#a11yArts: International Creative Leadership Series with Director Sins Invalid, Patty Berne

Join Touch Compass for the fifth webinar in our fabulous series #a11yArts: International Creative Leadership Series featuring Patty Berne, co-founder of the Disability Justice movement and co-director of Sins Invalid, a disability justice-based performance organisation in San Francisco, California.

Patty will be speaking about what approaching disability arts looks like from a social justice angle, and how disabled people are surviving and thriving during climate chaos. She will be joined in this kōrero by Touch Compass Artistic Direction Panel member Suzanne Cowan, PhD Dance Studies,as well as other energised activists and performers from Sins Invalid.

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About Patty Berne - Patty Berne is the Co-Founder, Executive and Artistic Director of Sins Invalid, a disability justice-based performance project centralizing disabled artists of color and queer and gender non-conforming artists with disabilities. Berne’s experiences as a Japanese-Haitian queer disabled woman provides grounding for her work creating “liberated zones” for
marginalized voices. They are widely recognized for their work to establish
the framework and practice of disability justice.

Berne’s training in clinical psychology focused on trauma and healing for survivors of interpersonal and state violence. Their professional background includes advocacy for immigrants who seek asylum due to war and torture, community organizing within the Haitian diaspora, international support work for the Guatemalan democratic movement, work with incarcerated youth toward alternatives to the criminal legal system, offering mental health support to survivors of violence, and advocating for LGBTQI and disability perspectives within the field of reproductive genetic technologies.