This interactive workshop session will start from the work of disabled artists, designers, campaigners and scholars. We will discuss how engaging with disability at the intersections can be both a creative design generator, and a key means to challenge and change what is ‘normal’ in the design of the built environment.

In architecture and related fields in the built environment, disability as a concept – and disabled people – continue to be predominantly framed through a set of outdated and functionalist categories (wheelchair user, blind, deaf, etc.).

There is still a widespread assumption that ‘disability’ is unable to bring any kind of creativity to the design of human spaces.

Since 2008, the DisOrdinary Architecture Project has been challenging this assumption by promoting new practice for the built environment, led by the creativity and experiences of disabled artists.

By finding innovative and enjoyable ways of bringing together disabled creatives with built environment students, educators, researchers and practitioners, DisOrdinary Architecture is co-developing new forms of valuing, and designing with, the rich bio- and neurodiversity of our many different ways of being in the world.

Speakers:

• Dr Jos Boys, Senior Lecturer in Environments for Learning, The Bartlett Real Estate Institute & co-director of The DisOrdinary Architecture Project

• Natasha Trotman, Artist in Residence at Somerset House, and a designer whose work explores extending the frontiers of knowledge around mental difference, non-typical ways of being and marginalised experiences. Natasha Trotman's studio practise site

• Raquel Mesquer, founder and Artistic Director of Unchartered Collective, where she develops projects and an aesthetic exploring difference as a creative tool, including ‘A Crash Course in Cloudspotting (the subversive act of horizontality)’. https://uncharteredcollective.com/

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Join The Bartlett’s monthly Inclusive Spaces event series, where we’ll delve into the latest research and ideas from The Bartlett’s world-leading thinkers on race, gender, LGBTQ+, disability – and other dimensions of diversity in the built environment.

Sign up for the Inclusive Spaces mailing list to receive monthly event details.

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The Inclusive Spaces lecture series will be streamed live through Zoom. Please ensure you download Zoom and create an account prior to the event.