TARYN GOODWIN: Faculty of Culture & Community. BFA, Critical + Cultural Practices Minor, Social Practice + Community Engagement
Taryn Goodwin
Taryn Goodwin (she/they) is an Inter-Connected, Disability Social Practice Artist, Neuro-Divergent Writer, and Community Organizer. Invested in supporting connections and conversations that re-imagine working cultures and campus communities for all MindBodies.
Goodwin uses relationships of care and mutual aid in community organizing to re-imagine academic governance structures and campus communities.
Committed to gathering lived experiences as tools for long-lasting impact to change educational policy, procedures and practices to address;
Who Does the University Exist For?
Their work aims to point out the disembodied pace of institutional learning to provide an avenue for all post-secondary learners, staff and non-regular and regular faculty to understand their own agency and power within The Student Body. That can only come through an embodied, self-established, peer-based, community-supported wellness ethic.
Holding a BFA in Critical and Culture Studies, with a Minor in Social Practice and Community Engagement (2022) and as a student who dropped out of ECUAD (2016) only to return due to the support of the remote learning now available due to the global health crisis of COIVD-19, Goodwin’s educational experiences are transparent to their work.
Finishing their degree with remote access(2020-22) personally and collectively invested with a mission for access-driven, community-focused social commentary, experiential research, relational exercises and social interventions in making disabling, harmful working and learning cultures visible, that wasn’t available for them 4 years ago as a student.
Taryn currently practices their work through a physical posture of rest from their couch, pacing, or walking sending audio notes on the unceded traditional territories of the Pentlach and K’òmoks Coast Salish People.
They are currently open for guest lectures, exhibitions, podcasts, interviews, and virtual artist talks upon request.
EMAIL: hello@taryngoodwin.ca
SEND A VOICE NOTE: @slow.full.organizing
“Disability Artist Q+A: With Taryn Goodwin” is a Celebration and Community event honoring Taryn Goodwin and their 10-year process to graduation as a Disability + Neuro-Divergent (Autistic / ADHD) Social Practice Artist, Writer, and Community Organizer.
Join to learn more about their educational journey and career as it continues to be informed by relational care in and beyond Emily Carr University of Art & Design.
Thursday, May 19th 7PM PST via Zoom
Sliding Scale Tickets(Free – $40 – $60 -$80 ) >> REGISTER TODAY
Hi Body, is a podcast liberated. Created in 2022, as a way to honor the moving, pacing, stimming Body was a way to communicate Taryn knew they weren’t able to sit and think behind a mic at a desk, so instead – they walk, and talk! To all the Bodies that move, and move to make sense of the World — Let’s keep moving together! And say Hi with Our Bodies!
“In many organizations, including ECU, the needs of disabled individuals are often addressed through a formal process of accommodations, something Taryn sees as fundamentally limited.
“It’s a practice of getting ‘back to the norm’ that suggests, if you can fit in like everyone else, then the accommodation is working,” she explains.
“It misses out on so much of the embodied knowledge that people who identify with disabilities have.” >> FULL INTERVIEW CLICK HERE
ECU COMMUNITY RESOURCES
ADVOCATED BY TARYN GOODWIN (2020-2022)
CAMPUS ADVOCACY WORK
WRITTEN BIOS: FOR EACH ECU COUNSELLOR
IMAGE DESCRIPTIONS: ECU COMMUNICATIONS, TEAM
ACCESSIBILITY RESEARCH GUIDE: ECU LIBRARY, TEAM w/ Ana Diab
CO-FOUNDED: ECU Neuro-Divergent + Disability Artists’ Run Collective (w/ Jay White)
Draft // Equitable Hiring: “Library Student Job Postings: Looking Through the Lens of Disability Justice” EDI Action Grant, with Emma Somers + ECUAD Library
WRITINGS
A New Lecture: A Students’ Manifesto, 2014
“Art + Writing in the Pandemic Era” – Guest Artist, UBCO with Matt Rader, 2021
Directed Studies Proposal: Final (Use as Template)
Call for Participation: Student Interview Series
What’s in a Word: ECU Student Activism
Catalogue Essay, Group Exhibition: “Catalog: The Missing Culture of ECUAD”
ASK FOR YOUR PRACTICE TO BE SUPPORTED.
QUESTION YOUR OWN WORK.
INTERVIEW YOUR OWN PROCESS.
ASK TOGETHER.
LET IT EMERGE.
LET IT SURPRISE YOU.
LET IT BE YOU.
ECU COMMUNITY ACKNOWLEDGMENTS:
2013-2022 Learning Journey
2013 / 2014 (Fall / Spring)
Zoe Kreye
Carmen Papalia
Justin Langlois
Jessica P. Hill
Reed Reed + Hannah Jickling
Amy K + John
2016 (SPRING)
Alison Westdorp
Christie Lim
2020-2022
Jay White
ECU Neuro-Divergent & Disability Artists’ Collective
Em Ludington
Emma Somers
Kate Giles
Andrea Nunes
Amy Kheong
Frances Soon
Michelle Cyca
Mads Elia
Cathy Holfeld
Josh Venne
Rachelle Sawatsky
Paula Coulombe
Katie Brennan
Rose Skeeters
Ana Diab
Laura Kozak
Matt Rader
Chloe D’Leen
Cemre Demiralp
Cameron Cartiere
Rob Stone
stephanie schneider
Mickey Morgan
Magnolia Pauker
Kaitlyn Beugh
Cissie Fu
Jaqueline Turner
ECU Writing Centre
ECSU (Emily Carr Students’ Union)
Cybele Creery
Lucas Anderson
Jack Page
Joe O’Brien
Scott + Shasta
Heather + Jani
Ingrid Brown
Grandma + Auntie Co
Brain + Cathy Goodwin
Deb + Mike Morrisey
Carissa + Jordan Massullo
And to the Absent Alumni.
For all those students, staff, and non-regular and regular faculty who were never given equal footing to begin, graduate, teach, and or express their fullness.
Those who were made Absent.
Due to the multitude of Ableist, Colonial, Capitalist, White Supremacist, Racist, Trans/Queer phobic, Ageist, Systematic Systems that uphold Oppressions. Micro, and Macro.
Absent due to never having felt an opening long enough, or at all, in institutional learning and teaching for their way, pace, rhythms of care, embodied learning, or wellness plan to sustain themselves in care, identity, and well-being.
Those who have gone unsupported, unnoticed, misunderstood, and deeply frustrated by, in and outside the systems set up against their rhythm, pace, and multiple intelligences.
Those Absent from this institution and many Graduating Classes’, Faculty, and Staff Lists across the globe.
For reasons that we may have internalized as faults of our own, or as our own Bodies responding to the mental health crisis of academic burnout as “failures.. unable to keep up.”
We are not failures, we are sick; of systems.
Sick of academic abuse and the hidden trauma lines of; institutional semesters, timelines, frameworks, policies, procedures, practices, and structures of compliance not supportive of one’s needs, access, or well-being as pillars of learning that are inherent in academic culture disguised as “excellence.”
Nothing is excellent about putting our Minds and Bodies last and after our work. Nothing.
This culture doesn’t work for many.
It’s not your fault.
You are Alumni. You are Absent.
And, You also belong here.
Very, Very much.
-Taryn Goodwin (She/They) Neuro-Divergent + Disability Artist, Writer & Community Organizer, 2022
