We are incredibly excited to share that we received a generous award from the Ford Foundation for core support for the Longmore Institute!
Thanks to this new funding, we will have the flexibility to continue and expand online programming that became popular during the COVID pandemic, such as Superfest Disability Film Festival, our Disability Justice panel series, and the annual Longmore Lecture in Disability Studies. All events offer spaces for disabled people to recover collectively from wider discrimination by providing opportunities to learn and to connect. At each one’s core, participants discover innovative forms of access and hard-hitting content that come from foregrounding disability expertise. Together, they help fulfill the Longmore Institute's vision to create a society where everyone believes the world is better because of disabled people.
Our biggest new initiative, "The 5A Club," is a partnership with our new Longmore Senior Fellow artist and SFSU alum JS Shokrian to expand her interactive workshop model and toolkit to promote disability justice discourse within, and ultimately beyond, the disability community. By fleshing out the 5A's of Access, Anti-Incarceration, Anti-Oppression, Accountability and Abundance, the initiative will create a publicly available toolkit of curriculum, handouts, and resources that allow other groups to use the 5A's rubric for teaching and facilitation. We will begin this project with a cohort of those most impacted by the 5A's, and then extend to a five-part summer 2022 series of public programs sharing the model while educating about the 5A's. Throughout, we will create opportunities for San Francisco State University students with disabilities to learn about the 5A's while gaining professional development as they work to support this project.