“* * * * * (five stars)”
– The Skinny
“An art movement like no other.”
– Nim Ralph, Open Democracy
“Cachín Cachán Cachunga! really matters in contemporary Scotland… it brings together a diverse group of artists, making it both difficult to pigeon-hole and restlessly contemporary.”
– The Vile Blog
“…something of a phenomenon.”
– The List
About CCC!
Cachín Cachán Cachunga! Queer & Trans Arts is an independent Scottish arts collective that produces visual, recorded and live art by LGBTQIA+ people (plus a few special-guest non-queers). We mentor, collaborate, and encourage artistic experimentation.
Cachín Cachán Cachunga! engages with intersectional feminism, transfeminism, and the principles of disability justice – which include clean air and a free Palestine (and Congo, Sudan, Haiti, Hawai’i and Puerto Rico). We are disability-led, and produce accessible arts events for both audiences and artists.
All events are masks required (and supplied), in well-ventilated and air-purified spaces, and/or online. CCC generally provides free or low-cost entry; relaxed events; quiet space; level access; accessible and gender-neutral loos; sign language interpreting; film captioning; projected text; travel stipends; and fragrance-free spaces. Depending on the event and audience, we also strive to offer live captioning/speech-to-text; Braille and large print programmes and visual art labels; and audio description.
CCC is dedicated to safer creative spaces for multiply-mariginalised LGBTQIA+ people. We centre radical queer and trans artists who are also qrip, disabled, neurodivergent, Mad, ill, sick, Deaf, racialised, Black, Indigenous, people of colour, asylum seekers, refugees, migrants, global majority, working-class, working-poor, benefits-class, skint, and/or from related backgrounds and experiences.
Most events are curated by San Alland; others are organised and led by committee or community members.
Recent Events
In 2026 CCC started Respirator Lab, a small masks-required event in Glasgow. Our first gig was an in-person and online relaxed, captioned, wheelchair-accessible and partially visually-described screening of Everybody To Kenmure Street. Contact cachin AT blissfultimes DOT ca if interested!
[Image below: A photo of a group of people from behind, watching a film in a room with open windows. Some use wheelchairs and all wear respirators.]
San Alland curated Qrip Shielders Solstice Salon in December 2022. This online event featured poetry, art and music from Karl Knights, Maria Quinn, m. patchwork monoceros and DL Williams. We also chatted about what keeps us going in the face of gaslighting and lack of safety from our governments and peers. Thanks to the BSL interpreters and live captioner, and to all the qrip shielders who celebrated with us.
[Image on YouTube player below: An online event. A BSL interpreter on the left. Karl Knights, a young white man in black glasses, on the right.]
In November 2019, Cachín Cachán Cachunga! and Strathclyde Feminist Research Network co-hosted Bani Amor’s workshop, Decolonizing Travel Culture, at Glasgow’s Transmission Gallery.
In July 2018, CCC produced Disabled and Deaf LGBTQIA+ Pride at The Space, Glasgow. This free full-day event featured: LGBTQIA+ Vocabulary in British Sign Language with Bea Webster; a film programme curated by San Alland including Shelley Barry, Stacey Park Milbern and Patty Berne, Tourmaline, and Matthew Hellett; a film panel with Claire Cunningham, Bea Webster, Bel Pye and DL Williams; an open mic of performances; warm food; and tunes from DJs Nena Etza and Kaiserin. Event information is available as a video in BSL, as text with pictures, and as an audio recording. Special thanks to Nila Gupta and Lisa Li.
CCC! History
For more history, read curator San Alland’s article on our 10th anniversary in Disability Arts Online.
Started as a monthly cabaret event in 2009, Cachín Cachán Cachunga! has continued to grow, to shrink again, and above all to change.
CCC has presented everything from noise music and opera, to interactive installations and collaborative photography. In addition to curated performances and film screenings, we’ve offered community-building events like potluck brunches, open mics, PWYC queer and trans haircuts, and two Giant Queer-Ass Trans-tastic Picnics.
In 2017, we hosted Eli Clare, Emilia Beatriz, Nathan Gale and others at Glasgow’s CCA for a discussion of ideas of ‘cure’, and Clare’s book Brilliant Imperfection (with thanks to Nat Raha). Later that year, CCC co-produced Who’s Your Dandy? with Film Hub Scotland and Edinburgh Filmhouse. The show featured performer Andra Simons, and San Alland’s 2016 multimedia live performance Equivalence. A shorts programme included Dickie Hearts, Tina Takemoto, Françoise Doherty and Shira Avni.
Cachín Cachán Cachunga! contributed posters, photos and other historical information to Proud City, a five-month exhibition at Edinburgh’s People’s Story Museum in 2016-17. We also took part in 2016’s Arts & Precarity: Forging New Solidarities (Glasgow University), with a talk by members on CCC history and the neoliberal biases of Scottish and UK arts funding models.
Generous donations in 2015 allowed Cachín Cachán Cachunga! to host five Open Mics and four Health Lotteries with prizes like counselling and massage from queer and trans practitioners. Our featured artists were Lake Montgomery, A.B. Silvera, Liz Cronin and Robert Softley-Gale. We screened films from folk including Yasmin Al-Hadithi, Kellee Terrell, Mattie Kennedy, Cheryl Dunye, Ami Nashimoto and Juli Saragosa. We also held our first QTIPOC-only and disabled-only discussions, as well as an open talk on classism in LGBTQIA+ communities led by Matson Lawrence.
[Image on YouTube player below: A live event onstage. A BSL interpreter downstage left, and a person in silhouette in front of a large screen centre stage. On the screen is a black person wearing a scarf holding a jar of water in both hands and smiling.]
In 2014, CCC produced two large-scale visual art exhibitions with live performances and integrated access – SEEP: Fluidity in Body & Landscape at Media Education; and SEEP II: Mirrors & Mires at Patriothall Gallery. We also hosted Who’s Your Dandy? at Edinburgh Filmhouse, with live multimedia performances, and a film programme including Erica Cho, Sophie Norman, and kimura byol/mihee-nathalie lemoine.
You can find captioned videos of other past events on YouTube.