Crip*—Cripistemology and the Arts (Crip*) is a practice-based experimental collaboration, creative research lab, and transdisciplinary pedagogical initiative formed by myself and Liza Sylvestre and is housed within the College of Fine and Applied Arts at the university of illinois urbana-champaign.

Crip* emerged out of the need to delink the typical medical approach to disability studies and explore what a cripistemological approach to creative pedagogy and applied research might be. (cripistemology being a portmanteau of ‘crip’ and ‘epistemology’)— Crip* draws upon points of connection between artistic practice and critical thought in response to the need to address both how cripistemologies are shaped pedagogically and how they are disseminated publicly.

A cripistemological approach to creative production focuses on how knowledge produced via a Crip/Disabled experience can shape and change the way we approach our respective mediums. Shifting away from essentializing difference and towards strategies that disrupt normative/hierarchical structures and make difference generative—to challenge the ways in which creative/interpretive spaces and strategies are reliant upon ableism. Crip* moves beyond the problem-solving approach to disability in the arts (ADA compliance, basic accessibility considerations, acknowledgement of disabled existence, etc.) and towards a creative methodology and pedagogical model that utilize a Crip* framework as an integral part of art critical discourse and production.

As a pedagogical model, Crip* foregrounds critical engagement with notions of access, embodiment, and representation (guided by principles such as interdependence, open access, generative difference, radical alterity, networks of support and collaboration, Crip temporality, and access ecology) and develops a creative methodology that is founded in the application of critical epistemologies—to facilitate the implementation and development of work (that is directly informed by the aforementioned principles) in the creative praxes of students.

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