Solidarity in Everyday Space - The Bartlett International Lectures

About

Streamed live on The Bartlett School of Architecture's YouTube channel, this event will be a discussion between co-hosts Faun Rothery and Elizabeth Dow and speakers Jos Boys and Nina Tame. 

This event forms part of The Bartlett International Lectures Autumn 2021.

This autumn and spring, each of the International Lectures will be curated by one of the school's programmes to inspire, invent, imagine, and provoke. This event is curated by Architectural & Interdisciplinary Studies BSc.

Abstract

Solidarity in Everyday Space: Disability Justice and the Urban Environment

Disability is an often-neglected topic in the discussion of architectural canon, from the reinforced nature of the ideal architectural body to inadequate accessibility features, pasted on after the process of design. There are many small everyday occurrences that lead to a widespread culture of ableism consistent through architectural education and practice. This leads to the question; how can we work to instigate change in this culture and how can solidarity and disability justice be pursued with in architecture.  

Dr Jos Boys will start the evening with a talk on the responsibility abled people have when practicing architecture and how to move towards integrating accessibility into design. Following this Nina Tame will talk about social media as a space for change and the politics of navigating the city as a disabled person. We invite you to join us in this dialogue as we try and uncover what it means to access information about long term change.

Speaker biographies

Jos Boys is Director of the Learning Environments Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Centre (LEEDIC) and programme lead for the Learning Environments MSc at The Bartlett, UCL. She was a founding member of Matrix Feminist Design Collective in the 1980s, and since then has been involved in several alternative architectural platforms, including takingplace and The DisOrdinary Architecture Project. 

Nina Tame is a disability advocate and writer. She uses her Instagram page to debunk the outdated myths that society has about disability and to highlight ableism in the ways it runs through herself and her life. She is a trained psychotherapist and uses this to empower other disabled people in a mentoring role. Her experience of growing up disabled is a continual influence that runs through her work in becoming the disabled person she strives to be today. She also challenges the inherently ableist narratives and practices of non-disabled parenting of disabled children, weaving in her own experiences of being a disabled child whilst sharing how she brings up her young son who is also disabled. Laced with wit, passion and lots of wheelchair selfies, Nina’s work explores the nuances of the disabled experience whilst contributing to the growing, diverse and brilliant online disabled community.

More information

• Explore Architectural & Interdisciplinary Studies BSc
• See the full programme for The Bartlett International Lectures

Image: 'Under table crit' by Jos Boys