My political obligations? I am a Black woman … in world that defines human as white and male for starters. Everything I do including survival is political.” ~Audre Lorde
Kim Crosby is a daughter of the diaspora, Arawak, West African, Indian and Dutch, hailing from Trinidad and living currently in Toronto.
She completed her artist residency under D’bi Young at the AnitAfrika Theatre and also was a student of the Buddies In Bad Times Young Creator’s Unit, touring internationally with her one womyn play, “Hands In My Cunt” a biomythographical account of her resistance and experience of sexual violence.
In 2009 she was the Youthline Award Winner for “Outstanding Contribution To Community Empowerment”. In 2010 she was named one of YSEC’s 100 Young Changemakers while also being recognized in Canada’s Northern Lights Exhibition: Celebrating African Canadian Stories. In 2011, she was recognized as one of 12 of the City Of Toronto’s Cultural Champions among such brilliant activists as Lillian Allen.
She has spoken on panels and conferences nationally as well as facilitated radical community dialogues including Queer As Black Folk hosted by The Black Daddies Club and was the keynote speaker at the 2011 Unity Conference. Her writing and her voice has been featured in the Toronto Star, The Huffington Post, George Brown University textbooks as well as Autostraddle and her writing can be found at queergiftedblack.blogspot.com
Supporting the creation of community arts and allocation of resources, she sits on the boards of Artreach, Mayworks, the Toronto Arts Council and most recently the Rhubarb selection committee. She also regularly curates and co-curates events and exhibits including the annual Gender Exhibition in Toronto.
Kim is a core member of the nationally touring Lesbian Blues group, a collective of Black Queer Folks committed to decolonization through creative political performance as well as T-Dot Renaissance, a wave of cultural and artistic collaborations for this generation of emerging artists of colour.
Kim is the co-founder and co-director of The People Project. Awarded the City Of Toronto’s Vital Ideas award in 2010, TPP is a movement of queer and trans folks of color and our allies, committed to individual and community empowerment through alternative education, activism and collaboration.
Through her work at The People Project, she has consulted and supported organizations the world over including Brown Boi Project, The Harmony Movement, The Grassroots Youth Collaborative, Stolen From Africa as well as the Toronto District School Board and The City Of Toronto Cultural Arts Division. In this work she has developed and co-developed over 50 distinct resources and tools as well as delivered over 150 workshops around race, gender, power, privilege, consent, creation, food and entrepreneurship.
She is also a co-founder of the New York based ‘The Brown Grrlz Project’, a collective dedicated to the advancement of “femme of centre” cis womyn, two-spirit people, intersex people and trans womyn.
In over a decade of community organizing, she has worked across the intersections of oppression in food justice, HIV activism as well as race & gender justice. She is also a yoga teacher teaching through the Brown Girl’s Yoga collective.
She is inspired, honoured and driven by the incredible work of community activists past and present including Punam Kholsla, Angela Davis, Audre Lorde, Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Mia Mingus and Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha.
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Come out to ‘What Makes A Man. Higher Unlearning: The 2012 White Ribbon Conference on Saturday February 11th . Join Kim and many other speakers at a discussion-focused event looking at the spectrum of identities, experiences and realities that determine ‘What Makes a Man’.
What Makes A Man. Higher Unlearning:
The 2012 White Ribbon Conference
Saturday February 11th
ENG 103 in the George Vari Engineering and Computing Centre.
245 Church St. (South/East corner of Church St and Gould St.)
Ryerson University
REGISTRATION 10:30am
11:00am – Morning Session begins
12:20pm – Lunch Break
1:20pm – Afternoon session begins
4:30pm – Dinner Break
5:45pm – Evening session with SHIHAN
ADMISSION $10 (or pay what you can)
Lunch provided by Salad King.
*All proceeds go to the White Ribbon Campaign*
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What Makes A Man. Higher Unlearning: The 2012 White Ribbon Conference. 