This course has been designed to be of interest to people from such diverse backgrounds as activists, counsellors, crisis workers, shelter workers, harm reduction workers, advocates, literacy workers, popular educators, community theatre practitioners, political artists, and critical social workers. The context in which it is offered is a world increasingly populated by ‘disenfranchised’ or systemically excluded individuals and communities and the need for more aware, more versatile, more strategic, more creative practitioners. The course addresses a number of systemically excluded individuals and communities such as people who have been engaged in the psychiatric system; people who are unhoused; people who have been imprisoned, and people who use illicit drugs; people who are ‘undocumented’; people who are sex trade workers; and the intersection between these communities and other systemically excluded groups such as racialized communities, people who are part of the dis/ability community, and Indigenous communities (please note: this is not an exhaustive list). Special attention will be paid to the overlaps and the commonalties , along with the meaning this holds for praxis. It has two primary purposes: to support people who would like to develop a deeper understanding of the lived experiences, and to become more skilled and creative allies, accomplices and activists to systemically excluded or ‘disenfranchised’ populations; and to explore key community development and social activism principles using the realities of these populations (including their inclusion/exclusion they experience), balancing strategic and arts-based activism. This is a counter-hegemonic course. The vantage points and concerns of the groups in question are the starting point; and their rights are paramount. It is grounded in respect for groups of people who have been systemically excluded, and for the solutions engaged, the cultures created, and the communities formed. Primary theoretic frameworks include: feminism, anti-racism, Marxism, critical theory, transformative justice, labeling theory, antipsychiatry, socialist anarchism, existentialism, and the philosophies of nonviolent activism. Questions investigated include: How, who, and why does the state ‘disenfranchise’?; What modifications are needed in community organizing with populations at risk from the state?; What are some ways the arts have been effectively used by the movements in question? The primary focus is the liberation movements of the communities we are examining in this course (e.g. the prison abolition movement, the antipsychiatry movement, the harm reduction movement, the antipoverty movement). A particularly pivotal question is how to advance the goals of the movements in question. There will also be an emphasis on the creation, use and dissemination of many different forms of art including: political art, expressive art, witness art, popular education (e.g. theatre (including theatre of the oppressed), visual art, photography, puppetry, photography, creation of documentaries, and storytelling).