Long Table: Decolonise Your Ears & Beyond Closure

Join Red Beti Theatre, SOPEN, and Keeping Six for a discussion of the Decolonise Your Ears Festival and Beyond Closure: A Community Zine for Hope and Harm Reduction

**

In Person & Online Event
Free! | All Are Welcome
David Braley Health Sciences Centre
Corner of Bay St S & Main St W (100 Main St W)
Room 2036

The Zoom link will be sent to registrants prior to the event.

Questions and accessibility concerns can be sent to Katie: [email protected]

**

Decolonise Your Ears Festival:

Born in 2020, the Decolonise Your Ears Festival at Red Beti Theatre makes space and supports Indigenous, Black and other Racialised women’s voices in Hamilton due to the lack of support in the city. Decolonising theatre means expressing culturally specific ideas, mythologies, music, dance; global majority bodies occupying space in celebration of our unique identities; and subverting rigid hierarchies in favour of a more equitable approach. It means having time to explore our voices, develop our practices and explore lesser-known cultural forms without having to negotiate, conform or squeeze into the parameters of Western aesthetics.

Beyond Closure: A Community Zine for Hope and Harm Reduction:

Created collaboratively by people directly impacted by the ongoing closure of Supervised Consumption Sites (SCS)--including people who use or have used drugs, loved ones, harm reduction and frontline workers, and community members--this zine amplifies lived experience and collective advocacy through art and storytelling. The project, co-led by Positive Health Network, SOPEN, and Keeping Six, aims to raise awareness of the life-saving importance of SCS in our communities. In the face of stigma, misinformation, and policy barriers, these pages bring forward real stories, creative expressions, and critical perspectives that highlight how SCS save lives, foster connection, and uphold dignity. We will be sharing insights from the project and inviting conversation about harm reduction, grief, resilience, and community care. Zines will be available for sale at a pay-what-you-can rate, with all proceeds going toward continued harm reduction and advocacy efforts in Hamilton.

About the Presenters:

Danielle Boissoneau is Anishinaabekwe from Garden River First Nation. She enjoys breathing new life into ancestral ways of being with creativity, laughter and determination. Whether that's trying something she's never done before or encouraging others to remember the old ways, she thrives in the spaces in between it all. Danielle belongs to the Old Turtle Clan.

Lex D'Angelo (they/she) is a community member of SOPEN and an Expressive Arts Facilitator / Therapist who collaboratively worked on the SCS zine project.

Radha Menon is a recipient of a Chalmers Fellowship 2022, City of Hamilton’s 2020 Arts Innovation Award and the 2016 Theatre Award, and began performing in British theatre and television in her youth. Stateless until age seventeen, Menon emigrated to Regina, Saskatchewan in 1995 where her performance career abruptly ended, and her writing career began. Her plays, which have been produced at theatre festivals in Canada, the US, UK and India, include Blackberry, Ganga’s Ganja, Rukmini’s Gold, Rise of the Prickly Pear, The Circus & The Washing Machine. Red Beti Theatre (RBT), Hamilton’s first feminist IBPOC theatre company, was founded by Menon in 2011. Winner of Toronto Fringe New Play Contest 2015, Hamilton Fringe Critics Choice Award 2015, 2020 Sanhita Manch National Playwriting Contest, Sultan Padamsee Playwriting contest 2020 & Herman Voaden Playwriting award 2021 Finalist, Rukmini’s Gold was published by Scirocco Press in 2022. Menon holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Guelph and is currently developing a suite of goddess plays, Devi Triptych. She is based in Hamilton and editing her first novel, a M**der mystery, Death Cry of a Peacock.

Marie Sinclair (she/her) is the Arts Coordinator for the Keeping Six Arts Collective, a community-driven group that operates on the belief that art-making is a form of harm reduction. The collective works to reduce harm by building relationships, making art accessible, and creating platforms for people to share their stories and amplify their voices. The Keeping Six Arts Collective collaborated with SOPEN to share participants thoughts and feelings in response to the closure of the safe consumption sites.

About the location of this event: The David Braley Health Sciences Centre is a fully accessible building located one block from MacNab Transit terminal, at the corner of Bay St and Main St W in downtown Hamilton. The conference room for this event is located on the 2nd floor, up the main staircase and to the left. Elevators are located near the reception desk at the building's main entrance, and security can provide additional directions if needed. Questions and access concerns can be sent to [email protected]

Parking: Paid parking is available in both a surface lot and a parkade at the David Braley Health Sciences Centre. Enter from Bay St S for both lots.

Know what’s Happening Next — before everyone else does.

Get App

Host or Publisher Centre for Community Engaged Narrative Arts