What: Disability, Access, and Art at UBC Okanagan: A Roundtable discussion
When: Tuesday, April 17 from 2:30 to 4:30 p.m.
Where: The AMP Lab, FIP 251, Fipke Centre, 3247 University Way, UBC Okanagan campus
UBC Okanagan’s Faculty of Creative and Critical Studies is hosting a roundtable discussion for students, faculty, and staff who identify as disabled or are identified as disabled, and how they navigate this in a university setting.
This event is planned alongside the launch of creative writing professor Matt Rader’s new book, Visual Inspections. Part memoir, part essay, part poetic investigation, this book reflects on disability, access, vision, pain, community and resilience.
Moderated by Rader, this event invites all members of the UBC Okanagan community to listen, tell stories, and consider what art-making can teach about negotiating access as individuals and as a community. This roundtable discussion offers an opportunity to share personal experiences in a public setting
Rader notes that professors and students alike struggle at times understanding the principles that inform policy around accommodation.
“Many students, faculty and staff at UBC Okanagan find ourselves disabled by our bodies, bureaucracies and built environments,” says Rader. “I wanted to create a space to have a conversation about the issues that we face, the ways we can deal with them and to make everything as transparent as possible.”
In working with these students at this institution, Rader says his only real strategy is to make everything as transparent as possible, and to negotiate the issues some people face through conversation.
“This book would not exist without community, so the launch of the book is an occasion to bring some awareness to accessibility issues.”
The launch of Rader’s new book will take place on April 17, at Kettle Rover Brewery and will include two Masters of Fine Arts students, Richard Amante and Victoria Alvarez, reading from their final thesis.
Matt Rader is the author of four books of poems: Desecrations (McClelland & Stewart, 2016), A Doctor Pedalled Her Bicycle Over the River Arno (House of Anansi, 2011), Living Things (Nightwood Editions, 2008), and Miraculous Hours (Nightwood Editions, 2005), as well as the story collection What I Want to Tell Goes Like This (Nightwood Editions, 2014). His poems, stories and non-fiction have appeared in numerous publications across North America, Australia and Europe including The Walrus, Geist, 32 Poems and The Wales Arts Review, as well as several editions of Best Canadian Poetry in English.