358

followers

217

following

A research collective and registered CIC.
Investigating the body and way it negotiates itself across intersectionalities, with a focus on disability.

MAPPING INEQUALITIES 🤝🧭

✨ From 31st August to 2nd September 2026, the Centre for Disability Research and Training (CDRT), Kirori Mal College, participated in “Mapping Inequalities: Interacting with Accessibility”, organised by @_negotiatingbodies . The three-day workshop focused on accessibility and how people experience and navigate college spaces. It aimed to raise awareness about barriers encountered in everyday environments.

📃 The first workshop, held on 31st August 2026, introduced Negotiating Bodies and explained the workshop series' purpose. The main reading was Perry Zurn’s “A Critical Phenomenology of Walking: Footpaths and Flightways”, which connected walking with accessibility, movement and inequality. Participants read the text together, shared thoughts, asked questions and discussed key ideas.

🏫🫂 The second workshop, held on 1st September 2026, involved a practical activity. Participants explored pathways from the college entrance, including commonly used routes and those designed specifically for people with disabilities. They observed stairs, doors, footsteps, obstacles and other features affecting movement, documenting their observations through maps or charts. They later discussed their experiences.

📝 The final workshop, held on 2nd September 2026, continued these discussions, focusing on making institutions more inclusive and accessible. Participants expressed ideas through writing, drawings, maps, instructional manuals and conversations. They reflected on improving educational and communal spaces for everyone.

👥✊ Overall, the workshop helped participants understand accessibility through reading, observation, walking and discussion. It encouraged closer examination of everyday spaces and highlighted the importance of inclusive, accessible educational institutions.

#MappingInequalities #CDRT #KiroriMalCollege #NegotiatingBodies #accessibility Participants sit in a small room during a workshop session, reading printed materials and discussing accessibility-related concepts as a facilitator presents a document to the group.

142

Download

✨ MAPPING INEQUALITIES ♿

See beyond the visible 💫👀

CDRT, Kirori Mal College, in collaboration with Negotiating Bodies, brings you a 3-day workshop to explore:

• Talk about accessibility 👥
• Mapping inequalities; creating inclusion 🤝
• Challenge inequality 🌱

Let’s look at accessibility beyond just a topic of discussion and understand the true meaning of responsibility. 💫

📅 31st August – 2nd September, 2026
⏰ 2:00 – 4:00 PM
📍CDRT Room, KMC

🎟️ Limited seats available!
Scan the QR code and register now.
https://forms.gle/wnEC7iKPF1CAc46H7

CDRT welcomes you all! 🌻♿

📩 For queries:
Komal: 8512020029
Prakhar: 9835004946

Download

A piece of writing by me (Divya) responding to the prompt: “you can either be a b**** or get an autoimmune disease.”

What do you guys think about this prompt? Or even this wider statement? I have a contentious relationship with it. Perhaps that is obvious by the text.

#disability #disabilitywriting #writing

Download

$Lived experience of pain wanted Collective Anthology on lived experiences, definitions and mappings of pain. published by Femmesocial Press in spring 2027 edited by Negotiating Bodies Deadline for finished work: 15 August 2026 Elaine Scarry, in her seminal text ‘The Body in Pain: the Making and Unmaking of the World,’ proposes that pain is language-destroying; it resists language, objectification, and communicability. “For the person whose pain it is, it is “effortlessly” grasped (that is, even with the most heroic effort it cannot not be grasped); while for the person outside the sufferer’s body, what is “effortless” is not grasping it (it is easy to remain wholly unaware of its existence; even with effort, one may remain in doubt about its existence or may retain the astonishing freedom of denying its existence; and finally, if with the best effort of sustained attention one successfully apprehends it, the aversiveness of the “it” one apprehends will only be a shadowly fraction of the actual “it”). So, for the person in pain, so incontestably and unnegotiably present is it that “having pain” may come to be thought of as the most vibrant example of what it is to “have certainty,” while for the other person it is so elusive that “hearing about pain” may exist as the primary model of what it is “to have doubt.” Thus pain comes unsharably into our midst as at once that which cannot be denied and that which cannot be confirmed.” Elaine Scarry, The Body in Pain We want non-fiction essays, stories, poems, art, and other experimental written materials on Pain; explorations and reflections on pain; the methods of communicating and mapping it; and the personal definitions of it one builds over the course of experiencing and/or seeing it. Email “negotiatingbodies.work@gmail.com” with the subject line “Pain Anthology submission”. #opencall$

134

$12.03.2025 \\ The Home-Maker by Dorothy Canfield Fisher \\ This is a role reversal story. A husband is paralysed from the waist down after an accident, the wife is expected to become a bread-winner to make ends meet. \\ It is a fascinating disability representation in so far as it captures how complex disability, self esteem, and societal expectations are when they tie into each other. This is perhaps the first time I have read a book from the early 1900s that does such a good job of asking the question of ability. What does it mean to be an able-bodied man? What does it mean to be an able-bodied woman? How does the ability or disability of your body affect your children? I think that the wife in the story, Evangeline, has some form of OCD. The way it affects the children is quite interesting and when Lester, the husband, gets paralysed from the waist down, it was really helpful to the children. They grew and flourished under his parenting. But also, Evangeline’s personality or neurodivergence made her very good at sales and the way she looked at the world could be considered quite ableist. I like looking into the children’s mind and the minds of Evangeline and Lester because they are honest in their internalised ableism. They are honest about the roles they occupy in society. And they are honest about their dislike of the roles they occupy in society. But, they are also honest about what it means to move away from those roles and how it would impact their pride. \\ #persephonebooks #thehomemaker #book #mordernclassics$

Download

$20.02.2025 \\ PIRATE CARE: ACTS AGAINST THE CRIMINALIZATION OF SOLIDARITY… By Valeria Graziano, Marcell Mars and Tomislav Medak “These are three tales of pirate care, three uncompromising acts of grassroots solidarity that defy unjust laws and norms. They use and hack the tools, knowledges, and resources available to sustain the life of those to whom care is denied under an uncaring Empire. This book is about such people whose practices defy resignation and cynicism, and about getting more pirates to join them.” “Pirate carers give themselves permission to be in the world otherwise, to appropriate and share knowledges, tools, and techniques needed for their tasks, even if these must be stolen from the master’s house.” “Instead, we embrace a pragmatic of pirate carers: those who work in the messy, queer, and radical spaces where care grows not from compliance to protocols, but from tender, rebellious acts of collective survival.” \\ This book is giving words to something that is hard to make tangible. I loved this book, I cried a lot. My only criticism of the book would be that they do not give enough emphasis, if any, to a history of activism. Knowledge is power and should not be something that is hidden behind paywalls. But, it’s not only knowledge that is power, memory is power as well. If every generation believes that they are beginning all over again, then there will be no collective solidarity that is continual and continued. We need continual and continued solidarity. \\ #piratecare #books #bookreview$

Download

📍 This week at Deptford Town Hall occupation:

TUESDAY, 6pm: Portrait-making with Mariam Hussein - some art supplies provided but please feel free to bring your own! 🖍🖌🖊

WEDNESDAY, 1pm: Crochet 101: Making bunting 🧶

THURSDAY, noon: General assembly! 👥👥

FRIDAY, time TBC: The able-body gossip sesh: spilling the tea on abili-tea 🫖

FRIDAY, 7pm: Screening Pride (2014) 🏳️‍🌈 #lgsm #pridemonth

🚮 #binthetp #goldsmithsuniversity #Lewisham #newcross #universityoflondon #goldsmithsuniversityoflondon #highereducation #highereducationmatters #artseducation #humanities #socialscience #education

Download

Thanks to @_negotiatingbodies for hosting a workshop with us a few weeks ago!

We had so much fun cooking rice and fruit compote and chatting about our bodies and relationships with food 🍓🍊🍚

Download

Negotiating Bodies

@_negotiatingbodies