Disability Justice and Joy: Zine Making Workshop
As part of Celebrating 40 Years of Accessible Arts, we’re presenting Disability Justice & Joy: Zine Making Workshops at the Art Gallery of NSW.
Zines are a celebrated practice in the Disabled community, offering portals to reclaim and access our own histories and providing toolkits for community safety, survival and justice.
Drop into a free workshop and create colourful zines celebrating Disability culture and community using cut-and-paste resources, stimmy craft materials and Disability arts ephemera from Accessible Arts’ 40-year archive. This workshop is made for and by the Disabled and Neurodivergent community, with allies welcome.
The workshops will be led by Ava Lacoon and co-facilitated by Cass Li, Lara-Marie Wilkinson and Mei Lin Meyers — a cross-cohort group of writer and artist alumni from Accessible Arts’ Ripple: Disability and Culturally Diverse Internship Program.
All materials are provided, and all levels of ability and experience are welcome.
Wednesday 14 October
3:30pm – 4:30pm
7:30pm – 8:30pm
Free workshops – no bookings required
Art Gallery of NSW
Naala Badu Building – Learning Studio, Lower Level 1
For details on how to get to the Art Gallery of NSW, please click here or check out the Visual Story.
Access
These wheelchair accessible workshops will be Auslan interpreted.
About the Workshop Facilitators
Ava Lacoon: Lead Artist
Ava Lacoon (she/they) is a Queer, Disabled, Crip, Anglo-Indian-Chinese emerging writer, zine maker, advocate, photographer and arts worker living on Sovereign Gadigal Land. Ava’s practice is informed by Disability Justice, Anti-colonial methodologies, queer theory and crip studies. She views zine making as a portal to capture the embodied knowledges, lived experiences and cultural production of Disabled peoples and our communities. They won the Kudos Emerging Writer Award in 2024, Guest Edited ‘Hyphen’ – Artlink’s 2024-2025 Warlati/ Summer Issue and have been published by the likes of Memo and the National Gallery of Australia. Ava participated in Accessible Arts’ 2025 Ripple: Disability and Culturally Diverse Internship Program and is the Project Coordinator of this year’s Ripple program.
Cass Li: Co-Artist Facilitator
Cass Li is an emerging artist and arts worker with a creative documentary practice from Western Sydney. Working across non-fiction writing, video and photography, she is interested in the representation of personal and diasporic narratives through self-documentation and autoethnography. Her essayistic work often draws on her Chinese Timorese-Indonesian heritage and seeks connection in present and ancestral realities, tracing the moving boundaries of insider/outsider across time, place, and memory. Cass is passionate for community access and inclusion, mental health advocacy and collective knowledge sharing. Most recently she has worked with Accessible Arts as a peer assessor, workshop facilitator and mentor, and is currently a Createability intern with Campbelltown Arts Centre. Cass has exhibited at photoaccess and Pari, and has developed work as a WritingNSW Cultivate mentee and National Young Writers’ Festival guest. She is looking forward to featuring at the Emerging Writers’ Festival and exhibiting at Bankstown Arts Centre.
Mei Lin Meyers: Co-Artist Facilitator
Mei Lin Meyers (he/they) is an emerging artist and writer working on unceded Dharug Land. His playful practice webs together drawing, painting, textiles and sculpture, as a way to explore complex feelings of dis/comfort, grief, and disorientation.
Lara-Marie Wilkinson: Co-Artist Facilitator
Lara-Marie is a multimedia artist working primarily in the mediums of sound, sculpture and photography, with the goal of finding clarity and catharsis in the midst of persistent pain. She moulds her pain to create artwork that responds to historical and contemporary, personal and collective, physical and emotional pain. With an emphasis on sublimating the abject experiences of disabled and colonised peoples, Lara-Marie aims to manifest a holistic rendering of suffering in the hope of fostering community and radical understanding.
Accessible Arts is proudly supported by Create NSW. This event has been made possible with support from the City of Sydney as Principal Local Government Partner, and the Art Gallery of NSW.
ENDS
Image description: Ava Lacoon, Zine Artwork, Shrine for Alice Wong, 2026. Image source: Ava Lacoon.
