Our Guiding Principles
Our Guiding Principles
PRINCIPLE 1
Access, not accommodation — and not just disability
We do not want to retrofit inclusion onto an exclusionary structure. We want to build something different from the ground up: a space where disabled scholars, independent scholars, non-tenure-track musicologists, caregivers, and all those the academy has failed are not accommodated as exceptions but welcomed as the center. Intersectionality is not a caveat here — it is the point.
PRINCIPLE 2
Curation, not gatekeeping
Our program committee operates as a curation cohort, not a selection board. Our strong disposition is toward including as much as possible and finding the right form for each contribution. We will seek to find opportunities for all.
PRINCIPLE 3
Failing forward, together
This conference is aspirational. We will not always get it right, and we commit to naming our failure points and moving through them together with collaborative transparency. The “unconference” spirit runs through everything we do: the shape of this event is not fixed in advance, and we trust participants to help us make it what it needs to be.
PRINCIPLE 4
Leadership as collaborative care work
We presume best intent and competence in each other. We have compassion for the fact that we are all doing this work in the middle of complicated lives. No shame, no blame, we are a non-hierarchical community and we trust each other with our goals of accountability.
We are building access into this event from the beginning, not retrofitting it afterward. Among the features we are committing to: