Online talk: Doing disability differently: access as collective care
Rupert invites all to an online talk by Jos Boys as part of Rupert’s 2020 public programmes on care and interdependence. The talk will be streamed online on Rupert’s Facebook page, 16th July, 2020 at 19 00 (EEST).
In this talk Jos Boys will show how The DisOrdinary Architecture Project, of which she is co-founder, has been exploring ways to critically and creatively rethink how we ‘do’ disability within architecture and design, as well as within society more widely.
Disability studies, disability arts and disability activism have long been critiquing assumptions about what kinds of body-minds matter –– who gets valued and who gets marginalised –– in order to challenge and remake conventional access and inclusion ‘solutions’. Rather than being seen as a problem for architecture, disability turns out be a creative generator for design; a powerful critique of what is assumed ‘normal’; a vital means for troubling everyday design assumptions about space and its occupancy; and an enabling mechanism towards new collective and emergent forms of social, spatial and material equity. Jos asks how built spaces can change when we reimagine access and inclusion, not as a merely functional ‘add-on’ to existing buildings and cities, but as a form of collective care for which we all have responsibility.
The talk will be live streamed on Rupert’s Facebook page. It will last about 45-60 minutes with 20 minutes to address questions raised during the talk.
Dr. Jos Boys is Course Director for the MSc in Learning Environments at The Bartlett UCL in the UK, with a research focus on creative and inclusive educational spaces both within and beyond the academy. She set upThe DisOrdinary Architecture Project with disabled artist Zoe Partington in 2008. Its mission is to promote activity that develops and captures models of new practice for the built environment, led by the creativity and experiences of disabled and Deaf artists. Jos is author of Doing Disability Differently: an alternative handbook on architecture, dis/ability, and designing for everyday life (Routledge 2014) and editor of Disability, Space, Architecture: A Reader (Routledge 2017).
Rupert’s programmes are supported by the Lithuanian Culture Council