Contributors — Desire Path Project

Anaïs Isiria Gurrola. Dramaturg and Artist.

Babatunde. Executive Director, Black and Beyond the Binary Collective.

Becky Emmert. Head of Accessibility, Portland Art Museum.

Cheryl Green. Access Artist, Independent audio describer, Captioner, and Multimedia Digital Artist.

Leila Haile. City of Portland Disability Program Coordinator, Creative Laureate, Co-Founder of Ori Gallery.

Rebel Sidney Fayola Black. Access Artist, Disability Justice Consultant.

Saara Hirsi. Social Education and Equity Consulting LLC.

Subashini Ganesan. New Expressive Works, Founder and Executive Director.

How do you want people to connect with you?

Instagram: @anaisysiria
Email: anaisgurrola@gmail.com

Who are the people you want to connect with?

Brown queer artists. Like, just cool brown queer people. Yeah, I'm always wanting to expand my community.

What do you need in your practice?

Rest.

Openness to different deadlines, OK getting things done whenever I can.

Balance.

Openness and gentleness for art to come when it comes.

Anais Flower Cutting #1

“We are constantly shifting and changing and learning. And that’s really important. People tend to sometimes stay stagnant in one type of thinking or one type of way. It’s good that we tend to continue. To listen, to mold, to shape.” -Anaïs Isiria Gurrola, Dramaturg and Artist

Anaïs Flower Cutting #2

“There’s so much beauty in saying no. Alternatively, there’s a lot of beauty in walking out. Like, for example, my coworkers and I were having this conversation and it was getting really mean and not productive. And people’s feelings were getting hurt. And I just disappear. And like the act of me just peacing out in that moment spoke more than me continuing to argue with this person.”

- Anaïs Isiria Gurrola, Dramaturg and Artist

Anaïs Flower Cutting #3

“In connecting with so many Latinos in Portland, I just realized we’re everywhere. We’re really everywhere. No, Portland is not white. You’re looking in the wrong places. We are here. People of Color are alive and well in Portland. We have communities, and we need to make them feel like theater is also open to them as well.”

- Anaïs Isiria Gurrola, Dramaturg and Artist

How do you want people to connect with you?

Black and Beyond the Binary Collective

Email Babatunde

Who are the people you want to connect with?

I'm definitely excited and ready for folks to reach out. Folks can hit up my email. I really enjoy connecting with folks either via Zoom or email or whatever feels good.

What do you need in your practice?

Pleasure and joy and to make what I need.

I need people to be ready for their own pleasure.

Folks being ready for — and able to name — their own pleasure, and doing the work to figure out what that actually means.

Babatunde Flower Cutting #1

“I think nature is really the greatest teacher. You want to learn some patience? Watch a plant grow.”

-Babatunde, Executive Director, Black and Beyond the Binary Collective.

Babatunde Flower Cutting #2

“Pleasure is so important, especially for marginalized folks. I feel like we spend so much of our lives denying ourselves that for numerous reasons. But ultimately, I think for me, liberation feels like pleasure. Uninhibited pleasure and joy.”

–Babatunde, Executive Director, Black and Beyond the Binary”

Babatunde Flower Cutting #3

“Where’s the love? Where’s the connection? What do you imagine liberation might feel like? What might it taste like? What type of music is there, you know? I need people to be ready for their own pleasure. And also to be able to name what that need is and spend some time exploring decolonizing their values around that.

The expectation should be that the folks you’re fighting with and in community with are going to fight for you to have what you need. At least that’s what I’m here for. The revolution will come. Let’s make it pleasurable.”

–Babtunde, Executive Director, Black and Beyond the Binary Collective

How do you want people to connect with you?

Email: becky.emmert@pam.org
Phone (text or call): 503-276-4334

Who are the people you want to connect with?

Other artists reaching out via text.  Happy to set up time. It helps to be able to set up and schedule time.

What do you need in your practice?

Budget

Coworkers with a willingness to participate

Increase institution's budget of interest

Accessibility not seen as a box that was checked as a one off because two groups of Disabled people were engaged once. The artwork, the budgeting, the time, the money, and the people for it on a consistent basis.

Becky Flower Cutting #1

“I really see myself as a bridge or a network of bringing people together and using the connection to the museum to try to provide a platform and resources and possibilities and opportunities to Disabled artists.”

–Becky Emmert, Head of Accessibility, Portland Art Museum.

Becky Flower Cutting #2

“Surviving as a Disabled person in this culture is a form of art making.”

–Becky Emmert, Head of Accessibility, Portland Art Museum. 

Becky Flower Cutting #3

“I so appreciate ADA and what it is, and it was needed. But we’re so far beyond that. It was written before the Internet existed.”

-Becky Emmert, Head of Accessibility, Portland Art Museum. 

How do you want people to connect with you?

Website: WhoAmIToStopIt.com

Media Access: Media Access Request Form

(for captions, transcripts, audio description)

What do you need in your practice?

Opportunities to vent with people who get it

Collaboration in creating this stuff

I need to always know that there's someone nearby who I can complain and get emotional support around.

I need that kind of camaraderie

Cheryl Flower Cutting #1

‘When someone in a meeting says, “Well, how are we going to communicate with people who have access issues?” And I raise my hand and say, “I don’t think we should ever call it access issues.” People don’t have access issues if they are struggling to access our content. We are the ones with the issues in how we delivered it. So can we please not refer to caption users as people with access issues?”

–Cheryl Green, Access Artist, Independent Audio Describer, Captioner, and Multimedia Digital Artist

Cheryl Flower Cutting #2

“I try to put my emphasis not on being compliant, but on being interesting and creative and artistic in my accessibility work. It’s not good enough to always just say music gets faster. Music gets louder. I ask my body. Like, what is it doing? My heart’s racing. Oh, the music is racing. I try to always remember what I have learned from Audio Description users and caption users about what they want. Want. And need. Users want an interesting and informative and immersive experience in a film. So why not give it?”

– Cheryl Green, Access Artist, Independent Audio Describer, Captioner, and Multimedia Digital Artist

How do you want people to connect with you?

Work Email: leila.haile@portlandoregon.gov

Artist Website

Personal Email: hello@leilahaile.com

Who are the people you want to connect with?

Use work email for anything city-related. If you want to yell about something at the government, please, I love it. Because it's public record. So anything that you say to me is pullable by anyone. If you want to be on the record, hit me up at the city [laughter].

Personal email for anything outside of government work — art related, or organizing related. If it's a grant-writing workshop, if you're, you know, want to ask me something about City work, but you don't want to do it on my city email, that's also OK.

What Do You Need In Your Practice?

Time off.

I want folks to be ready for revolution

I want folks to feel that they are prepared to revolt: do what you need to do. Get your vitamins. Get your revolutionary reading on board. Learn about your elders, learn about tactics like, you know, read a little bit of bell hooks.

Leila Flower Cutting #1

“We need creativity in order to imagine new worlds and new ways of being. Or even to remember how to reinstitute old ways of being. And so I feel like access art is refinding that divine creative.”

–Leila Haile, City of Portland Disability Program Coordinator, Creative Laureate, Co-Founder of Ori Gallery

Leila Flower Cutting #2

“I feel like people should be scared. If I was an able bodied neurotypical person at this point in time and I found out about ableism and I found out about, like all of these, you know, oppressive structures, I would be very scared. Not just scared but I would be moved to action. I feel like discovering a new type of oppression should wake something up in your brain and be like, “Oh no, this isn’t right, how do I get rid of it?”’ 

– Leila Haile, City of Portland Disability Program Coordinator, Creative Laureate, Co-Founder of Ori Gallery. 

Leila Flower Cutting #3

“I view my position as like I should be institutionalizing solutions that the community has already come up with, and that should just be the name of the game. And people don’t see government work as that. But that’s what I think it is.” Image 2. “My job is to ungaslight the people and really reveal that, you know we have the answers we have been looking for and we are the ones who will save us.”

– Leila Haile, City of Portland Disability Program Coordinator, Creative Laureate, Co-Founder of Ori Gallery. 

How do you want people to connect with you?

Email: rebelsidneyblack@gmail.com

Phone (text or call): 971-325-5434

What do you need in your practice?

Disabled mentors who are People of Color. Even if they don't consider themselves mentors.

Community of queer and trans and BIPOC Disabled people.

Opportunities for learning together and the opportunities to support one another's work.

I need to not be alone in my practice, I need others.

Rebel Flower Cutting #1

“Surrounding myself with beauty is a form of access.” 

–Rebel Sidney Fayola Black, Access Artist, Disability Justice Consultant.

Rebel Flower Cutting #2

“When I’m producing work, I interrupt if there’s an access need. I don’t think, ‘Oh, it’s so important that the presenter gets to present their whole thing at the expense of people not understanding or people not being able to read the information and just leaving those people behind.’ Instead, I say, ‘Hey, can we take a pause for a minute? We’re having some access issues.’” –Rebel Sidney Fayola Black, Access Artist, Disability Justice Consultant.

Rebel Flower Cutting #3

“I think like ADA access is a barrier a lot of the time. You know, people are able to check off a list and say, “Hey, we’ve done our due diligence and that’s all we have to do. And the result is that like, in my wheelchair, I go into bathrooms where I can barely fit in the stall and I can’t close the door. But I’m told that that’s an accessible space. And like, how is having my privacy violated an accessible space?”

–Rebel Sidney Fayola Black, Access Artist, Disability Justice Consultant.

How do you want people to connect with you?

Email: saarahirsi@comcast.net

Who are the people you want to connect with?

Organizations who want to learn about Disability and Immigrant and Refugees. Disabled immigrant and refugee communities who want to learn about Disability.

What do you need in your practice?

I want people to know me

A lot organizations for networking would be great: to know what I can offer. 

Sometimes, you know, a lot of people don't know me, or maybe I don't know how to reach them, so the network would be great.

Saara Flower Cutting #1

“Don’t assume everybody needs the same thing.”

–Saara Hirsi, Social Education and Equity Consulting LLC. 

Saara Flower Cutting #2

“I immigrated this country as a refugee, and originally I’m from Somalia. I am legally blind and I do advocacy a lot for Disability refugee community. Because when I came to this country, I struggle for me to navigate the system and the language.

A lot of times people who are interpreters really don't know how to interpret when it comes to people with disability. I went to The Commission for the Blind and they hired somebody who was interpreting for me.

I remember the case manager, she was telling me like I can go to school, I can do a lot of things. The interpreter was shocked to say, "I'm not sure if you can do this.” I had no idea at that time: do I quit or do I try, you know? It was a really bad situation. Then I said, what I have to lose? I'm going to try.  Yeah. I really thank God I just tried. I had no idea what I was doing. I just went there. But I'm happy that I didn't listen to him.”

‘I even went to interpreter training. You know, people who do the training. I said, How can you include the language so people can learn how to talk to people with disabilities? They ask me, can I do volunteer? [laughter] And I said, ‘No, you're going to pay for the teachers to study from me, not volunteer.’”

–Saara Hirsi, Social Education and Equity Consulting LLC

Saara Flower Cutting #3

“In my own experience and with people I work with, they really don’t know the right question to ask. First of all, you need to know what exists and then you can ask. So I always have to educate the community what they can ask and how can they use their own creativity so they can do their part to get access they need.”

–Saara Hirsi, Social Education and Equity Consulting LLC

How do you want people to connect with you?

New Expressive Works Website

Who are the people you want to connect with?

Performing artists in Portland who are part of communities who have not felt visible or do not feel strong or don't think that they should be gaining access to resources.

What do you need in your practice?

Time to think.

Time to sit and reflect and build from things that have happened.

Time to not do things.

Time so that things can defrag and fall into spaces.

Subashini Flower Cutting #1

“What I need is time, but not time to do things. Time to not do things. Time to just…[exhales]. So that things can defrag and fall into spaces.”

–Subashini Ganesan. New Expressive Works Founder and Executive Director

Subashini Flower Cutting #2

“I work with colleagues and I help them get more confident about applying for grants, and the biggest barrier becomes the budget. First of all, we’re so afraid of money and we’re so afraid of the shame that so many of us feel for not knowing how to work with money and then to represent it on paper feels even more awful and stressful.

I’ve spent the last year and a half trying to figure out what financial literacy means for our [arts] community. How do we buy homes? How do we have retirement?”

–Subashini Ganesan, New Expressive Works, Founder and Executive Director.