Read for Rights
A grassroots community event celebrating intersectionality, accessibility and the power of peer support.
15 November 2025, Perth WA.
About the Project
A Fantastic Day. A Day that Fostered Community.
Read For Rights was not just LGBTQIA+SB Pride. It was Mad Pride, Disability Pride, Autistic Pride and so much more. It was an event that showed accessibility is possible — even on as minuscule a budget — and which traversed barriers to bring to life something that SHOULD BE (but still is not) available every day: community, learning, sensory accommodation, affordability, and Peer support.
Whilst it was by no means the biggest or most spectacular event, it captured and reflected the values of Integrity Initiative and the Peer workforce more broadly — justice, acceptance, diversity, empowerment and dignity.
What is Intersectionality?
Intersectionality is a term coined by legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw in 1989, used to name something many people had always lived but had no shared language for: that we do not experience the world along a single axis of identity. A person's experience of mental health, disability, race, gender, sexuality, neurodivergence or housing instability does not exist on its own. These identities, and the systems built around them, combine and compound each other.
For many of the communities Integrity Initiative was built for, this is daily reality. Someone navigating mental health challenges as a disabled, queer, or First Nations person faces barriers that differ in kind, not only in degree, from someone holding just one of those identities. Services, policy and even advocacy spaces are still largely designed around one issue at a time. Intersectionality asks us to notice what gets missed when that happens.
Intersectionality is a prism for seeing the way in which various forms of inequality often operate together and exacerbate each other… it is a lens through which you can see where power comes and collides, where it interlocks and intersects. It’s not simply that there’s a race problem here, a gender problem here, and a class or LBGTQ problem there.
— Kimberlé Crenshaw, 2017
The Event
More Than a Pride Event
Read for Rights was a community-driven reading and resource event held on 15 November 2025. More than just a pride event, it embodied a deep, wholehearted intersectionality — celebrating LGBTQIA+SB Pride, Mad Pride, Disability Pride, Autistic Pride and so much more, all in one accessible and welcoming space.
Even on a minuscule budget, the event demonstrated that accessibility, sensory accommodation, affordability and genuine Peer support are not only possible — they are essential. It was the embodiment of what should be available to every community, every day.
15 Nov 2025
Perth, WA
Free & Accessible
Community
Who Is Read for Rights For?
Read for Rights is for everyone who experiences the world at the intersection of multiple identities and systems of power. It is designed with and for communities often left out of mainstream spaces: people with lived experience of mental health challenges, LGBTQIA+SB folk, disabled people, autistic people, and those who simply need a safe, low-pressure space to connect and learn.
The event was deliberately designed to be accessible — with sensory accommodations, a zero-cost entry model, and a non-prescriptive structure that let people engage at their own pace and in their own way.
LGBTQIA+SB Pride
Mad Pride
Disability Pride
Autistic Pride
Made Possible Through…
Event Partner
Maeson’s Soapbox
Our incredible co-host who brought books, community and a platform for stories.
Venue Partner
Pride WA
And Dr Lauren Butterly, who graciously lent their space to host the event.
Financial Supporter
Neami National
For supporting us via a small but vital grant through RightByYou.
Community Support
CoMHWA
Consumers of Mental Health WA — for always having our backs.
Explore More
Integrity in Albany
A regional engagement pilot bringing workshops and community events to Kinjarling.
Unfiltered
An independently made documentary amplifying real lived experience stories in mental health.
Trail of Creativity
A series of creative workshops, relief artist packages and community exhibitions celebrating the messy, human side of making.
We cannot talk about mental health without talking about LGBTQIA+SB rights. We cannot talk about LGBTQIA+SB rights without also talking about disability rights and Aboriginal health and culture and homelessness and AOD and justice systems... all of these experiences and identities overlap and intersect. By ignoring even one, we fail to see the whole human and become the systems we hope to shift.
Rachael Burns
Read for Rights was created to address that gap. It was built as a space where Mad Pride, Disability Pride, Autistic Pride and LGBTQIA+SB Pride could sit alongside each other instead of competing for attention.
