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- [00:00]
A
Hello, everybody. This is Marshall Po. I'm the founder and editor of the New Books Network. And if you're listening to this, you know that the NBN is the largest academic podcast network in the world. We reach a worldwide audience of 2 million people. You may have a podcast, or you may be thinking about starting a podcast. As you probably know, there are challenges basically of two kinds. One is technical. There are things you have to know in order to get your podcast produced and distributed. And the second is, and this is the biggest problem, you need to get an audience. Building an audience in podcasting is the hardest thing to do today. With this in mind, we at the NBM have started a service called NBN Productions. What we do is help you create a podcast, produce your podcast, distribute your podcast, and we host your podcast. Most importantly, what we do is we distribute your podcast to the NBN audience. We've done this many times with many academic podcasts, and we would like to help you. If you would be interested in talking to us about how we can help you with your podcast, please contact us. Just go to the front page of the New Books Network and you will see a link to NBN Productions. Click that, fill out the form, and we can talk. Welcome to the New Books Network.
- [01:07]
B
Hello, everyone, and welcome to academic life. This is a podcast for your academic journey and beyond. I'm the producer and your host, Dr. Christina Gessler. And today I am so pleased to be joined by Dr. Alex Ketchum, who is the author of how to Organize Inclusive Events and Conferences and the booklet how to Organize Inclusive Events. Welcome back to the show, Alex.
- [01:32]
C
Thank you so much for having me. I'm really excited to chat with you today.
- [01:36]
B
I'm so glad that we get to speak again. For listeners who haven't met you in a previous episode, will you please tell us about yourself?
- [01:44]
C
For sure. I'm an associate professor at the Institute for Gender, Sexuality and feminist studies at McGill University. I'm a historian by training, but I teach in a gender studies program. I look a lot at the history of queer labor history, history of social movements, kind of feminist queer history, a lot around food and technology. But I also have a strong dedication to doing public scholarship.
- [02:11]
B
And you tell us in your work that you have a background in putting on events. The fact that you put on events and that you have a doctorate in history may seem for some people at first blush to think, well, what do those have in common? But those of us who've been in and around academia know that putting on events often sort of falls to someone to have to do rather than an outside organized. Can you tell us about how you became involved in putting on events?
- [02:35]
C
Definitely. So I can talk about how I've gone into it through the academic side, but also just kind of my back history in organizing events throughout my lifetime I've really always enjoyed bringing people together. So even back in high school I was, you know, on the dance committees and always organizing different ongoing things of music events, concerts, different fundraisers and stuff like that. And I continued that work throughout undergrad as well, organizing farm festivals, more music related kind of concert festivals and stuff like that. And a lot of times there was always kind of an under current of kind of political fundraising or different kind of community organizing with all of that or kind of around food and art and environmental stuff. And then when I started grad school I continued a lot of that work and I really saw that there was an opportunity to use events and different kinds of programming to bring my research to different kinds of audiences and communities. And I also really enjoyed finding connections between my research and different community partners and using that as a way to collaborate in order to kind of share some of my research with different groups and be able to make use of those connections with those community organizations who would bring in audiences. So. So while people might not think about events as being a kind of traditional academic publication, it is a form of research knowledge mobilization because you can really connect with other people on a different level. Not everyone's going to read an academic journal article, but a lot of people might go to a talk at a bookstore or maybe where you bring in a few different speakers on a topic and you have food or there's music and stuff like that.
- [04:23]
B
How did it come to your attention that many of these events aren't inclusive? Often despite someone's well meaning intentions that they just aren't?
- [04:32]
C
Yeah, I think there's a few things just like going to different folks events and seeing limitations. So part of it has to do with just kind of structural barriers. If you're hosting events at university campuses, perhaps your university doesn't have elevators or the campus is just really hard to navigate and. But there's a lot of other kinds of barriers to accessibility as well. So for example, there could be issues of how large the font is on slides or the kind of color contrast that could be difficult. Or when the event is hosted might make it hard for people with parents or doing caregiving opportunity, like caregiving roles to have the opportunity to attend. So I was just kind of noticing what, what communities were able to participate in events and which ones weren't. And I was also reading a lot of work by important disability advocates and activists and really learning from what they were saying as well. So it was in part doing my own research, in part from experience, and just listening to different activist networks.
- [05:40]
B
In reading how to Organize Inclusive Events, I was also thinking that it's partly being receptive to feedback because you tell us flat out the book, no solution is perfect. And as you're reading the booklet and we're going through the different things, it's clear that everything's subject to change and a venue that you used to be able to rely on. Maybe they remodeled in a way that's no longer as accessible, or maybe they've started charging fees. There's a number of reasons why the ability to be adaptable is important. How did you start incorporating feedback?
- [06:14]
C
Oh, yeah, okay, so I really like that question. So I totally agree that being receptive to feedback from people who want to participate participate or who have participated is really important so that you make sure that you're actually serving the audiences that you're trying to or the participants, not necessarily just audiences. So I think that part of it was that people would come up to me and talk to me after events. So from 2019, January 2019, until fairly recently, I organized 106 events as part of the speaker series that I ran and founded called Disrupting Disruptions, the feminist Accessible Publishing, Communications and tech speaker and workshop series. And so prior to the start of the COVID 19 pandemic, all of our events were in person. Sometimes there were some hybrid components, but they're pretty much all in person. And so at that time, it was really easy for participants to say things to me like, oh, I really wanted to come to this other event, but it was like it conflicted with a religious holiday, or, oh, like, they just kind of give me different kinds of feedback of things that, oh, I had friends who wanted to attend, but they couldn't because of that. When I would get that feedback, I think about, okay, how can I respond to that, Knowing that there's also things like, oh, well, maybe this speaker could only come to campus on a Friday afternoon, and thus we had to host it then. But maybe we can have a recording of it so people can participate asynchronously and stuff like that. And then throughout 2020, 2021 and onward, all of the events pretty much were either online or hybrid as well. And I continually solicited feedback from folks who were participating who would write me in the Q&A box or email me afterwards or connect with me on social media because I really wanted to make sure I was doing outreach to the communities that I want to reach. But as you said, there's always challenges. So one thing I talk about in the booklet, as well as my forthcoming book that comes out this January that expands upon all of this, is that there's things like translation, right? For example, you might have planned to host an event in English, but not everyone speaks English or English isn't their first language. But you're not necessarily going to have the budget or capability to hire a translator for every single language. So just having a sense from community members like, oh, would it be helpful to have a French translator? Or would it be helpful to have human generated cart captioning and stuff like that and kind of touching base with the audience and then also with who's involved. So for example, one of the presenters was deaf and so I reached out to her and was like, do you prefer asl? Do you prefer having a captioner? And kind of, you always have to adapt. You can have kind of your standard set guidelines. And I kind of talk about that in the pamphlet and in the book, but it's also useful to continually check in with the people that you're working with and who you want to reach. And, and in some ways this is kind of tricky because you might have an imagined audience, but I also challenge you to try to think beyond your first assumption of who would be interested in the events as well, because you might actually be creating barriers in designing your events with a certain intended audience. And it actually could maybe reach more communities.
- [09:31]
B
And there are probably a number of people who are hear about an event and automatically think, well, I can't do that because of a number of the reasons that you, you go through in, in the booklet. They're going to know from past experience that childcare won't be offered. They don't want the burden of trying to teach the presenter, you know, that there should be childcare. And so a lot of the book is taking us through these kinds of gatekeeping and inviting us in to see it holistically. Before we ever start promoting the event, we have to think of all of these different things and then we have to be receptive to the idea that as you say, clearly the book, no solution is perfect. So there's going to be feedback later and it's something that we can use to grow on, to keep scaling. Can you talk about what encouraged you to create the book and the booklet in the first place.
- [10:24]
C
Yeah. So there's something that kind of is an ongoing current in all of my work that I don't want people to have to essentially reinvent the wheel. So for some of these strategies, it took me a lot of time, a lot of research, a lot of learning. Right. I've mentioned I've organized hundreds of events and I'm still constantly growing, learning as an event organizer. And I just really like practical things. I enjoy practical writing and I just want things to be clear for others. And people kept asking me like, oh, how would you do this? How would you organize this? Or like similar questions. And while at first I would sit down with people and have a one on one meeting for an hour or so to kind of try to bring them in, I realized that would be ultimately more time efficient also to have it written and I could reach a way wider audience, people who wouldn't necessarily feel comfortable to reach out to me to ask for those kinds of one on one meetings and mentorship and training. And so yeah, so I just was like, okay, here's things that I figured out. I'm obviously not perfect, but here's lessons that I can share. And originally I worked with Microcosm because I could also distribute it in a really accessible way. Like their price point is quite low. A lot of their booklets range between 5 to $10. So that meant that I could like reach a wider variety of audiences. I also have created like different free resources online as well, but this is, you know, more detailed version. And then also the book that's coming out also can reach different audiences because libraries don't tend to stock these booklets, but they will stock the book and potentially like audiobooks and ebook versions as well. So that way it's really about just trying to reach different people to share this work and. Oh yeah, oh, I just wanted to add one more thing. And one of the things that's been really exciting is so we're talking about the booklet how to Organize Inclusive Conferences primarily right now. But as you mentioned in the introduction, I also wrote the booklet how to Organize Inclusive Events. And it's just been amazing to see the reception for that as well, to just see how people have taken it up and where it's distributed. And I'll just go to lots of different, like small bookstores, community bookstores, like punk indie bookstores, and there will be like one of these. And people say that they have a hard time keeping it in stock, which like, means so much to me because I think a lot of people are organizers and they want to think through these things. And it's helpful to have it written out. And I just wanted to make these resources more readily available for folks.
- [13:09]
B
And it sounds like you were in a position for people to share with you. Sometimes people are maybe because of their position or something about them, they seem more inaccessible to give feedback to. And so they'll say, well, I would do something differently, but I don't know what people want. And this book really gives people the insider guide. If you don't have someone in your ear who can explain to you why an event or wasn't as inclusive, or why, for example, lactating women didn't come, why caregivers didn't come, you don't have to try to explain it to that person. They can peel back the curtain by reading it in this book that says, well, you need to have a lactation room available. Well, you need to let people know that childcare will be available. But at the very beginning, you level the playing field. You start by defining the terms. And some of the terms that are really important are accessibility and design justice. How do those two things work together and what do we need to know about them?
- [14:09]
C
Yeah, for sure. So for accessibility within the way that I'm thinking through it, yes, I'm thinking about accessibility when we're thinking about disability and really kind of on the social model of disability, which is this idea that it's not. There's kind of like two prominent models we often see with disability, which is there's the medical model, which is that is kind of about fixing the body. Can there be medical interventions to make the body more like the norm? And then there's the social model of disability, which is that it's actually society that disables the body. For example, it's not that there's something wrong with the body, but that you put stairs instead of a ramp to enter a building. And there's different disability advocates and activists who kind of bring different components of the different models together and so forth. And, but so that's in thinking of accessibility. Yes, there's the disability side, but I'm also thinking about other forms of accessibility as well, such as thinking about things like class. Right. So who can afford to go to an event? Do you have maybe sliding scale prices? Do you have things where maybe someone can maybe volunteer for part of it to get free access to the multi day conference or festival? Are there different kind of worker exchanges? How are you pricing the tickets? How are you pricing food that's at the event in terms of accessibility in terms of just like labeling of washrooms. Are there gender neutral, all gender washrooms for longer events? Are there spaces for people to chest feed or breastfeed? Just the kind of language you're using. Noting whether child care is there. As some of my friends who are parents have noted, they don't necessarily expect there to be childcare, everything. But it's really helpful to know if even children are allowed to come. Is it something that you could bring your children to, to join you? And also something that's important because if you're hearing me talk about all these things, you might think, wow, this sounds exhausting. How can you do all of this? I don't want people to feel dissuaded from organizing events because there's also about accessibility for the organizers themselves. Like, how can organizers be taken care of in this work? What can make this sustainable? What won't lead to burnout in trying to organize events? And so there's different tips about kind of stepping stones of maybe don't make the first thing you organize a four day international conference. Maybe it's something like a one hour talk or something like that. Building up confidence, building up networks, kind of learning your skill sets as well. Yeah. So really thinking about access in that kind of broader way. And then around Design Justice, I'm really inspired by this term and work around Design Justice. So there's a lot of really important work coming out of Detroit around this concept, but it's kind of expanded further. So it's thinking beyond ideas of universal accessibility and thinking about how design impacts basically accessibility and social justice. That was like a very short definition of it. But I really recommend that folks check out design justice in more detail as well. And there's some amazing online resources and.
- [17:28]
B
You encourage people to check out, for example, the Design Justice Network to learn more about that. You go on to talk about sustainability and it's a word that people have heard so much. I think most of us don't have a working definition of it. You know, like a lot of words that we hear a lot. We're like, yeah, I know, but you really break it down for us for what it is. And it's more inclusive, I think, than a lot of us think of with sustainability. Because you talk about it as part of an ethic of care. And a moment ago you were talking about including that ethic of care towards you as the event organizer. As someone who did 106 events in what sounds like about five years, it would have been easy for you to burn out or to blow through your health and that that ethic of care has to include everyone.
- [18:19]
C
Yeah, definitely. So yeah, I'm thinking about sustainability. Yes. In terms of like environmental sustainability. Right. Just like being mindful of like if, if this is possible where you're located. Right. Are there public transit options to where you're. The venue. Right. Like if the buses stop running at 9pm wherever you're located or 11 or whatever time they stop running, like making sure the event wraps up, thinking about those kinds of things related to environment and like the food you serve and like, you know, plastics and what you throw away. But that's, I'm thinking more beyond that. I'm thinking about sustainability in terms of how can, if you want it to be a recurring type of event, how can you make sure that you're building up a team where people are supported, that you can have knowledge transfer. Right. I hire research assistants out of grants that I write for these events and then I am able to train them, but I also then can pay them to train other students to replace them as they graduate or move on with their lives. So different ways of kind of sustaining that knowledge and also ways to kind of make the events, like creating certain frameworks for the events so that I'm not having to start completely from scratch each time. So I've created certain workflows that I can repeat and kind of break down so it's not as challenging. And then also in terms of sustainability for the Disrupting Disruption series, with the consent of the presenters, we recorded most of the events and put them on our website and they're embedded on disrupting disruptions.com but there's also a YouTube channel. Part of it was like, okay, well, sustainability of. Okay, how can I make sure that I've budgeted enough to pay for the domain name of the website for the next however many years and stuff like that, just so the project can outlast the short period of time. And so part of sustainability is also thinking about when to wrap up projects as well and kind of how the project will end and doing that as thoughtfully as possible.
- [20:25]
B
And in that section you invite us into, as you stated, the environmental impact of your event, your well being as the host, and financial concerns for sustainability as we go along, we get into the initial planning and that was something that I referenced early on, that there's this work to do to consider a lot of different things before you get too deep into planning the event. And so this really breaks it down to a granular level that when you're brainstorming you need to think about what kind of event it is and how the event will match the intent of what you want to do. And then you take us into the brainstorming of the who, what, when, where and how. How do we brainstorm in an inclusive way?
- [21:08]
C
Alex? Yeah, I think part of it too can be chatting with other people of saying like, you know, you might have your initial conception of who would be involved, but even talking to friends or colleagues or other people, like, oh, do you think, like, there's other folks who might be interested? I think the other thing too of like kind of expanding. And one reason I really like working with community partners is because they're also going to bring in different communities. So I think that can be another way of just getting more feedback in terms of the inclusiveness. And then I also ask questions for people to kind of think beyond their first initial response of who would come to the event. So there's kind of follow up questions of like, okay, well, like, you know, you might have conceived of this as an event for, like, for academics, right? You might have conceived this as an event for your peers. But like, maybe undergrads might be interested, maybe community members, maybe community partners. One thing with the Disrupting Disruption series, especially prior to the start of the pandemic, was that I actually had different government employees coming to events who told me that they really liked that the events were open to anyone who wanted to attend because they weren't able to access all of the kind of information that we were talking about because it was paywalled. But by coming to the events, they could meet the researchers doing this work and kind of use that to inform policy making. So I didn't actually think of government workers and policymakers like when I first conceived of the events, you know, So I think sometimes too, having, even if you say something's like open to the public, not everyone's going to feel comfortable coming to a university campus or something like that. But trying to use different kinds of language to invite people, advertising in different places, because people might actually be interested even beyond what you can conceive.
- [23:01]
B
You take us into planning an in person event and this circles back to the design justice aspect, because design justice centers the voice of people who are normally marginalized. And you tell us in this section that we have to start with space, and there are a lot of considerations for the space about cost and availability, but there's also ways of considering about how it will continue to allow you to center the voice of people who are normally marginalized. Things like stairs, hills, elevators, width of door frames. This really gets into a checklist for people to use at a more granular level because it even gets into things like service animals and door handles.
- [23:45]
C
Yeah, 100%. And part of that is stuff that also folks who are able bodied or don't have those disabilities might just take for granted. So it was really helpful to kind of think through the spaces themselves. One thing that I've tried to do and actually something that we try to do for the Institute for Gender, Sexuality and Feminist Studies that I work at, we as an institute, try to book all of our events in rooms on campus that meet these general requirements. But our campus is built on a hill and it's very old, so McGill University. So it can actually be a challenge sometimes to find these rooms, but we have a commitment to doing that. So it's a priority in all of our bookings. And so I think once you start to become aware of this and notice it, then it's something. Also, maybe you're trying to book something at a venue you haven't yet visited. You can ask the venue these questions like, hey, is there a step to get into the room? How wide are the door frames? Do you have washrooms, bathrooms that can accommodate a wheelchair and stuff like that, and depending where you're located. So in the United States, there's the ada, which has different legal requirements, but like I live in Canada and our requirements are different. So that's why I want to kind of make those definitions so that this work could be useful for folks no matter what geographic context they were in, with the limitation being that the text is written in English.
- [25:20]
B
And you also talk about, and we've alluded to this about the washroom situation, that you need all gender washrooms to make something inclusive for trans and gender non binary individuals. And as we mentioned earlier about having a space for parents who are nursing. You also talk about things that organizers can be thinking about on their end, about how you're going to arrange chairs, how you're going to rearrange chairs and how many rooms you're going to use. But then it gets into things that I think people often don't think about, like having a low stimuli space for people who get, you know, they need to take a pause. And then there's issues about lighting. I think a lot of people have accepted that the lighting is going to give them a horrible headache. And you invite us into thinking, how can we prevent that?
- [26:09]
C
Yeah.
- [26:10]
B
And similar.
- [26:11]
C
Oh, I was just going to say. Sorry, I was just going to Say yes. And like that being said, right, there can be limitations of the budget you have and maybe you have to host it on your campus or something like that. And all the lighting is terrible but just like different ways. Like are there some buildings on campus that have natural light or stuff like that that you can use? Sorry, but please continue.
- [26:32]
B
There's also, I think it's really important and few places say this because I think they're afraid they're going to offend people, but you can just explicitly say it's going to be a low scent environment and that can really help who have allergies or migraines to be able to attend.
- [26:47]
C
Yes, for sure. And it really depends kind of in like what circles you tend to socialize in or that you use for your academic networks. But for a while at least I saw it on more and more event posters and information of people saying like please refrain from wearing certain fragrances. This is like a scent. We're trying to make this a scent free space, you know, the best of one's abilities and stuff like that. So just like there's things that you can signal also in posters and advertising of the event, whether you have it on some kind of webpage for your institution or you have an eventbrite or something like that, or a social media post or a physical fire, you can note these things like if there's childcare or if you need childcare, contact us at this time or all age event or there will be alcohol or there will be no alcohol, things like that. So people can make informed decisions about whether or not they want to attend and whether it's right for them. And then also one thing I recommend doing too, if it is going to be something that's recurring. While there can be some benefit in having things like oh, we always have it at 6pm on a Wednesday because that's like when we can book the room and like people can note that in their calendar. That might be really useful for maybe if you have something that's just for your department or something like that. But if you want it to be broader to a wider variety of people, I like to try to mix up the times that I make the events whenever possible. I also have my own schedule limitations. But sometimes having a lunchtime event can be useful for some folks who because of caregiving responsibilities or second jobs, they work or whatever other commitments that anything after 5pm they could never attend. And then it's also for some folks, right, like because of their work schedule, especially members of the public, maybe they finish work at 5, 30 or 6. So having it in the evening means that they can attend. And kind of mixing up the date like day of the week and the time allows for some different types of communities to attend. And it does create more difficulty. I would say making things hybrid is way harder than in person only or online only. But I do like having hybrid events when possible because it does open up whole other communities that can attend just because of travel of cost and so forth. But I will be transparent that sometimes on the organizing side, hybrid can be challenging because it requires a lot of kind of adaptability while you're in the space. Because you're trying to navigate, you know, working with the people in person, being present in that space. But also you're running the tech, you're trying to think through it, you're trying to check in with the people online and making sure that they're taken care of. And then you're also trying to make sure if it's recorded, that the recording's running. So I also really recommend for hybrid to not try to do it completely yourself, to at least have like one other person working with you so you can like appoint them to just like even make sure that the feed is still going or the stream is still going, or be able to adapt if there is a technical issue, if you're physically present and you want to be there for the speaker and the in person people.
- [30:15]
B
And you mentioned that it's become really important to you to see yourself as leading a team, that there's going to be not only people that you train, but you're going to encourage knowledge transfer. And by seeing all this work to do as something that can be divided up amongst team members, it becomes less daunting and more like a checklist and an opportunity for people to jump in on. Okay, I'll take the lead on making sure there's a cleanup crew. I'll take the lead on scouting venues. And that takes us into another section where you're talking about figuring out the venue itself. It may be greatly influenced by budget, particularly if you work in or around academia. Budget is always on our minds. And one of the things that you talk about for people, particularly who are starting up an event, is imagine that your budget is zero.
- [31:00]
C
Yes.
- [31:01]
B
And I felt that because when I started this podcast that was my budget. And I think it's important for sustainability to be realistic about not committing yourself to price points that you don't know how you can keep up with. So you take us into free and low cost options and you name a number of them. You're also really transparent about the pros and cons that if you accept a free space from a religious organization that may make a number of people self select out, you may be offered free space to use or low cost space in an independent bookstore. But for people who need low stimulus, that might be too many things going on in too many places. And so you throw out so many ideas here where people can start thinking about what might match what they have the bandwidth to do at this time.
- [31:50]
C
100%, yeah. And I also just want to kind of editorialize for a second, which is that I think universities, especially public universities, which most of our universities in Canada are at least, is that universities have a commitment to using space for these kinds of events, especially ones that bring in members of the public, where taxpayer funded, even private universities receive tax money. And I just think that it should be part of our mandates to do this. I know that over the last couple of years, many universities have started to become stricter about what kinds of events that they'll allow. And there's campuses they won't. They make it harder for faculty members to book rooms or students to book rooms. And I find it really disappointing and frustrating because I think this is a huge part of our educational mandate is to have these kinds of events. And so I really, if there's any university administrators listening and you are able to have power within your university to do this, I really implore you to try to simplify the process for people to book space on their campuses, to host speakers, to bring in members of the public, to, you know, just allow for people to exchange ideas. Because yeah, I think that's part of our educational mandate. And yeah, so anyways, going back to like the, in terms of like, I know I kind of lost part of that question in saying that. But yeah, I think there's a lot of pros and cons whether you host on a university campus, but some folks won't be comfortable coming to a university campus where some folks are like, I know what university campus is like, this is what I expect and so forth. So if you're able to kind of mix and match, that can be useful. That's also the benefit of the hybrid space. You know, some people don't feel comfortable coming to a campus, but they might watch on Zoom while they're cooking dinner for themselves or their families or whatever. So it can open up different opportunities.
- [34:04]
B
One of the things you talk about with Budget is speakers and performers and you say the quiet part out loud that Asking people to come and perform or speak or present or share their music or art without paying for it and expecting them to be able to do that is a class issue, 100%. We hear that a lot with academic conferences that people are flabbergasted that they have to pay to present their work at a conference, or they can present their work at a conference, but they have to assume this unpaid amount of labor to get it done. And this class issue, it is divisive.
- [34:43]
C
100%. Yeah. So what I think is really important. So we talked about, imagine your budget is zero. And then I think the next step is like, okay, if you have any budget, like try to make that go to an honorarium. So with the Disrupting Disruptions series, our standard honorarium was 800 Canadian dollars for a speaker. And so I was very transparent when I did the invitation, email. I like say, hi, here's the series. I love your work. Would you be able to speak, you know, open to format. But here's kind of like a general sense of what we'd be looking for. Here's what my budget is like. I would make sure to say the amount of money I could offer in that first email. And I think that's really important because it allows people to be informed when they're saying yes or no. I find it uncomfortable, but I'll still ask about it. People ask me to speak in different places and you know, knowing that like what the honorarium is can help me make an informed decision. Because sometimes someone is asking for, you know, an all day workshop or sometimes people are asking for even just like a short talk. And you know, my range, it depends, like if it's a local community organization, like I often will give those talks for free. But those groups will even sometimes be like, oh, we have $50. And just like them noting the labor means so much and the transparency around that. And sometimes, you know, maybe I'll refuse or I'll accept that. And then sometimes like a huge corporation will ask for talks from academics about their expertise and they don't want to pay a lot or like a richer university. So I think it's just really useful and important to just be transparent about the money and your budget. So the way that I was able to, listeners might be thinking, how could you pay like $800 a speaker for like 106 events? Some events have multiple speakers and stuff like that. And it's because in Canada we have this thing called connection grants. So in terms of like labor, it's a lot of labor. On my side as the organizer writing these grants. But then it meant I could pay for students to assist and I could pay for speakers and pay for like software that I needed. So that was basically the cost of the series. Like most of it went to honorariums or in the cases when people traveled, also to cover their travel.
- [37:11]
B
And you talk about that in other parts of this booklet about the labor of grant writing. And you suggested that people are just starting off organizing events, maybe they want to do a smaller scale event in the beginning because the grant writing is going to be so much labor and that grants are more often granted to people who have some experience in what they're asking for money for. So if you start small, sustainable, on no budget, you then have the experience and you can point to how you want to grow it or scale it in the grant, which may go in your favor. But in any case, whether you're going to start off writing grants or you're going to postpone that, know that the grant writing is a huge amount of labor.
- [37:52]
C
Oh, it's so much labor. But I also like along with that, in terms of starting small for academics, your university, who might have some internal funding beyond like departmental, every university is different. But you know, if you need $200, you can oftentimes I think, find $200 somewhere in the university. One thing, like for the connection grants that I mentioned, so this especially for Canadian academics, part of it is that you need 50% matching funding for whatever amount you're asking for. So let's say you're requesting $20,000, you need to have $10,000 that you've also raised, but that can also be in kind. So this is actually a great way to kind of collaborate with others, whether you're applying for these specific grants or any other kind of grant or just organizing events, is I would reach out to academic departments, not just at my own university, but at Montreal's kind of four major universities. So I'd reach out at the different universities, I'd reach out to local bookstores, different research institutions, different community groups and stuff like that. And they could also give things in kind. So they could give in kind of helping with publicity or letting us use a space for free. And so all those things not only helped build up showing that the grant that I had this kind of matching funding and support, but it also meant that it was already bringing in other audiences because there's some people who go, every event's put on by a certain bookstore or, you know, members of that community organization would come to this one event in particular. And then they might think, oh, I actually like the speaker series, I'll go to something else. So it also, I think can help facilitate bringing in different groups. But it also, it's a lot of work to do that, like for sure. But it also is a way of kind of showing grant agencies that you have support and also can be a way of showing like even if you're, you know, let's say you're in the faculty of arts and there's some like random shared budget within the faculty of arts at your university and you can say like, oh well I'm also working with like this department and this department, this department. And then it shows that like, okay, well there's a lot of folks at the university that are interested in this. Maybe we can give you some money. So every university again is unique. But those are just some tips that might work at your university.
- [40:13]
B
And you go into, in this section about speakers and performers that in a way you're asking people to be mindful of language because you talk about the difference between financial compensation and honorarium gifts. But you also say exposure does not pay the rent. I think it's really grating for people on their nerves to hear that, hey, there's no compensation, but this is great exposure. Can you talk about why it's so important for us to onboard the idea that exposure does not pay the rent 100%.
- [40:48]
C
The thing is, is that like especially we see this with the arts, but we also see it a lot with academia and especially for early career academics, non tenure track academics, grad students, right? You only have so much time in the day, you're trying to pay your bills. We all know that costs of living have continued to soar. And so for someone to be able to allocate the time to this, it's really important that they're compensated for that work. And this idea of like, oh, this is an opportunity, you know, like again especially in academia when we know there's so few permanent jobs or so little stability, people need more than just like a promise of an opportunity. Right? Like there also need to be concrete things that back this. And I know that a lot of times people really want to emphasize like, oh, we're going to give the big honorarium to the like superstar academic. But actually like I really encourage, if you're running a speaker series, try to invite people at a variety of career levels, like bringing in a grad student, like a PhD student who you know is very knowledgeable about their research, is very strong in their work and paying them $800, that could be really life changing money even at that point. And it can allow them to network. And with the Disrupting Disruption series, I made sure to invite the people who are the top of the field and grad students because then the high names kind of uplift the whole series as a whole. It gives more prestige to the grad students who are also being paid. It also allows them to be in this kind of network together and they can then talk and get mentorship beyond that. So just trying to bring in people at different levels I think can be important. And pay is also important because I don't know about like whoever is listening, like universities. But you know, my starting pay as a grad student in my program was 12,000 Canadian dollars. So that's about 8,000 US dollars and 2,000 had to go back towards tuition. So $800 was significant at that time.
- [42:55]
B
And that leads into the next section which is all about funding. And you get into the organizers end of it about you know, how I'm going to pay for all this and imagining realistically what your budget is. But then you start talking about ways that funding can happen. We've touched on grants and you've gone really granular inside your grant, which is really helpful I think for listeners to understand an example of how these things might work. But you also take us into things that I think people take for granted as being frankly not a gatekeeping thing, but often are. And one of them is selling tickets at the door of the event and selling tickets at all.
- [43:32]
C
Yeah, definitely. So I think there's like a range to deal with this. Right. Like we can think about this with a single event or we can think of it for academic conferences. Like there sometimes are costs that even if you get a grant that you might need to offset. But right. There can be things like pay what you can or sliding scale if you're selling things. And sometimes people might feel different, like feelings of guilt or shame too if they ask for the lower cost and stuff. So that's why also if you have certain pre sales online too, that can kind of circumvent some of those feelings perhaps. But I also try to. So for the Queer Food conference I organized with Megan J. Elias In 2024, the first one in Boston, it was also hybrid. And then we have one coming up in 2026 in Montreal, it will also be hybrid. So we priced the tickets at US$50. And with that you got two meals included, you got a cookbook, because the conference program was also a cookbook. And like, you know, by doing that, like, I don't know if you've eaten in Boston recently, but, like, two meals basically is $50. So it was like a way to try to keep it quite accessible. And by having the hybrid options, it meant that people who weren't able to travel, that reduced different costs. The thing that also I think was helpful was I was extremely transparent about why it was priced at that point. And I also talked about, compared to other academic conferences where sometimes it's $600 to register, so things like that, to just be very clear, I think it can be useful to explain to people why, or if you do need a ticket, why there is a ticket and what that cost is going towards.
- [45:18]
B
Yeah. And you also take us into other forms of funding, like donations in kind. Donations, sponsorships, as you mentioned on air. Looking at your university or college for forms of funding that you might not have thought of. For example, even if you're not a student, you may be able to work with a student activities group because they have sources of funding and they can pay for you to come do the speech or put on the event because it matches their needs and they have the funds to bring you to do that. So you go through a lot of ways that people can think about how, as you say, a bit of money grows and the ways that we can start thinking about that. Because I think fundraising in general feels daunting, particularly when people are going through all the steps to truly be inclusive. And as you said, they can't burn out. Sustainability must include the needs of the organizer themselves. You take us through very transparently how a number of these things work, including, can you find volunteers? How are you going to compensate the workers? You talk about things that people who are putting on an event might not think they need to bring, but they should, like a pen and paper and tape and extension cords. You talk about just practical things that can really help you make that event sustainable on the fly. Because despite all your planning, something's going to need to need to be labeled. Something's going to need to have a replaced cord. There's ways that you can really provide tangible assistance in the moment. The booklet goes on in so many ways, taking people through about interpretation, captioning how to make your visuals accessible. It takes you through renting equipment, considering food and drink, considering if that drink will be alcoholic, what types of serving utensils to use. But you also point out that an event must be publicized. The most accessible event in some ways is the one that People know about and they know how it's going to work. We're starting to come to the close of our time and we trust that listeners can ask their book for how to organize Inclusive events and conferences and get a copy of how to organize Inclusive Events. As we come to the close, can we talk about tangible ways to publicize in a way that really emphasize the inclusivity?
- [47:48]
C
Yes, for sure. So I think many folks, if you are social media active, you know that kind of the landscape has changed a lot for publicity. It used to be a lot of people were all in one place and it was fairly. I wouldn't say it was easy to reach audiences you want to, but it's become actually pretty difficult. A lot of information's become siloed. I would recommend using a variety of tools for publicity. So if you do a single thing that's not going to reach a lot of audiences. So if you're organizing, for example, an academic event on campus, whatever that means to you, let's say you're bringing a speaker to campus, but you want to be open to the public and maybe you're working with a community partner, like they're co organizing it or they're donating materials or you're doing it on their space or whatever. So I would recommend that you, yes, send it to your departmental or institutional listservs, that you also put up some physical flyers if possible. Because actually in a sea of so much digital messaging, sometimes a physical flyer just on a bulletin board around campus can really stand out. And if it's open to the public, like greater public, also maybe put some of those flyers in coffee shops, other other spaces around the city. Maybe your city or town has also public bulletin boards as well. Because in a lot of places it's against the law to actually tape things to signposts. But you might have public bulletin boards, stuff like that. So physical flyers, also putting it on different social media accounts and tagging the collaborators as well as like the speaker and asking them to share it so it goes within their network. If there's community partners having them share it within their own listservs, it's basically. It sounds like a lot, but it's really hard to actually get information out now about events. But I think that can be helpful and starting early too. So one thing I like to do if I'm hosting a recurring series or kind of an event series and stuff is I try to have at least the initial calendar out quite early with every kind of event through the year. And it doesn't have to be fully filled out. Like if there's some things I don't know. Like I'm right Now organizing about 17 events leading up to the Queer Food Conference about queer food. Because I co edited a book called Queers at the Table. So I, you know, for example, I put on queerfoodconference.com a list of all the events. But I'm also then having the external links and then as the events get closer, I'm also sharing those, but also kind of pulling people back. So I know this sounds like a lot of work and it is, but you can't just do a single form of outreach anymore. Unless it's like, unless this event is for 10 people and it's like a set workshop and you have the 10 people attending it. If it's not that, you're going to have to use a variety of forms. But I would say again, actually working with other people, asking them to share it in their networks. That will actually be key for reaching more people.
- [50:55]
B
I want to ask you, what do you hope this episode sparks for listeners?
- [50:59]
C
I hope people feel excited about organizing events, not exhausted by what I talked about. Because I know when we start to go through all the details, it can feel maybe exhausting or exasperating. But I have to say that organizing events, at least for me personally, is extremely fulfilling. It allows me to help showcase other people's work. It also, when I'm organizing events related to my own scholarship too, it allows me to connect with communities that I may have never gotten questions from. And people that are outside of academia will ask really different questions about the work that I think makes the research better. I find it really invigorating. We sometimes write articles and then they're just out there and we never hear anything about them. And you don't really know the impact. You might see, oh, a citation on Google Scholar or something like that. But this is a really nice way to actually kind of share your work with others and see the impacts that it can make and help other people do that. I really enjoy facilitating other people being able to share their work. So if it's something that's kind of piquing your interest, start with something small, try it out, see if you like it. You don't have to commit to 100 events. Maybe commit to one, a one or two hour event and kind of go from there, see if it's, if it's for you.
- [52:25]
B
And finally, what do you hope listeners take away?
- [52:27]
C
I hope listeners take away a feeling of empowerment that they actually really can do this. It is really feasible. And it's okay if you make mistakes. If you're trying something new, you're new at it, so you're not going to be perfect. But I hope you give yourself the opportunity and grace to try it if it seems interesting and there's something that you want to bring people together over.
- [52:58]
B
Thank you so much for being here today, Dr. Alex Kitcham, and taking us inside. Your work on organizing inclusive events, you've been listening to the academic life. I'm Christina Gessler, inviting you to please join us again.