Divergent: Weird pride, unruliness & outsider wisdom

The rules of our world aren’t consistent. They are rarely fair, rarely just, rarely rooted in nature, joy, care or creative potential. What could the future look like if we built it with a different rule book?

There is a boundless beauty and wisdom in world-views and experience that can't be boxed up, defined or refined by the 'norms' of a broken world. Join us to celebrate and explore neurodiversity with speakers pushing us to rethink our relationships to nature, gender, capital and each other.

If we acknowledge that neurotypical, heteronormative expectations, healthcare, norms and binaries do not make the world make sense, maybe we need to take another look at how to make our world better for everyone.

When we centre voices usually relegated to the fringes we create a richer, fairer world for us all - come crack the world open with us!

– Our Speakers –

CJ DeBarra (they/them) is queer, non-binary journalist, author and historian from Cork, Ireland residing in Nottingham, UK. They are the author of Neuroqueer and Queer Nottingham volumes one and two, and have an upcoming book due from Jessica Kingsley Press. CJ is also the founder of the NQHA, an oral history campaign recording queer stories from Nottingham spanning from 1790 to 2025.

frank r jagoe’s (they/them) work is a reclamation of madness and monstrosity in opposition to the exclusionary category of the human. Often it explores communication with other-than-humans: in recognition that we are in community with each other; in acknowledgement of the personhood of other-than-human beings; and in order to displace a western hierarchy that claims humanity as the highest form of existence. They are particularly drawn to considering how madness and monstrosity are defined in relation to language usage, and in opposition to rationality, coherence, and ‘reason’. Highlighting forms of communication beyond words, beyond class-based language, beyond human forms of speech, feels an urgent imperative. Throughout they want to consider whose language is respected, whose language is engaged with, and believed, or even acknowledged.