Care Collective Festival

Join us at Community Base for a day filled with joy, kinship, and community building. Come together with other queer, trans, disabled, neurodiverse and chronically ill individuals to share ideas, tactics, grief and laughter.

This in-person event is a celebration of our perseverence and resilience, complimenting the incredible mutual aid work we’ve been doing online & dispersed over the past 3 years. Enjoy live performances, workshops, and skillshares (exact content to be confirmed, existing programme can be found here).

Bring anything you need to be comfy (which might be layers, cushions, chargers, hot water bottles, headphones, eyemasks, sugary snacks etc). We will also be providing cushions, pillows, and even blow up beds to help make the day more accesible and comfortable, especially for anyone who may need to spend all or part of their time at the event lying down. There will be hot drinks - a range of teas and coffees (including plenty of decaf) - and a food delivery later in the day. There will also be some basic art supplies (such as a variety of pens, paper, collaging content, scissors, etc), stim toys, eye maks and ear plugs.

If you have any spare or unused access devices / pain management devices that you’d like to go to a good home, feel free to bring them along.

Please test for COVID-19 before you arrive if possible, but we also recognise that these tests can be hard to access and will have plenty that you can take on arrival. Please also ensure you wear a high quality mask - if not, we’ll have lots of adult bifold FFP2’ on the door freely available. Please don’t attend if you have any viral symptoms or have been in recent intimate contact with anyone who is now unwell (in ways that are transmissable by air). Consider your risk tolerance, and the risk tolerance of others who will be attending, many of whom have become disabled as a result of infections by viruses that are assumed to be very survivable. When considering your exposure we advise minimising the time you’re spending in public spaces during the week preceding the event (could you ask someone else to go shopping for you, or work at home instead of the library?), and wearing a high-quality mask during unavoidable exposure to public spaces. We recognise that it is a privilege to be able to make these choices, and want these guidelines to inspire community care rather than guilt or shame. Access is a shared & collective responsibility, and those able to take precautions doing so makes it safer for those who are unable to.Most important is a collective effort all contribute in whatever ways are available :) Together, we can contribute in whatever ways possible towards a safer & freer feeling event.

A lot of love, time & labour have gone into making this happen, and thanks to Switchboard’s Community Health Inequalities Grant, this event can be offered freely to anyone who’d like to come. If you’d like to support us to put on more accessible events in the future, you can make a donation using the "pay as you feel" option when you get a ticket. Getting a ticket, even if it is free, helps us approximate how many attendees to expect, and will also help remind you about the event and alert you to about any updates we make (like the programme for the day, once confirmed). If you know you can’t make it but want to donate, you can do so via our supporter tier or Paypal.

Receive updates via our Instagram or Substack (mailing list).