Anti-Ableism: Pay-what-you-can Introductory Crash Course for Artists

This is a fun and participatory workshop, for independent artists who want to challenge everyday ableism in our industries.

Delivered in a supportive and engaging way, this workshop will help you develop a more nuanced awareness of yourself and our society, and enrich your capacity to show up for disabled collaborators and colleagues in informed and constructive ways.

This crash course doesn't focus on working with disabled artists in community or disability arts settings. Instead, you will learn about creating grassroots change by addressing systemic discrimination and amplifying the work of your disabled peers in the professional sector and artist-run spaces, with the power you have already as an artist.

📋 Workshop Plan

5:30pm - 5:50pm Acknowledgement of Country & Check-ins

5:50pm - 6:10pm Overview of disabled culture, social contexts, and arts practices

6:10pm - 6:20pm Questions

6:20pm - 6:40pm Introduction to non-disabled fragility and anti-harassment

6:40pm - 7pm Role-playing activity: non-disabled feelings

7pm - 7:15pm Reflections

7:15pm - 7:20pm Break

7:20pm - 7:45pm Introduction to industry power differences, solidarity and cultural safety

7:45pm - 8:10pm Role-playing activity: participatory peership

8:10pm - 8:30pm Questions & Closing

The learning will be about one third sharing information verbally with summary points and pictures on a powerpoint, one third facilitated discussion as a group, and one third practical activities that involve working in pairs.

The "role-playing activities" do not involve pretending to have disabled lived experience.

To offer a holistic and responsive learning environment, this workshop is capped at 12 participants.

🫱🏽‍🫲🏻 Is this workshop for me?

If you are:

• an independent artist, producer, or arts space organiser who wants to use your privileges to improve how our industry treats and works with disabled performers and makers

• interested in learning from disabled perspectives, and comfortable with your own perspective being gently challenged and exposed to new ideas in a supported but honest learning environment

• based in professional or independent sectors that don't have a specific focus on working with disabled communities

Then this workshop is intended for you.

If you are:

• a teacher of any type of body-based performance who wants to develop safer learning spaces for disabled performers

• a studio or venue manager, arts worker or board member interested in improving disabled cultural safety at your studio, venue, company or organisation

• interested in applying what you learn here for working in the disability arts sector, as a disability support worker, or in any settings with a specific focus on disabled participants

Then this workshop is not intended for you. But if you're interested in these topics and want to collaborate on your professional development, please feel free to reach out and we can discuss if my other training for dance and drama teachers, or my work specifically for organisations or companies, is a better fit for you. You're welcome to reach me anytime through the "Contact host" link at the top or bottom of this page.

👨🏻‍🏫 About the facilitator

Patrick Gunasekera (he/him) is an interdisciplinary performance-maker, writer, cultural safety trainer, and teaching artist based on Whadjuk Noongar Boodjar. His practices often expand western art forms with a sensitivity to intersectionally marginalised resilience, interdependence, and radical empathy. His previous works include After Nick (WWIM 2026), The Little Mermaid: a small scale ballet (The Blue Room Theatre), After Lili (Audible Edge Festival 2024), and Risk pas de deux (The Blue Room Theatre 600 SECONDS MOVES, with STRUT Dance).

He has taught dance and experimental performance classes independently since 2024, mainly exploring responsive and inclusive class structures, and teaching techniques developed through his own highly interdisciplinary and body intergrity-focused performance practices. Since 2019 he has extended mobility aid-using dance technique through his lived experience as a cane-, walker-, and later manual wheelchair-user, with a particular focus on holistic movement and professional practice, which he recently begun formalising as Gunasekera technique.

Since 2023 he has facilitated disabled-only spaces for artists to develop creative processes that draw from and centre their own voices and knowledge - including Autobiographical Storytelling Workshop for Deaf and Disabled Artists in residence at PICA in 2023, and curating the Crip Constellations workshop series for Audible Edge Festival's Night School in 2024. He has worked as an access and inclusion advisor with numerous artist-run, small-to-medium, major and national organisations, and since 2025 has run pay-what-you-can anti-ableism workshops for independent artists.

♿️ Access Info

💻 This workshop will be entirely over zoom, with a powerpoint presentation. You are welcome to have your camera on or off.

🔤 The powerpoint presentation will have high contrast colours, dyslexia-friendly font, and will have dot points appearing one at a time after the previous point has been spoken to.

🌱 The tone and pace of this workshop will be open and responsive, in order to create a learning environment that is curious and where honest dialogue and feedback can be shared. It's important to me that you feel accepted and valued so that you can grow confidently into the next stage of your learning journey, but I will also encourage you to think critically and truthfully about the social contexts we work in.

🚦 This workshop includes learning about important social and cultural histories and present-day experiences which may initially shock some participants for whom these lived experiences are unfamiliar and unjust. This will always be shared with care and respect, and prefaced with content warnings. In mindfully harnessing the potential of uncomfortable growth, this workshop has been designed over the three hours to give you the best possible opportunity to grow emotional resilience and better cultural competency whilst maintaining healthy boundaries and nervous systems.

🧠 Information will always be broken down into manageable amounts. It matters a lot to me that you have access to the skills and knowledge we're learning, so I will always adapt and work at the pace of the room (whether that's faster or slower). There will be ongoing check-ins about pace.

👀 Please note: A couple of disabled peers may be shadowing this training over zoom, but won't contribute, and will uphold confidentiality for all discussions.

If you have any questions, concerns, requests or feedback about this workshop, I would love to hear from you - please click "Contact host" under the event dates at the top of the page, or in the Host section below.

Header image: On Silence (After John Cage) (chor. Patrick Gunasekera) Outcome Unknown #84, 2023. Photo by Eduardo Cossio.