Keywords: Accessible workshop, mobility aids, skill-building
Mobility equipment is essential to many disabled folks movement practices. When it isn’t working well, or is broken, our creation and life is impacted
There is currently a high reliance on vendors to do repairs, that are often due to failures from wear and tear and other elements of technoableism.
These vendors don’t work quickly to restore our mobility.
Knowing how to do accessible and preventative maintenance is critical to avoid being stuck with a breakdown, build skills to manage them when they do occur, and create care networks outside of the medical industrial complex.
This knowledge sharing is also critical to build equipment familiarity in the lack of accessible or open source service manual, amid financial justice issues to access new equipment and funded maintenance services, and for safety of marginalized users in the face of a mostly white and cisgender service industry.
This workshop will teach an overview of manual mobility aid maintenance with multimodal access, a technical demonstration in multiple formats, time for questions, and provision of resources for further information.
About the Artist
Brennan Roy is the creator of the workshop "Manual Mobility Device Care and Maintenance for Movement Artists."
Brennan (Bren) Roy is a multiply disabled, queer, and trans wheelchair dancer, multidisciplinary artist, and community worker. They focus on the overlaps of dance, circus, disability consulting, and mobility technology. They are interested in how individuals in these fields construct bodyminds, what influences them, and how to dream beyond.
Brennan has trained with companies across North America including Full Radius Dance, Axis Dance Company, Kaeja D’Dance and REAson D’Etre Dance Productions. They were also one of the founders and directors of the Cyborg Circus Project (2018-2021).
View Brennan's profile on our directory here.
Media
Image Description: In an 8x12 ft storage unit, several disassembled wheelchairs, walkers, rollators, crutches, and bathroom aids have been attached together to create a large, tunnelled sculpture. Seats from devices and rails from walkers offer bases for inverted crutches to lean, rising high above the tunnel’s entrance like the eaves of an attic. Circular wheels and squared frames offer the shape of the tunnel. Wheelchair cushions line the pathway in. Within the depths of the tunnel, as if curled in the heart of a cave made from the most precious resources, rests a pale being. Their arms curl around their knees, head resting gently on their shoulder, eyes mostly shut behind metal framed glasses.
Project Details
- Currently located in Ontario
- Access rider available
- Budget available
- Contact Brennan via social media for additional information and/or booking
