Shifting Frameworks

What is it?

Shifting Frameworks is a workshop series designed to help organizations and businesses learn and grow. Instead of just focusing on how to create queer-safe spaces in a world that isn’t always safe for queer people, we go deeper—exploring why these safe spaces are needed in the first place.

What if every space was welcoming for queer people? What if we took a closer look at the ways our society, language, and systems unintentionally exclude them? And how can we, as individuals, businesses, and communities, use our influence to promote real inclusion and justice—driven by the needs of the people we aim to support?

Shifting Frameworks doesn’t offer one single answer to these questions. Instead, it provides flexible ways of thinking that encourage compassionate, critical reflection as we work together to imagine new possibilities.

These approaches are open-ended, gender-neutral, and adaptable, making them useful in different situations and over time—without becoming outdated. Concepts like language, gender, queerness, equity, justice, and accessibility are always evolving. What feels like the best solution today might change tomorrow. But if we use frameworks that grow with our understanding of how to care for one another, we’ll be in a strong place to move forward.

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.