Sins Invalid is Seeking Summer Interns!

Inspired by Sins Invalid’s artistic, educational, and movement-building work and looking for more ways to get involved? A Summer Internship could be the perfect way to SummerInternsdeepen your understanding of disability justice and practices of collective access, to build community with amazing people, and to support Sins Invalid’s work towards a world in which every bodymind is recognized and celebrated as valuable and beautiful! Queer, trans, and gender non-conforming people of color with disabilities strongly encouraged to apply! Details below: 

Sins Invalid

Internship for Summer 2015

[June - Sep]Do you want to be a part of a totally rad community that creates GROUNDBREAKING WORK?Internship Summer 2015Sins Invalid is a Bay Area based performance project that incubates and celebrates artists with disabilities, centralizing artists of color and queer and gender-variant artists as members of communities who have been historically marginalized.  Our performance work explores the themes of sexuality, embodiment and the disabled body.  Conceived and led by disabled people of color, we develop and present cutting-edge work where normative paradigms of “normal” and “sexy” are challenged, offering instead a vision of beauty and sexuality inclusive of all individuals and communities.We are seeking interns who know what skills they can contribute, are invested in working towards collective liberation, understand the importance of cultural work as a means of making change, and are excited to work with us! At this stage we can not guarantee a significant or any salary for your work, however we are open to discussing how we can otherwise support you in terms of housing or finding other paid work.What we are looking for:

  • A minimum commitment of 3 days per week, from 1 – 6pm; days/times are negotiable for a minimum of 3 months.
  • Proficiency with Microsoft Office programs; our hope is that everyone has their own laptop/computer to work on as we currently can’t offer one.
  • A strong attention to detail and ability to work independently.
  • An interest in disability justice, racial justice and disrupting heteronormativity.
  • If you are in school, either at a junior or senior level in college or the equivalent in life experience.

What you could gain from your time with us:

  • Opportunities to build relationships with people from a wide variety of justice and performance related fields.
  • Opportunities to learn deeply about the intersections of disability, race, gender and sexuality.
  • Experience in non-profit administration.
  • Opportunities to engage with Disability justice praxis.

To apply, please send an email to info@sinsinvalid.org.  We will send you an volunteer application to be returned to us along with a current resume if you have one. Please send this before May 30th if possible.Our Summer 2015 projects open for intern involvement include:Community Workshops/Local Performances: We organize performance workshops for community members with and without disabilities.  In the past, these workshops have included poetry, dance, storytelling, erotic writing, dance, and vocalization workshops. We also do short excerpts from performances for events. Support with organising these could be part of your work.Supporting event webstreaming. Webstreaming a Sins Invalid Performance: Many Sins Invalid community members who have connected with us through our web presence or our education work around the country are unable to attend a live Sins Invalid event.  Additionally, due to the isolation of ableism, even local community members may face difficulties attending a live performance.  In response to these challenges, we will offer our 2009 performance to be viewed on-line 24 hours/day during an allotted time.Fundraising support: Sins is currently working on moving towards more grassroots funding structures. We would welcome your support on our monthly donors acquisition program and all other fundraising efforts. We are also currently still working on attaining more grants to fund a potential Annual Performance in the fall of 2015. So if you have previous fundraising experience then that is fantastic!Movement Building: Through our invite-only series of “MAKING CONNECTIONS: Conversations Within and Between Communities,” we bring together political artists, cultural activists, and movement-building allies involved with radical social justice projects to cross-pollinate our politically and creatively informed works.Political Education: Sins offers political education workshops for community based organizations and other organizations that share our commitment to social justice principles as a means of integrating analysis and action around disability, race, gender, and sexuality. Offering support to this work as an intern would mostly be in terms of capacity building for this sessions.What past interns had to say about their experience at Sins Invalid:“Nothing short of fabulous… Sins pulls the pain and traumas from ableist oppression and turns it inside out into a complex celebration of beauty and sexiness.  This doesn’t just happen on the Sins stage, but also in our program work: I’ve had exciting opportunities to interview on behalf of Sins live on the radio, learned invaluable lessons about what it takes to make base building happen, helped plan and launch a successful fundraising campaign to finish Sins – The Film (we surpassed our $15k goal!), I’ve developed my networking skills, I’ve participated in political dialogues I wouldn’t otherwise have been exposed to (like developing best practices for being a politically radical mixed ability organization, or how we negotiate the legacy of the freak show in disability performance)… Interning is nothing short of fabulous, sure, but don’t get me wrong—it’s also hard work.  But that’s what Sins is about as a performance project and a disability justice movement-building organization: collaboratively building an approach towards increasing accessibility, towards making a space where we can co-exist as uniquely embodied subjects as we work to maximize our own skills—as they are—and develop them as such in a way that is sustainable, accountable, responsible, and interconnected.  Whew.  Might sound ambitious, and it certainly is but that’s the kind of hard work of historical pains and revolutionary pleasures.”—Brooke, Intern @ Sins from June 2011 – June 2012.