Shifting Frameworks

What is it?

Shifting Frameworks is a series of specialized workshops that provide education to different people, organizations, and businesses who interact with queer folks. Shifting Frameworks workshops are currently offered in person, with online workshops or hybrid workshops offered occasionally.

Shifting Frameworks provides education beyond how to create queer-safe spaces in a world that is foundationally unsafe for queer folks, and rather, how to identify and challenge the conditions that require us to have safe spaces in the first place. What if every space could be a place that queer people felt comfortable? What if we reflected on the parts of our society, language, and infrastructure that often go unchecked, but are fundamentally exclusionary to queer people? How do we leverage our positionality as individuals, businesses, organizations, and communities to advance inclusion and justice in ways that are equitable and self-determined by the communities we want to support?

Shifting Frameworks doesn’t seek to provide a singular answer to any of these questions, but rather offers frameworks through which to apply compassionate critical thinking in the co-creation of what these possibilities could be. These frameworks are foundationally non-assumptive, gender-neutral, and open-ended, which allows for them to be utilized in a variety of situations, as well as throughout the passage of time, with less chance of crystallizing into irrelevancy. Language, gender, queerness, equitability, justice, and accessibility are all concepts that continue to develop and evolve. What we can offer as our best solution today may not be the best solution tomorrow. But if we can operate with frameworks that embrace the expansion of our individual and collective understanding of how to care for one another, we will be in a good starting place.

Workshops

Who is it for? This stream is aimed at local businesses and organizations.

About this stream: Workplace Queer-Competency Training operates in a three part model.

Attend an initial training session. This session invites 1-3 people per workplace to attend; we suggest that owners/management staff attend from businesses, and board/staff attend from non-profits.
Have your staff/board trained with a custom workshop that addresses your workplace’s specific needs.
Work with Coastal Queers through an ongoing consultation basis for continued resources and support.
Next session: SIGN UP HERE

Who is it for? This stream is aimed at local, regional, and Vancouver Island based healthcare providers.

About this stream:

This 3 hours workshop will trace the origin of the present day barriers in accessing queer healthcare through the problematic history of the western medical system, challenge the cisheteronormative assumptions ingrained in our systems of care, and highlight local solutions for care providers to create a more inclusive healthcare experience for the queer community.

Next session: SIGN UP HERE

We value our role as educators at Coastal Queers, and carry this responsibility with humility, accountability, and gratitude. We understand queerness not only as a personal identity, but also as a worldview that informs our understanding of how to move through this life with good actions, values, and relations. With this lens, we can share education not only about queerness as it relates to gender and sexuality, but a vast array of topics; past custom workshop topics have included seminars on leadership, queering surf culture, and more.

REACH OUT HERE

Workshops are usually free for attendees, but please check the information for the specific workshop you’re interested in attending. Some workshops are paid for through grant funding, and others are paid for privately. This can impact whether or not there is a cost to attend!
Prior to a workshop, there will be an hour and a half of independent learning required; we ask that if you plan to attend the in person component, that you also commit to completing the pre-work. This will ensure that everyone is familiar with some of the foundational knowledge, language, definitions, and concepts we will be discussing while in person. Shifting Frameworks is intended to be an accessible entry-point for anyone on their learning journey.