CAN (LET’S) is part of the board of the OAFAC. Recently OAFACC hired 2 new people, an Access Director and General Manager. OAFAC’s mission is to set a new cultural standard for accessibility by nurturing creative and justice-oriented accessibility practices. With its research, public programs and strategic initiatives OAFAC:
- invites participation to the accessibility movement that is local to this land and its history.
- nurtures accessibility practices that are a direct response to harmful institutional models for support, establishing new standards for accessibility within the cultural sector.
- creates learning opportunities that build capacity for disabled communities to participate in public life, freely, fully and without compromise, so they may claim influence and power within a wider cultural context.
New Access Director – Jane Shi
Jane Shi is a Mad autistic survivor and a queer Chinese settler who lives on the stolen, occupied, and unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and səlil̓ilw̓ətaʔɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) peoples. She organizes Masks4EastVan, a grassroots mutual aid project that distributes personal protective equipment to neighbours in East Vancouver and beyond. She is a board member of Canthius magazine and a collective member of ROOM. Her work has appeared in the Disability Visibility blog, Briarpatch Magazine, The Puritan, and CV2 Magazine, among others. She is the author of the chapbook Leaving Chang’e on Read (Rahila’s Ghost Press, 2022).Jane’s family speaks Wu languages and is from Pujiang County and Liuheng Island, Zhoushan Archipelagos, Zhejiang. She was born in Nanjing, Jiangsu and lived in Shanghai, what’s colonially known as Richmond, BC near the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm fishing village Spul’u’kwuks, and near the Indigenous trail in Little Saigon. One of her artistic influences is the films of Jia Zhangke.
Jane believes the arts must be continuously reclaimed as a site of rebellion, movement, and prefigurative politics. As Access Director, Jane hopes to be of service to those most impacted and the changes they demand.
New General Manager – Calla Evans
Calla (she/her)is a fat, queer, disabled, white settler living on the stolen lands of the xʷməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and səl̓ílwətaʔɬ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) peoples, colonially known as Vancouver, BC. She is an image-maker, visual storyteller, digital problem solver, fat activist and ex-scholar. Much of her practice explores the material conditions of fatness in so called “Canada” as well as digital fat identity construction and performance. In addition to her work with OAFAC, Calla currently works as a digital storytelling facilitator at Re•Vision: The Centre for Art & Social Justice. She cultivates as much time as possible in the woods with her pup, Ellie.