This is written in Easy Read so everyone can read it.
This is about the Re-imagining Parenting Possibilities Self-Advocate Working Group theatre workshop.
Re-Imagining Parenting Possibilities began because of the work of community organizations Springtide Resources, Centre for Independent Living Toronto and SPIN (Strength-based Parenting Initiative).
These groups noticed how labelled people were excluded and treated differently when it came to parenting. This lead to the creation of the Re-Imagining Parenting Possibilities group.
Re-Imagining Parenting Possibilities is a group from Ontario, Canada.
The group includes labelled people and researchers from McMaster and Ryerson Universities.
They worked together as researchers and co-researchers.
Co-researchers are people from the community who help university researchers in all of the research.
It was important that the co-researchers be labelled people.
The group wanted to make sure that labelled people were a part of research about how labelled people can parent.
They collected stories from labelled people all over Ontario about why they are parents or why they are not parents.
Together the group read the collected stories many times.
Together the group decided what were the important ideas.
The group focused on how people responded to labelled people saying they wanted to be parents.
The group took parts of these stories and turned them into scenes to be performed.
People who come to the workshop can be a part of each scene.
The scenes are a type of theatre called forum theatre.
In forum theatre scenes are about oppression.
Oppression is when one group of people is treated unfairly or unjustly.
The Re-Imagining Parenting Possibilities scenes are about dis/ableism.
Dis/ableism is when people with disabilities are treated unfairly because of their disability.
In the Re-Imagining Parenting Possibilities scenes people act out the ways in which labelled people are treated when they say they want to be parents.
This means that the scenes can be painful and hard to watch.
But the audience can act in the scene and can stop the scene to change what happens.
Stopping the scene and changing what happens can help us to explore different ways that labelled people can parent.
