Crip Rave

Crip Rave is a Toronto-based event platform and consulting hub showcasing and prioritizing Crip, Disabled, Deaf, Mad and Sick party-goers and talent within safer and more accessible rave spaces. It was co-founded by Mad and Crip organizers Renee Dumaresque and Stefana Fratila, who are passionate about electronic music and envision a world where raves sites are accessible to everyone. Together, they have hosted parties and workshops, participated on panels at MUTEK (Montréal) and Nowadays (New York), and consulted with festivals and event promoters to enhance accessibility. Crip Rave draws on lineages of electronic music, rave dance music and club culture, as well as Disability Justice and Crip community wisdom in their work. Renee Dumaresque lives in between St. John’s and Toronto and is community organizer, psychotherapist and PhD candidate practicing at the intersection of creative, critical, and chaotic thought. They are a co-founder of Crip Rave, a long-time organizer of Showing Up for Racial Justice (SURJ) Toronto, and a Board member of the Social Justice Co-Operative of Newfoundland and Labrador. Their writing on music and sound, queerness, disability justice, race, and colonization can be found in open-source publications including, Intersectionalities: A Global Journal of Social Work Analysis, Research, Polity, and Practice, Journal of Feminist Scholarship, and New Sociology: Journal of Critical Praxis. Stefana Fratila is a Romanian-born artist, composer and sound designer based in Toronto, Canada. She is also a DJ and co-founder of Crip Rave. She created Sononaut, 8 open-source VST plug-ins that emulate the atmospheric conditions of the planets in our solar system in collaboration with NASA scientists and Jen Kutler. She has exhibited and performed her work internationally, including at MoMA and e-flux (New York, USA), Ars Electronica (Linz, Austria), and the International Symposium on Electronic Art (Paris, France). Photo credit: Anthony Tuccitto @badreggae