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People Who Stutter Create

A photograph of the five members of People Who Stutter Create standing on a rooftop across the street from an installation of their billboard work Stuttering Can Create Time.

People Who Stutter Create: Jia Bin, Delicia Daniels, Kristel Kubart, Conor Foran, JJJJJerome Ellis (photo: Liz Logan)

Currently on display in a lightbox on the campus of the University of Toronto Mississauga is a work by the collective People Who Stutter Create. Titled Stuttering Can Create Time, it is included in Chapter Two: Longing and Desire of the Blackwood’s three-part exhibition In a Manner of Speaking, curated by Karie Liao and running until April 29. (Chapter Three: Understanding and Fulfillment is on view from April 30 to June 30.)

Akimblog asked the members of the group about what they do and their thoughts on the relationship of speech to creativity. Conor Foran of Dysfluent was unable to participate, but JJJJJerome Ellis, who will be performing two of their works at the Music Gallery in Toronto on April 15 and 17, got the ball rolling…

Photograph of the artist and performer JJJJJerome Ellis on stage playing the saxophone in front of a projection of part of the score for their piece Aster of Ceremonies.

JJJJJerome Ellis, Aster of Ceremonies, 2024, performance documentation at Portland Institute for Contemporary Art (photo: Robert Franklin)

JJJJJerome Ellis: I’m an artist. I like to use music, text, performance, and other media to ask what stuttering can teach us about listening, play, and justice. I feel tremendously lucky to be part of the collective People Who Stutter Create. I admire Conor, Delicia, Jia, and Kristel very much. They teach me how to speak and how to listen.

This work is composed of five lines of text against a photo background. The photo is of light glistening off a gently moving water which is a light turquoise blue. The lines of text span across the entire image, and are spaced equally from top to bottom. Some lines of text have breaks in them and in some instances letters or characters are stretched out. Sometimes the text fades into the water behind it. Only one of the lines is in English and translations have been provided in the exhibition text. A note on the writing: At the top is Anishinaabemowin: it is a sentence written with the Roman alphabet, the same as English. Of five words, three have 13 characters or more. Next is Hindi which is a flowing script of rounded letters with a few dotted accents marks–there are four words in the line. Below this is Mandarin, the line is 18 characters long, each blockish character is made up of predominately straight lines. Under this is Arabic, which has a script shape similar to Hindi but with more dots and a last row is in English, in the Roman alphabet.

People Who Stutter Create, Stuttering Can Create Time, 2024-ongoing, digital image

Jia Bin: Born and raised in China, I grew up in an environment where speech was expected to be smooth, fast, and correct. My stutter didn’t fit that mold. But it led me to ask different questions about voice, value, and connection. Now, as a doctoral student in Communicative Sciences and Disorders, and as someone who leads local and international support groups for people who stutter, my work is driven by a desire to create spaces where dysfluency isn’t marginalized, but celebrated.
I’m part of People Who Stutter Create because I believe stuttering holds creative, cultural, and relational power that deserves to be seen, heard, and felt. For so long, stuttering has been framed as a disruption, something to fix, hide, or overcome. But through lived experience, research, and community building, I’ve come to understand stuttering as a generative force, one that creates space for deep listening, shared vulnerability, and reimagined ways of being together.

A photograph of the work Stuttering Can Create Time by People Who Stutter Create installed in a outdoor lightbox on the campus of the University of Toronto Mississauga.

People Who Stutter Create, Stuttering Can Create Time, 2024-ongoing, installation view at Blackwood Gallery (photo: Toni Hafkenscheid)

Delicia Daniels: My practice involves creating visible spaces for African Americans whose archived voices have been diminished or omitted. My area of interest includes 19th Century African American Literature and Law. I joined People Who Stutter Create to extend my understanding of Blackness and Visibility. As an African American Woman with anxiety, I felt invisible in certain spaces. My speech impairment added an additional layer of shame. This collective helped me tear down the wall of humiliation that I built around repeating words. I archived older beliefs – an older version of myself – to embrace anxiety and stuttering on stage.
Speech and creativity are instruments that breathe. As an artist, when I consume words that expand my mind – words that repeat – what is released is unlimited invention.

The Stuttering Pride flag features a wave motif that interlaces sea-green and ultramarine fields of colour.

Dysfluent, Making Waves: Stuttering Pride Flag, 2022, https://dysfluent.org/flag

Kristel Kubart: I am a passionate speech-language pathologist who stutters and has cerebral palsy. I work with kids, teens, and adults who stutter. In speech therapy my goal is to help people who stutter embrace their stuttering and learn to trust their voice so they can speak with less tension and struggle. In addition to specializing in stuttering, I also work as a school-based speech therapist with kids who have a variety of speech and language disabilities. I take a neurodiversity-affirming approach to speech therapy at my school job. In 2018 I developed a disability pride club in my school! The club serves as a place for kids who identify as having disabilities to talk openly about them and to get support, and for kids who don’t have disabilities to learn more about disabilities and how to be good allies.
With my stuttering, I’ve had to develop out-of-the-box thinking to reject ableism and embrace my stuttering. When it comes to disability in general, I believe that disabled people are some of the most creative and innovative people on the planet. It takes true creativity to navigate a world that wasn’t necessarily built with you in mind. In my work as a speech therapist, I love to figure out creative ways to teach kids that disability is a part of diversity and something that they can feel good about and even take pride in.

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