ABSTRACT
In this growing landscape of non-option institutional support services, those with diverse and complex needs are routinely disempowered by the systems that they rely upon in order to maintain their basic health and well-being. This deeply rooted oppression plays out in schools, hospitals, cultural institutions, policing organizations, and through various arms of government, making one’s effort to claim agency a strategic, high-stakes intervention. However, if access was defined by an open, collective process, would the systems that those in need rely upon be accessible as needs change and as institutional entities evolve? What might the tenets of an open model for access be? This chapter explores how I have negotiated these considerations in life and in my socially engaged art practice, outlining the strategies that I have employed in order to find a community of support in the midst of a complex set of disabling social and cultural conditions.
