'The dance floor is this place of connection': How DJ Crip Time is making raves accessible

The dance floor has always been a space to let loose and enjoy music, but for Stefana Fratila, a.k.a. DJ Crip Time, it's a space that doesn't always feel accessible for disabled people. 

This is partly why the Toronto-based musician, who lives with chronic pain, co-founded Crip Rave, a collective working to remove barriers so that "crip, mad, sick, deaf or disabled talent and partygoers" can enjoy electronic music and raves in a way that is inclusive and accommodating — without sacrificing any of the fun of rave and club culture.

Through raves and workshops, Fratila and her co-founder, Renee Dumaresque, are cripping the raving experience for not only ravers, but musicians, too.

In a new interview with CBC Music, Fratila talks about how raving can be exclusionary, the importance of empowering disabled communities and more.

Was there a specific moment that spurred you to create Crip Rave?

Yeah. I mean, I met my creative partner and co-founder, Renee Dumaresque, at a conference on chronic illness. And we just connected really deeply and specifically connected over our kind of shared love of, and also our shared frustration with, the inaccessibility of venues or just inaccessibility in general around how the raves were being structured, etc. So we kind of just got together and decided to put on our dream party, basically, our dream rave, and that is how Crip Rave began.

So what happened at this very first dream rave that took place?

So that would have been in 2019. So, we're nearing our six-year anniversary. But a lot of our purpose or what we felt was our purpose when we first started, was to just really prioritize accessibility for cripped, mad, sick, deaf and disabled people and artists, and just with that in mind, make an event more accessible for everyone who's there. So that first event was kind of a mix of showcasing and prioritizing crip people and kind of thinking a lot about what a safe and accessible space might be. And we were obviously [operating] with certain constraints, of course. We didn't have an unlimited budget or anything. We did it out of pocket, basically, that first one.

So we kind of just did everything we could that was ... doable. [We had] a hydration station [with] non-alcoholic options that were great and not just Coca-Cola. We had anti-inflammatory snacks and we had [an] area where you could stretch or just kind of lay down or relax. We had different zones laid out in the space so that you could kind of take breaks between dancing and also still be in the space, but not be kind of relegated to a smoke pit, which is very common with raves. And just having different kinds of spaces laid out was a big part of it. [There was also a] kind of de-stimulation zone. So these kinds of things were things that we were thinking about.

And we just had basic stuff. We had harm reduction supplies and earplugs because one of the artists that was on the bill was deaf and they wanted to really feel the bass and really pump it up. And so with that in mind, you know, other people in the space were like, "This is too loud." And so you kind of have to think about different points of access and how at times someone's access needs might kind of directly contradict another person's access needs. And rather than letting that dissuade you from doing this work, it kind of almost empowers us to want to do it more and think of creative solutions for that and kind of bring people together.

Yeah, absolutely. Also, I think one of the things about accessibility, and you kind of touched on it, is it's something that's always changing. It's always evolving for different people because your needs are never going to fully be the same.

Yeah, and it evolves over time, you know, we will all have different access needs as we grow older, or you know, if you have a kid, that changes how you navigate the world. So all of these different things can kind of impact [you such as] becoming ill. Yeah, these are things that we all have to confront at one point or another in our lives.

Yeah. And you kind of mentioned a few different things, but what would you say are some of the biggest barriers in terms of access for raves and electronic music events? Because I feel there are so many different things that might turn people away if they feel that a certain venue might not be a welcoming space for them.

Yeah, I think this applies across all music, but one thing that we've been really advocating for is having information posted ahead of time and that would include what is not accessible. So basically it means that if you don't put that information out there to begin with, you're kind of forcing people to make the call about not coming, right? Because it would be devastating to buy a ticket, show up, and then find out that there are two flights upstairs or something, and then perhaps you can't do two flights up stairs. So I think a lot of the time, people who are disabled, they're excluded by default from these spaces.

We ultimately are doing this because we really believe the dance floor is this place of connection and this space of a kind of sense of escape and a kind of altered state of the body [and] mind.- DJ Crip Time

And we've been really publishing [information] ahead of time on event pages specifically, and just making really clear in detail what is being offered, what is not being offered. So that allows a person who is interested in going but unsure if they can kind of make it work to make that call and [gives] them that agency to make the decision themselves. And we've found that very effective solution to that kind of problem, which was really just a lack of transparency, on the part of venues especially, and promoters just not giving any kind of detail. And part of that is complicated by the fact that a lot of, especially within rave culture, there's this sort of allure to finding out the address last minute.

Part of what matters to us at Crip Rave are certain rave esthetics, and we ultimately are doing this because we really believe the dance floor is this place of connection and this space of a kind of sense of escape and a kind of altered state of the body [and] mind. And that's really important to us. And I don't think that necessarily the address has to be published every time, but I think there are other ways to offer information.

For example, [knowing] nearby intersections or nearby transit stations, things like that that can just help make it so that your audience has an easier time deciding whether they can make it or not. A mysterious [address] or no address, definitely got in the way of my experience with raving, and so again, there are ways around that, there are things you can post that don't actually include the actual address just to help people plan their night, right? Because I think that's the other thing is people need to make all kinds of decisions, right, whether it's even just childcare or [how they get home].

Yeah, that's a very, very good point. And aside from the raves themselves, you also do workshops, so I'd love to know a bit more about those and how they can kind of also help to illustrate just why rave culture should be more inclusive. 

Yeah, we've done a few different kinds of workshops. One thing we do is we've kind of become a consulting hub for accessibility. So we have done a lot of workshops on accessibility in general around events, not only raves, just music events or art events. And then one of our earlier workshops that we did had to do with [why] the DJ booth is a very heavily coded space. I think for many people, it feels out of reach and there are a few different reasons for that, but we wanted to kind of create a workshop that allowed the DJ booths to feel more accessible. So we've created a workshop called Cripping the DJ Booth and that one was facilitated by Syrus Marcus Ware, and basically our kind of approach to that together with Syrus, was just to kind of demystify DJing a little bit and go over a kind of basic introduction, but in a way that also showed the software and showed how DJing actually works, from a different approach.

And then we were interested in the idea of, how can you as a crip DJ, prepare for what that might mean for that night, whether it's having a plan for your bathroom breaks or kind of thinking of ways to work through this kind of multi-sensory experience of sound and presenting these tracks that you love. And then also, Syrus Marcus specifically kind of threaded in to the workshop this idea of kind of incorporating activist and abolitionist archives into the DJ set, with samples of different people speaking, so that was a really interesting aspect of that.

And we've done a lot ourselves on access riders, which is something that we're very passionate about, which is basically a technical rider, but for access specifically. So, yeah, those are kind of the main workshops that we've sort of facilitated over the past six years.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.