How can we—educators, researchers and community members—tap the power of research and story to imagine and create a world that affirms, and even desires, disability and difference?

This talk brings to life a new storytelling and disability studies approach to inclusion and belonging in education, countering long-standing educational inequities heightened through COVID-19. The talk moves its audience beyond a Western biomedical understanding of disability as deficit that needs be remedied. Instead, Dr. Douglas asserts disability and difference as fundamental, desirable, and needed for tangibly reimagining living, learning, and thriving together on planet earth.

The shift made in this talk from deficit to gift, and inclusion to belonging in education is illuminated through community engagements across Canada, the UK and Aotearoa (New Zealand). The talk includes screening two short multi-media (digital) stories, invites audience reflection and participation, and concludes with a vision for education as a site of radical hope for belonging and thriving in unprecedented times.