“Inclusion is my jam” means inclusion is something you care about and want to be part of. It borrows “my jam,” the expression for a favourite song or something you love, and adds a food pun: jam is made to spread. The slogan’s original author and first use remain unverified.
It is an easy phrase to like. Short enough for a shirt, warm enough to start a conversation, and considerably more inviting than a workplace slide about inclusive practice. The joke gives an abstract word something you can picture: a jar on a table, ready to share.
But a jam jar is an awkward object to choose as a symbol of belonging. For someone who cannot grip its lid or break the seal, the contents might as well be out of reach. That tension gives the saying more substance than its cheerful surface suggests.
How a favourite song became a statement of values
The useful history starts with “my jam.” When someone recognises a song they love and calls it their jam, they are expressing attachment. Extend that expression to an activity or an idea and it means something like: this matters to me; this is where I feel at home.
In a 2018 discussion of the expression, linguist Arnold Zwicky described that broadening from a favourite song to a favourite thing. He included a 2017 example about yoga. He associated the musical usage with Black American speech and suggested it emerged in the 1970s or 1980s, while making clear that this was his assessment rather than a firmly established first-use date.
That account explains the language available to the slogan’s users. It does not identify who first put “inclusion” in front of it.
The food meaning adds another possibility. Once jam appears in the picture, “spread it” can mean sharing the message. A jar illustration makes the wordplay visible without a paragraph of explanation. The familiar phrase carries enthusiasm; the food pun makes it shareable.
A musical jam session offers a further association with people making something together. It is a plausible reading of the slogan, especially in a music-themed design, but there is no evidence here that it was the original creator’s intention. Interpretation and origin are different questions.
Can we identify its first recorded use?
There is no securely established first recorded use of “Inclusion is my jam” in the sources examined for this article. Nor is there enough evidence to credit a particular teacher, organisation or designer with inventing it.
An Etsy listing with the phrase in its title has an item review dated 20 April 2021. That looks promising until you examine the evidence more closely: the listing’s current images show “Inclusion Is My Thing.” Listings can change. The review dates a purchase associated with that listing, but cannot by itself establish what wording appeared on the shirt or page in April 2021.
A clearer example appears in the Council for Exceptional Children’s prospectus for its 2024 convention. The sticker-bar section, on printed page 10, shows a blue circular design reading “INCLUSION IS MY JAM.” It documents the exact phrase in a special-education setting. It does not establish that the organisation coined it.
This distinction matters. Evidence that a saying circulated among educators is not evidence that it began in a classroom. A dated example gives us a point in its recorded history; claiming an origin requires more. Until an earlier, securely dated source settles the question, the honest answer is that its beginnings remain unclear.
The jar makes the joke and tests the promise
The food pun becomes more interesting when you take the jar seriously.
Arthritis Australia’s 2018–19 annual report records glass jars among the five packaging formats receiving the most nominations in its worst-packaging campaign for 2018. Salsa and jam jars led the complaints within that category. These were consumer nominations, not a finding that every disabled person finds the same container hardest to open.
The consequences are easier to understand through someone’s own account. Writing for SBS Food in 2022, disability advocate Jerusha Mather described enjoying cooking and preparing food with a support worker present for safety. She also described a jar so tightly closed that she could not open it even with assistive equipment. Her argument was about freedom to cook and choose, and about manufacturers involving disabled people in packaging decisions.
“People should live with freedom and choice,” she wrote.
That is a much more useful way into the slogan than treating inclusion as a personality trait. The person has the interest and the skills. The food is there. A design decision gets between them and something they want to do.
Help can be welcome, and needing support says nothing about whether someone belongs. The problem is being given no workable choice. If breakfast has to wait until somebody else is available to open a container, the packaging has helped decide when you get to eat.
What everyday access has to do with belonging
Belonging can sound like a feeling that other people generously offer. Everyday access makes the question more concrete: how much of ordinary life can you take part in on terms that work for you?
Consider a shared kitchen. Being invited to use it means less if the things you need are consistently beyond reach or impossible to open. You might be welcomed warmly and still have to interrupt someone every time you want to make lunch. Repeated across a day, that gap between invitation and use becomes exhausting.
The same gap can appear when a conversation moves too quickly for someone using a communication device, or when an event’s only quiet space is far away from everyone else. These situations involve different access needs. What they share is the way an arrangement can leave a person present but unable to participate as they would choose.
No slogan can tell you what each person needs. “Inclusion is my jam” does, however, invite a question about the speaker’s commitment: does that enthusiasm extend to changing the arrangements, including when somebody points out a problem you had not noticed?
For disabled people, the phrase can also be a statement about their own place in the world. The “my” need not belong to a teacher, manager or ally offering someone else admission. It can express an expectation of participation, a pleasure in community, or a refusal to treat access as an unreasonable request. Nobody has to earn that place by being easy to accommodate.
For practical ways to act on that commitment, read our guide to being inclusive every day: ask, listen, adapt. Our article on why design should include everyone explores how ordinary design decisions affect participation.
The Shared Spread
Our Inclusion Is My Jam collection brings this reading into URevolution’s own design, The Shared Spread. An open jar and spreading knife sit alongside the lettering. The ordinary act of sharing food gives the phrase its visual form.
The jar is open. That small detail suits the way we read the saying: something available to take part in, with fewer obstacles between the invitation and the experience. It is an interpretation expressed through artwork, rather than a claim that URevolution invented the phrase.
A person can wear the words because they like the joke, recognise themselves in it, or want to make their position visible. Disabled people are allowed cheerful clothes without having to deliver an access seminar every time someone comments on them.
The words can begin a conversation. Whether someone can join that conversation, stay for lunch and use what is on the table gives the sentiment its weight.
