SPEAK Season 2: The Stories and Voices of BEING Studio
The second season of SPEAK, a podcast from BEING studio, is a delightful romp through time. Hosts Debbie “The Dragon” Ratcliffe and Rachel Gray take us on a winding journey that spans from BEING studio’s humble beginnings as H’ART of Ottawa, to its present standing as a thriving community of artists, and beyond, to its dreams for an even brighter future. Along the way, listeners are invited into the world of the BEING studio artists, who teach us about the strength of community, the power of art and storytelling, and the wonderful possibilities and sticky tensions of being both an artist and a person with a disability. There is something here for everyone: from jokes told by “funny guy” Doug Garrow in episode 8 , to heartwarming tales of carrying on the artist tradition from Claire Nedzela in episode 7, to deep dives into what it means to be a “disability artist.” You won’t want to miss out on this podcast.
Ottawa’s disability community is small, and smaller still is the community made up of people with developmental disabilities and those that love and support them. This vibrant community is like a tightly woven fabric of a thousand colours, each representing a different person, each as important to the whole. I was lucky enough to enter this community several years ago, and now I rarely walk into a disability space in Ottawa in which I do not recognize at least one friendly face – and so, whether I am at a community dance, or a bowling night, or even listening to a podcast in my own apartment, I feel immediately at home. The artists whose stories are shared in SPEAK’s second season make up an important piece of this fabric, so I feel connected to their stories from the moment I hit PLAY.
In her book Crip Kinship, author Shayda Kafai (2021) writes about how tight-knit disability communities are like communities of trees, with “their expansive network of connectivity and their intertwined root systems.” Not only are the trees connected, but they talk to and take care of each other, sharing resources like water and nutrients through their roots (Kafai 2021). Reading this reminded me of BEING and the artists of SPEAK, and now I like to think of this community as a grove of trees, part of the larger forest of Ottawa’s disability community. Listening to the artists at BEING talk about each other, it’s clear that this metaphor really holds up. In several episodes of season 2, the creatives share how important their fellow artists are to them and to the BEING community as a whole. They support and love each other, just like trees, and “they gain strength from being in community with one another.” (Kafai 2021)
But the artists behind SPEAK are not just part of Ottawa’s disability community. They are also part of another community - another forest - made up of all of the disabled artists, and artists more broadly, in Canada and beyond. The boundaries of these communities are not well defined - they shift and mingle with each other just like real forests. This can be messy and confusing - there is a lot that goes into a decision to identify, or not, with a particular community. The way you think about and label yourself is influenced by your personal history, experiences, and opinions, as well as outside forces like the time and place you live in. Many labels are connected, too. What it means to be a disabled artist in Canada, for instance, is shaped, as Rachel reminds us on SPEAK, by “larger histories of art and disability in Canada.” The final two episodes of SPEAK Season 2 explore this history, seeking to understand BEING’s past, and how it became the disability arts organization it is known as today.
Rachel begins by describing a dark part of Ontario’s disability history - from 1876 to 2009, institutions operated in Ontario, and many disabled people, especially people with developmental disabilities, were confined within these institutions during that time. When the institutions did begin to close, more than 100 years after the first one opened its doors, communities had to find other ways to support the people who used to live there. This, Rachel says, is how BEING, then called H’ART of Ottawa, came to be. Rachel speaks to Michael Orisini, a BEING board member and University of Ottawa professor, about what people generally understood about the role of art in the lives of people with disabilities during this time period. Art, they say, was appreciated for its therapeutic benefits for the artist, rather than being considered culturally significant in its own right, like it was for non-disabled artists. Orsini says, “If you think about [art] as, kind of, an outlet for folks then selling the work, promoting the work, treating folks like artists, all of that would be seen as secondary, or not even relevant, to what was seen at the time as the primary responsibility.”
This is connected to a history in which the art of people with disabilities, particularly those who were currently or formerly institutionalized, was labelled as “outsider art.” This labelling positioned disabled people as an exotic “Other”, and their art was viewed as unprofessional, once again ignoring the cultural significance and artistic merit of the work of artists with disabilities (Wexler and Derby 2015). As the National Post notes, the art was regarded as “more spectacle than work of art.”
A conversation between Bucko, an artist and former board member, and fin, SPEAK’s executive producer, highlights how this history continues to shape the experiences of disabled artists today, as they share their feelings about labels like “disability arts.” Bucko describes how this label can feel limiting, and that he wants people to appreciate his art on its own merit, while it feels like many people are attracted to his art solely because he is a disabled artist. This can take on a patronizing tone, that repeats the assumption that art made by disabled artists is inherently less skillful and therefore less valuable. Referencing the history of struggle and resistance connected to disability arts, Bucko says “it’s important to acknowledge that journey and struggle, but also its important to build the bridges that allow people with disabilities to be on the artistic stage as anyone else.”
Disability arts, and related projects like SPEAK, are already doing the work of building bridges, by creating in ways that expand the boundaries of what art is and who counts as an artist. Eliza Chandler, a professor of Disability Studies at Toronto Metropolitan University, also spoke to Rachel about this in the season’s final episode. To define what disability arts means to her and how it can change the world, Chandler says that disability arts makes a “commitment to anti-assimilation rather than inclusion. So, creating culture not as a way of being included into normative culture, but creating our kind of culture.” In other words, rather than working to fit into a system that excludes and hurts so many people, we can build a new system, a new world, that includes everyone. One important way that we can accomplish this is by telling stories, just like those shared on SPEAK.
While SPEAK is always entertaining and often lighthearted, I felt from the beginning that there was something deeper here; that the hosts and artists had achieved something really powerful, and really important. I think much of the power of SPEAK can be summed up by the phrase Rachel Gray says at the beginning of each episode: “SPEAK is artists with developmental disabilities telling their own stories.” Each episode tells a unique and captivating story that is worth listening to in its own right, but collectively, they are an example of how storytelling can be a tool for making change. In Crip Kinship, Shayda Kafai frames storytelling as a form of activism, writing that “[b]ecause so many of us often do not speak in our own voices and are instead, spoken for, disabled storytelling is a radical act.” Listening to SPEAK, it is clear that the hosts and artists are committed to challenging the typical dynamic within which non-disabled people, especially “experts” like doctors and psychologists, tell disabled people’s stories for them. For example, the 6th episode of season 2, “Communicating Artfully”, focuses on the story of Sharlene Cooney, a non-speaking artist who makes bright portraits of butterflies and rainbows. In this episode, Kim Kilpatrick, a storyteller, reads Sharlene’s words to the listeners, becoming her “voice” for the episode - but despite this responsibility, Kim is careful not to speak for Sharlene. In the episode, Kim says “I don’t like, as a person with a disability, I don’t like when people speak for me and it’s not what I want to say, or other people assume something about me and don’t give me a voice. So, I want to make sure that I am speaking the words in the way she would like them to be heard by the listeners.” As Rachel says “SPEAK is artists with developmental disabilities telling their own stories.” (emphasis added.)
Telling our own stories allows us to show ourselves as we are, not as others see us. Every time you share your story, you are saying “my story is worth sharing”. In a world that works hard to hide and erase the stories of disabled and other marginalized people, this is powerful. Even more, when others hear these stories and see themselves in them, community is made. If we imagine ourselves as trees, storytelling helps grow our roots, making them grow long and strong, all tangled up with the roots of our communities.
All types of stories matter, whether they are imagined or real, and whether they tell about ancient history or the far future. We can use them to teach each other about the stories of people who have been silenced in the past, or to imagine a world where we all belong. Many of the stories in SPEAK span across time, showing how the past shapes our current and future lives. In season 2 episode 10, Rachel, Debbie, and fin deep-dive into the history of BEING studio through the story of Irene Beck, a former artist with a decade’s worth of work in the BEING archive. The hosts share how Irene’s legacy highlights the power of art and storytelling, and of reaching into the past in order to better understand our present. As Kafai writes, “[o]pressed communities reach into their pasts, their presents, and their futures to tell stories of their bodyminds as survival and reclamation, as a way to, as Kayhan [Irani] reminds us, ‘remake the world.’” This closely echoes what Rachel Gray says in the final installment of season 2, an episode called “World Builders”. Rachel explains how the artists at BEING, and SPEAK itself, are working to change the world for the better. “World-building,” Rachel says, “is a huge part of many artists’ work at BEING studio – it’s a big part of this podcast…Often, we use our art to make the spaces we want to see in the world real. Through art, they become real, and become tools for changing the world around us.” The world building power of art and stories is obvious when listening to SPEAK. By proudly sharing their stories and claiming their identities as artists, the artists of BEING studio are contributing to a cultural shift that will ultimately change how we make art and who counts as an artist.
Rachel, Debbie, and the BEING Studio artists certainly accomplished a great deal in their 11-episode 2nd season. The episodes are bursting with stories - there is so much in them that I haven’t even touched on. Listening to this season of SPEAK was like connective with more than a dozen new friends, and there was so much to learn about the artists, their practices, and their collective histories. As you listen, think about our future, and how bright it can be as long as we have the BEING artists and their world-building creativity to dream it into existence.
A version of this story first appeared on Apt613.ca
References
Ahsan, S. (2016). Tangled, Toronto's first accessible art gallery for disabled artists, is bringing the outsiders in. National Post. https://nationalpost.com/entertainment/tangled-torontos-first-accessible-art-gallery-for-disabled-artists-is-bringing-the-outsiders-in
Alice Wexler & John Derby (2015) Art in Institutions: The Emergence of (Disabled) Outsiders, Studies in Art Education, 56:2, 127-141, DOI: 10.1080/00393541.2015.11518956.
Kafai, S. (2021). Crip kinship: The disability justice & art activism of sins invalid. Arsenal Pulp Press.
Wexler, A., & Derby, J. (2015). Art in institutions: The emergence of (disabled) outsiders. Studies in Art Education, 56(2), 127-141. https://doi.org/10.1080/00393541.2015.11518956