Arts

DisCoTec hosts artists residencies with artists who have a focus on disability justice with performances and educational events. The artists’ time is shared between UNCC, VT, and other area partners. These residencies invite in artists and writers to facilitate community workshops, performances, and learning. Artists residencies last for anywhere from 1-4 weeks, depending on artist availability and ability, with great respect for how difficult travel can be for some members of the disability community and honoring notions of crip time (an important concept in disability studies).

Through these residencies, we will connect artists to our communities in southwest Virginia and western North Carolina. They will also help facilitate community networking and understanding of cross-disability issues. We use these residencies themselves as a technology of connection. Disabled people have long used technologies to build community and to tell each other our own stories – something often under-recognized in disability tech research and infrastructure.

Our Schedulle — and we will update this list as we get confirmation from artists:

October 14-21, 2025: Gaelynn Lea is in residence at VT Blacksburg and participating in several events (including visiting a local elementary school) and classroom visits, ending in a performance with the Music Inclusion Ensemble (with principals Adrian Anantwan and Molly Joyce and students and former students from the Berklee School of Music) on October 20, 7:30pm EST live at the Center for the Arts (Blacksburg, VA). CART and ASL provided.

June 1-20, 2024: Anita Cameron, a longtime disability justice activist who has been arrested 140 times with ADAPT and now works with Not Dead Yet, has a storied lifetime of activism around important legislative and community issues — and we’re excited to host her to work on her own story, her memoir, as a writer-in-residence. Her time with us will culminate in an online public reading where she’ll take questions and we will officially launch the DisCoTec Center. Event on June 27, 7pm EST. CART and ASL provided.