Cassidy Bankson, Faye Harnest, Earl LeBlanc, Dawn McLeod, Ezra Benus, Alexei Dymdymarchenko, Margeaux Feldman, Stefana Fratila, Alex Haagaard, Aimi Hamraie, Tangled Art + Disability
#CripRitual was an art exhibition and digital project that took place in early 2022 at Tangled Art + Disability and the Doris McCarthy Gallery in Toronto.
A project led by disability justice-involved arts workers and artists, it featured work by disabled artists and used the idea of ritual to explore how disabled people live, connect, and push back against discrimination.
The exhibition included several ways to support disability justice, such as:
The project shows how disabled artists and arts workers use ritual, or repeated and meaningful actions, to survive, connect, and build community. Importantly, it also demonstrates how an art exhibition can itself be a form of disability ritual by putting accessibility and disability justice at the centre.
#CripRitual is not a technology-focused project, but it offers important lessons for how new media and technology can be shaped by disability justice values.
Through its commitment to accessibility, collective care, and disabled leadership, the exhibition models practices that are highly relevant to tech and media work. It shows that access is not just a technical fix, but a creative, relational process.
By using tools like image descriptions, ASL, plain language, and a hybrid presentation format, and by involving artists in co-creating accessibility measures, #CripRitual demonstrates how media and technology projects can move beyond compliance and toward justice.
Even without centring tech, #CripRitual offers a model for rethinking how media and digital projects can be more equitable, more creative, and more deeply shaped by those most often excluded.
1. How can access become part of your creative process, not just a requirement?
#CripRitual treated accessibility tools—like image descriptions, ASL, and plain language—as creative decisions, not add-ons. In your own work, what would change if access was built into your artistic or curatorial process from the start?
2. How can you involve artists in designing access for their own work?
Rather than applying standard access measures across the board, #CripRitual ran workshops where artists shaped how their work would be accessed. How might you create time, space, and resources for artists to lead access design within your projects?
3. What assumptions about “normal” timelines, professionalism, or success might be excluding disabled artists or audiences?
#CripRitual challenged dominant expectations by embracing slowness, flexibility, and care as part of its structure. What norms in your practice could be rethought or let go to better support disability justice?