, and white. The background is a curtain with daisies and says ‘Flower Market’ on it]
DANILA STONE
A common thread in my work is exploring the idea of connecting to a sense of home in oneself, the power of choice, and speaking through ancestry. All of my ancestral knowledge lives in and is the heart of my practices.
I, first and foremost, identify as a Black, Trans-nonbinary, 4th-generation birth worker, and I claim the arts and visual storytelling as a facet of my birth work.
Birth workers are artists, storytellers, and musicians giving life to new thoughts, ideas, and possibilities for home and the future.
For me, storytelling (visual or otherwise) is an intuitive practice of sharing which leaves room for individual interpretation. Instead of choking on my words, I find expansive rebase in each new piece I make. Exploring new mediums deepens my grounding in my practices (clay, pottery, collage, music making, etc.) and gives voice to untold stories.
Image Description: Eli smiles lightly at the camera in a school hallway; they have blonde hair with braids and bangs and she has greenish/blue eyes. They are wearing round glasses and a big beige knit sweater. She has on two necklaces, the one that hangs in front is a blue and circular gemstone. She is tilted slightly to the left]
ELI
Eli (she/they/any) is a singer-songwriter of the indie music persuasion. She tends to write about trials and tribulations with a strong lacking in the love-song department. Taking up the guitar at the age of 12 and singing since they could talk, what Eli truly loves to do is share her words and emotions through music so other people can feel what she has, even if just for a moment. Currently in her undergrad for psychology and queer studies at TMU, they hope to go into the arts and teaching in the future. This is Eli’s first event with The Disability Collective and is very excited to be a part of this event.
Image Description: A portrait photo of Afro-Canadian artist, Kelly La-Vane. His hair is in locs. He is wearing a white jean jacket with a black and white shirt]
KELLY
La-Vane Kelly; writer, workshop facilitator, spoken word performer and visual artist. He is an Afro-Canadian artist of Caribbean descent, whose work is centred within BIPOC spaces.
He often draws inspiration from his own experiences, living and interacting with different and diverse communities. His work centres around social justice, spirituality, love, mental health awareness and black experiences.
La-Vane believes in the power of words as a tool for healing, community engagement, and activism. He hopes to create platforms for artists of all levels and disciplines to publish their works and build their creative arts interests.
LAURA TRENTON
Laura Trenton (she/her) is a singer/songwriter from Toronto. Her original music is inspired by her lived experiences as a queer, disabled, and chronically ill young woman.
Image Description: Laura, a white person with long dark brown hair braided to one side, is surrounded by blue fog while seated on stage holding an acoustic guitar and smiling into a microphone. She is wearing a black long sleeved shirt and grey pants with dark grey suspenders, rainbow beaded earrings, and a colourful embroidered guitar strap]
MADDI MARVIN
Madison Marvin is an MA Creative Writing student at the University of Toronto. She completed her undergraduate degree at Trent University, with a Dual Honours BA in English Literature and Political Studies with a specialization in Creative Writing. Maddi enjoys writing auto fiction that explores the intersections of race, disability, and trauma.
Image Description: Picture of a woman with black hair and glasses smiling at camera wearing a green graduation robe]
Image Description: Namitha, a brown femme, has shoulder-length straight black hair, and is wearing a gold nose ring and gold necklace. They are wearing a cream linen shirt and dark green pants. She is standing outside on the grass in front of a lemon tree]
NAMITHA
Namitha Rathinappillai (she/they) is a fat, disabled, queer, Tamil spoken word poet, organizer, and workshop facilitator who entered the poetry community in 2017. She is currently based in Toronto, and was the first female and youngest director of Ottawa’s Urban Legends Poetry Collective (ULPC). They are a two-time Canadian Festival of Spoken Word (CFSW) team member with ULPC, and they published their first chapbook titled ‘Dirty Laundry’ with Battleaxe Press in November of 2018. In 2019, she won the RBC Youth Ottawa Spirit of the Capital Award for Arts and Culture. They enjoy crafting, writing letters to friends, and looking at the moon. You can find more at namitharathinappillai.com.
PARVATI THE ART PIXIE
Parvati The Art Pixie is the artist name of Parvati Mehmi, a transgender and disabled multidisciplinary artist from Brampton, Ontario. She has been writing stories since she was 11, and has branched out into film, music and visual art.
Image Description: A South Asian Transgender woman sitting on a chair, with a mustard yellow dress against a pink background]
Image Description: Sophie, a pale white queer person with long brunette hair is looking into the camera with a slight smile. They're wearing a coral-coloured t-shirt in the photo and leaning against a white wall, with the corner of a colourful mixed visual arts illustration of foliage visible]
SOPHIE
Sophie (they/she) is a queer white, British, invisibly Disabled settler, writer, workshop facilitator, and community organizer. Their work primarily focuses on the intersections of disability, identity, nature, and grief, and she's just finishing up the first draft of a novel featuring a young adult with a heart condition. Sophie is the founder of Sick Stories, a space for Disabled and chronically ill people to share the stories that live inside them. Sophie's keen to explore how we can move both through and away from capitalist ideologies while taking care of our whole selves and each other.