Join us for MadMade, a free, one-day event uplifting the creative work of artists living with psychiatric disabilities and mental health challenges. This community-centered fair brings together artists, organizers, and visitors to celebrate art that resists stigma, builds connection, and honors lived experience.

MadMade is more than a print fair—it’s a gathering built on inclusion, care, and cultural empowerment. Visitors are invited to explore and purchase artwork from printmakers, illustrators, designers, and zine makers working across screenprinting, linocut, risograph, etching, digital processes, and more.
This mad-positive, disability-affirming event centers the artists themselves rather than diagnoses or treatments. MadMade offers a counter-narrative to both clinical and romanticized depictions of mental illness, instead highlighting real people making real work—art that is beautiful, messy, joyful, angry, and thoughtful—work that sparks conversation and fosters community.

Access Information
Access Living’s space is fully wheelchair accessible. Access Living is a scent free space. Please refrain from wearing or otherwise bringing in scents into the space. MadMade offers CART and ASL for our public panels and can provide ASL and/or CART by request for the workshop (just select the access you need when you register).

There is a quiet, sensory space available to fair participants on the 4th floor available to those who may need a break from the main fair area with some tools to assist with nervous system regulation. We also strive to include as many artists as possible while keeping the space open for mobility device users. Access workers and way-finding materials to help you get where you may need to go are provided.

There is a dedicated space directly in front of Access Living’s front doors for paratransit or other drop off with a curb cut, tactile pavement, and a ramp. All restrooms in Access Living are accessible and the space offers both binary and all-gender mulit-stall restrooms as well as all-gender single stall restrooms.

Panel Discussions
The day will feature two panel discussions highlighting the intersections of mad identity, artmaking, and community. Both are free and open to the public and will be moderated by Matt Bodett, Director of the Center for Mad Culture.

“Mad and Disability Culture Building” | 12:15 – 1:00 pm
Reclaym, Degenerates Collective, Dandy of the Underworld, and OOO Press will discuss collective organizing, mutual support, and creative collaboration across mad and disabled communities.

“Mad Artmaking” | 3:15 – 4:00 pm
Alyse Ruriani, Sky Zhang, 47pennys, and Darya Foroohar in conversation about artistic process, lived experience, and reclaiming madness as a site of creativity and cultural expression.

Community Resource Partners
In addition to artist tables and panels, the fair will include a community resources area featuring Live Oak, Inc., Wolf Pack Therapy, Therapy Access Project, the Mental Health Autonomy Alliance (MHAA), and the Chicago Disability Culture Archive.
This section recognizes that art and community care are deeply connected. It offers attendees direct access to organizations working toward mental health equity, peer support, and mad and disability justice, extending the fair beyond creative exchange into collective well-being.

Community Workshop
deCRIPtion, a workshop series that creates storytelling and poetry workshops designed by and with disability community in mind, will run a workshop during MadMade. The workshop offering will be: Odi et Amo (I hate and I love): A Poetry–Shape Note Singing Workshop on Contradiction, Loops, and the Voices We Carry. This workshop requires registration. For more information or to register, please visit the Access Living Event Page.

MadMade is organized by artist Dylan Sturdy in collaboration with Access Living, Spudnik Press Cooperative, and The Center for Mad Culture.

Website: https://www.accessliving.org/event/madmade-print-fair-2/