MEDIA KIT
What to expect when you’re expecting Sulaiman
This is my Accommodation Document whenever working with Sulaiman. It’s a guide to all clients on how to interact and work with Sulaiman, in full transparency and disclosure.
Image Description: Landscape closeup photo from a secret and sacred family trip to Scotland in July 2023 of Sulaiman (a wholeheartedly Disabled AF, British-Pakistani man with black buzz cut hair and tattoos on each wrist) sitting in his new power wheelchair (the M5 Corpus via Permobil) at full elevated height on the balcony deck @The_Treehouses of Lanrick in his wheelchair-accessible treehouse amongst the canopy of tremendous trees, Sulaiman’s non-human kin. Next to him, on his left, is a green moss-covered tree growing through the balcony deck. In the background, you see a forest of tender trees. Sulaiman is wearing his new white t-shirt via his dearest friend @jtknoxroxs featuring a red and pink illustrated eye with a star shining in the pupil of the eye representative of our demand for radical healing and dreaming, underneath there’s the dark red text that reads “Calling all radical resters” in capital letters, and a dark red illustrated star all on the front of the t-shirt. Sulaiman has a huge smile, feeling joyful for and grateful for every radical breath he takes every single second of every day. End.
Image description: Profile portrait photo of a smiling and joyful Sulaiman (a wholeheartedly Disabled AF and British-Pakistani man with buzzcut black hair) sitting in his power wheelchair via the Brand By Me team. Sulaiman is wearing his rainbow-coloured mesh jacket with a black shirt with bright pink flamingos underneath, his yellow badge with black text that says Black Disabled Lives Matter via his dear friend Jennifer White-Johnson, and his pure silver chain and pendant that his late Nanaji (maternal grandfather) made for Sulaiman when he was 15 over 23 years ago and that Sulaiman rediscovered early this year. The silver pendant says “Raja Sulaiman” in Urdu, as that’s what Sulaiman’s Nanaji used to call him. Sulaiman wears this pendant to remember and honour his late Nanaji, his ancestors, and his descendants because Sulaiman understands (and respects) that he is the link from his ancestors to his descendants. End.
Image description: Profile landscape photo of Sulaiman (a wholeheartedly Disabled AF and British-Pakistani man with buzzcut black hair) sitting in his power wheelchair. Sulaiman is wearing his black face mask that says Black Disabled Lives Matter via his dear friend Jennifer White-Johnson, his blue sequinned t-shirt with a black long-sleeve top underneath, his yellow badge with black text that says Black Disabled Lives Matter via his dear friend Jennifer White-Johnson, his red and blue glitter lightning bolt badge via his friend Juliet Eccleston, and his pure silver chain and pendant that his late Nanaji (maternal grandfather) made for Sulaiman when he was 15 over 23 years ago and that Sulaiman rediscovered early this year. The silver pendant says “Raja Sulaiman” in Urdu, as that’s what Sulaiman’s Nanaji used to call him. Sulaiman wears this pendant to remember and honour his late Nanaji, his ancestors, and his descendants because Sulaiman understands (and respects) that he is the link from his ancestors to his descendants. Sulaiman is also wearing a white handwritten name tag sticker on his left side. He is making his signature, playful surprised eyes look. End.
Image Descriptions: Sexy, spicy, and sacred. Black and white photos of Sulaiman (a wholeheartedly Disabled AF, British-Pakistani man with buzzcut black hair) by the legendary photographer Rankin and his team at the Art Car Boot Fair in London. Sulaiman sits in his new black and green power wheelchair since walking and standing are SO overrated, as Sulaiman says. He is wearing his pure silver chain and pendant that his late Nanaji (maternal grandfather) made for Sulaiman when he was 15 over 23 years ago and that Sulaiman rediscovered early this year. The silver pendant says “Raja Sulaiman” in Urdu, as that’s what Sulaiman’s Nanaji used to call him. Sulaiman wears this pendant to remember and honour his late Nanaji, his ancestors, and his descendants because Sulaiman understands (and respects) that he is the link from his ancestors to his descendants. And yes, he knows his pendant is facing backwards, but it’s deliberate and facing his heart. Sulaiman is also wearing his black sequin biker jacket via Phix Clothing, and his Pink/Blue/Yellow-coloured Party Leopard Meggings with a leopard print throughout via Kapow Meggings. Sulaiman smiles while feeling joyful and badass in his radically bold, wild, fearless existence. Also, although the description is of the colour look, the photo is black and white. End.
Image Descriptions: Sexy, spicy, and sacred. Black and white photos of Sulaiman (a wholeheartedly Disabled AF, British-Pakistani man with buzzcut black hair) by the legendary photographer Rankin and his team at the Art Car Boot Fair in London. Sulaiman sits in his new black and green power wheelchair since walking and standing are SO overrated, as Sulaiman says. He is wearing his pure silver chain and pendant that his late Nanaji (maternal grandfather) made for Sulaiman when he was 15 over 23 years ago and that Sulaiman rediscovered early this year. The silver pendant says “Raja Sulaiman” in Urdu, as that’s what Sulaiman’s Nanaji used to call him. Sulaiman wears this pendant to remember and honour his late Nanaji, his ancestors, and his descendants because Sulaiman understands (and respects) that he is the link from his ancestors to his descendants. And yes, he knows his pendant is facing backwards, but it’s deliberate and facing his heart. Sulaiman is also wearing his black sequin biker jacket via Phix Clothing, and his Pink/Blue/Yellow-coloured Party Leopard Meggings with a leopard print throughout via Kapow Meggings. Sulaiman smiles while feeling joyful and badass in his radically bold, wild, fearless existence. Also, although the description is of the colour look, the photo is black and white. End.
Photos
These are the only authorised photos of me to be shared. Whenever and wherever my images are shared, the accompanying image descriptions must be included. This is non-negotiable. Accessibility is a necessity, not a luxury.
Who is Sulaiman R. Khan – سلیمان راشد خان?
One sentence
Daringly integrating Disability. Sulaiman R. Khan – سلیمان راشد خان [he/him/his/Disabled] is a Disabled Oracle and a radical, badass multiple award-winning Disabled AF: Founder, Speaker, and Activist.
50-word biography
Sulaiman R. Khan – سلیمان راشد خان [he/him/his/Disabled]
Daringly integrating Disability. Radical multiple award-winning Disabled AF: Founder, Speaker, and Activist. Disabled Oracle. Ultimately, he creates radical, infinite, interdependent ecosystems of care (and curiosity), Access Intimacy for collective liberation, and acts of daily Revolutionary LOVE®. https://sulaimanrkhan.com/
100-word biography
Sulaiman R. Khan (سلیمان رشاد خان) [he/him/his/Disabled]
Daringly integrating Disability. Multiple award-winning Disabled AF: Founder, Speaker, and Activist. Disabled Oracle. Founder and Chief Radical Officer of ThisAbility® Limited, a Disability (and Person of The Global Majority)-led (and owned) Disability Justice business and a Certified B Corporation. Sought-after radical speaker. A joyful activist from his first breath, with every breath until his last breath. Ultimately, his life’s work and goal are to create radical, infinite, interdependent ecosystems of care (and curiosity), Access Intimacy for collective liberation, and acts of daily Revolutionary LOVE®. https://sulaimanrkhan.com/
Full biography
Sulaiman’s (current) Disability pronouns are: Disabled[1]/wheelchair user.
Sulaiman’s (current) pronouns are: he/him/his/Disabled.
Multiple award-winning Disabled AF: Founder, Speaker, and Activist. Adventurer and Continual Work-In-Progress. Creating relationships, stories, and joy.
Daringly integrating Disability. Sulaiman R. Khan radically always centres Disability (and Disabled people, especially Disabled People of The Global Majority or colloquially “people of colour”), daringly. Sulaiman believes in the imagination of Disability and always doing everything in service of Disabled people for our collective liberation.
This Regenerative Leadership and Regenerative Being Custodian, Sulaiman is a socially conscious Disabled Entrepreneur and a Disabled Oracle.
The anti-ableist and Disability liberation maestro. The radical, badass Disabled friend and lover you wish you had.
Through his infinite imagination within limitations, Sulaiman uses his intersectional, anti-ableist, and Disability Justice lens, as Founder and Chief Radical Officer of ThisAbility® Limited, a Disabled and Person of The Global Majority[2]-owned Disability Justice business and a Certified B CorporationTM. ThisAbility® Limited helps socially conscious brands divest from ableism and enact Disability liberation, by integrating Disability culture.
Our mission is to support the (re)imagining of every socially conscious brand into a fully anti-ableist organisation, all in aid of collective liberation in business and society.
Because of our innate sense of solidarity and desire for justice and collective liberation, we work tirelessly to ignite, amplify, and invest in Disabled creativity across the globe for a liberated future for Disabled people. In everything we do, we always centre Disability, daringly.
Our business may be limited in name, but we are unlimited in imagination.
Sulaiman is also the Disability Justice and Accessibility Lead at Brand by Me (Freelance). After working in interdependence and love with Brand By Me for over 18 months (and counting as of April 2023), Sulaiman is proud and honoured to share that I’m the Disability Justice and Accessibility Lead at Brand By Me. He champions, challenges, and celebrates Brand By Me and all their respective clients on all things Disability Justice, Accessibility, anti-ableism, Disability, and Disability Liberation.
[Open Quote] “DIVERSITY should be a given; INCLUSION is our practice; EQUITY is our tool; JUSTICE is our mission; so that LIBERATION is our GOAL.” [Close Quote]
— Collette Philip (Brand By Me) and Sulaiman R. Khan – سلیمان راشد خان.
In July 2023, Sulaiman also became the Founder and Praxis Revolutionary Lover at revolutionary LOVE®. Coming soon, 2024 to 2025. Written, created, and shared in Crip Time. In short, Crip Time is the bending of time (and time travel) that Disabled people are experts in practising, and centres (and regenerates) Disabled bodies and minds by and for Disabled people. He adds: [Open Quote] “I’m wheeling away with zero tolerance to your ableism, racism, patriarchy, anti-blackness, anti-fatness, colonialism, capitalism, sexism, heterosexism, cissexism, classism, antisemitism, Islamophobia, hegemony, heteronormativity, carceral ideology, anti-abolition, subjugation, supremacy, toxicity, and all systems of oppression. Oppressors, you can put it where the sun doesn’t shine. Also, I have never been able to walk and don’t want to ever walk, so as a power wheelchair user, ‘wheeling away’ is my cheeky take on ‘walking away.’ Walking is SO overrated! Xx” [Close Quote]
Revolutionary LOVE® via Sulaiman R. Khan. The Book, Newsletter, Podcast, and Event to champion, challenge (for), and celebrate Revolutionary Love. Love is our ultimate KPI x
A revolutionary loving exploration and experimentation that’s part of ThisAbility Limited and radically imagined by (the radical and badass) Sulaiman R. Khan.
Onwards and upwards.
[Open Quote] “Conformity, palatability, and dehumanisation are built on fear, hate, intolerance, scarcity, and injustice. Revolutions are made with community care, collective liberation, interdependence, and, most critically, revolutions are built on love. Revolutionary Love is the only way forward for our (collective and loving) thriving beyond surviving. Healing is interdependent and intertwined. We choose Revolutionary Love as our North Star for the collective liberation of all of our kin (by blood or bond, our human and more-than-human kin, and our inner and outer selves). I will be my own North Star by existing infinitely through Revolutionary Love.
In simple terms, this means don’t be an arsehole; leave that energy and behaviour back to pre-2020. I, for one, refuse to be an arsehole because I’m too much of a (and too busy being a) revolutionary lover.” [Close Quote]
– Sulaiman R. Khan – سلیمان راشد خان (revolutionary LOVE®[3]).
The igniter of hearts creatively, a British-Pakistani Disabled wheelchair user adventurer, Sulaiman, loves to create relationships, stories, and joy. A highly acclaimed, sought-after radical speaker – Sulaiman is a joyful activist from his first breath, with every breath until his last breath.
Also, Sulaiman is the Co-Founder at Cripjoy, a transnational, majority-BIPOC community of practice reworlding mental health through an intersectional, Anti-Ableist, Anti-Audist, and Anti-Sanist lens. Moreover, as an activist, his intent is to envision new futures for eco-justice that centre—all too often marginalised—Disabled lives. Critical “Cripship” Studies, a neologism he coined (and platform he started), marks one such domain where scholarly and community knowledge merge to set an agenda for survival strategies in the wake of climate change. And this was formed and ignited by Sulaiman’s acceptance to a Master of Science in Sustainable Development programme that he started in November 2021, yet after much thought and talking to his Mama (whether by blood or by bond, family is everything), in December 2021, he decided to leave his master’s degree/university and postgraduate education until further notice due to academic ableism. The support provided was not good enough. Sulaiman deserves and demands better. ableism is a fucker. However, Sulaiman will continue to unlearn (and relearn) daily and be a continual work-in-progress. He is more determined than ever to go beyond mainstream knowledge; instead, he will work in his cultural/spiritual knowledge and experiential knowledge (as defined in the Intro Research Justice Toolkit via the Data Center). With joy and interdependence, Sulaiman will continue to do so with his Disabled AF and British-Pakistani[4] wisdom and richness together, in harmony above balance, with his Disabled global family.
Furthermore, Sulaiman is the Founder and Radical Executive Director of International Disability Crisis Support (IDCS) - sustaining Disabled people in crisis globally - an organisation launched in March 2022. IDCS serves and sustains Disabled people in crisis worldwide through outreach, advocacy, practical advice, community, and regenerative restoration in harmony above balance.
In addition, Sulaiman is part of The RSA Fellowship. He aims to centre Disabled people at the forefront of finding practical solutions to social challenges for all his work with The RSA.
With over four decades of lived experience of Disability and over a decade and a half of experience with the creative industries, he is fierce in working to daringly integrate Disability (and, in turn, Disabled people) in everything he creates. Radical (the “grasping at the root” definition by Angela Y. Davis), restful, and regenerative: Sulaiman (actively) chooses to live in his divinity, truth, power, creativity, interdependence, and love as a whole and complete person. With joy and grief in harmony above balance: everything he does (and every interaction he has) is infinitely always rooted in interdependence and love. Sulaiman is infinitely a radical with Adrak (ادرک), Haldi (ہلدی), Zafran (زعفران), and Chambeli (چمیلی) badassery. Sexy, spicy, and sacred existence. Always.
Ultimately, his life’s work and goal are to create radical, infinite, interdependent ecosystems of care (and curiosity), Access Intimacy for collective liberation, and acts of daily Revolutionary LOVE®. And Sulaiman is an active (non-optical) intersectional accomplice-in-progress and a continual work-in-progress too, relentlessly and unapologetically.
–––
[1] Personally, Sulaiman uses Disabled interchangeably with Crip (a term only to be used by the Disabled community and in no way to be used by not-yet-Disabled people) as he’s done making his Disability palatable for an Ableist world. He doesn’t wish to erase his Disability or Disabled identity nor be a part of “overcoming Disability” and “Disability Paradox” narratives – Sulaiman hasn’t “overcome” his Disability; he has overcome ableism and ableists. He prefers not to use problematical person-first language such as “person with a Disability”, and he is not keen on using ableist language such as “differently-abled,” “handicapped,” “wheelchair-bound”, or “special needs” that worsens his internalised ableism. This is Sulaiman’s personal choice and may not reflect all Disabled people nor the whole Disability community across the world. We are all on different journeys in our Disabled identity journey, and that’s okay. If in doubt, ask the Disabled person directly.
[2] People of the Global Majority: coined by Rosemary M. Campbell-Stephens MBE is “a collective term that first and foremost speaks to and encourages those so-called, to think of themselves as belonging to the majority on planet earth. It refers to people who are Black, African, Asian, Brown, dual-heritage, indigenous to the global south, and or, have been racialised as 'ethnic minorities'. Globally these groups currently represent approximately eighty per cent (80%) of the world's population, making them the global majority now, and with current growth rates, notwithstanding the Covid-19 pandemic, they are set to remain so for the foreseeable future. Understanding that singular truth may shift the dial, it certainly should permanently disrupt and relocate the conversation on race.” (R. Campbell-Stephens, 2020). This aligns wholeheartedly with Sulaiman’s Disabled AF, British-Pakistani existence. It is his way of wheeling away from all systems of oppression, including but not limited to no longer being capitalism’s plaything, ableism’s commodity, racism’s tool for power, colonialism’s puppet for violence, white supremacy culture’s fetish for manipulation, cis-able neocolonial-racist-supremacist heteronormative patriarchy’s armour for bullying, and oppression’s pawn for harm
[3] ThisAbility and Revolutionary Love are registered trademarks of ThisAbility Limited at The Intellectual Property Office of the United Kingdom. ThisAbility Trademark number: UK00003954170; Revolutionary Love Trademark number: UK00003954175.
[4] Sulaiman is actively wheeling away with zero tolerance to your ableism, racism, patriarchy, anti-blackness, anti-fatness, colonialism, capitalism, sexism, heterosexism, cissexism, classism, antisemitism, Islamophobia, hegemony, heteronormativity, carceral ideology, anti-abolition, subjugation, supremacy, toxicity, and all systems of oppression. Oppressors, you can put it where the sun doesn’t shine. Sulaiman has never been able to walk and doesn't want ever to walk, so as a power wheelchair user, “wheeling away” is Sulaiman’s cheeky take on “walking away.” Xx
Contact
Twitter: @SulaimanRKhan
Instagram: @SulaimanRKhan
Email: hello[at]SulaimanRKhan[dot]com
Speaking requests: please contact Tia Denton at ThisAbility Limited; tia[dot]denton[at]ThisAbility[dot]net