Abandoned in the Archives? Collaborating with Disabled People Towards More Inclusive Spaces

ABSTRACT

The DisOrdinary Architecture Project was co-founded in 2008 by Zoe Partington, a partially blind artist who has a chronic condition, and Jos Boys, 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. Since then, through this platform, diverse disabled artists have been working with students, educators, museums, galleries, architectural professionals and other cultural practitioners to co-explore innovative and creative ways to think about improving access, equality and inclusion. In this article, framed as a conversation between the DisOrdinary’s two founders and co-directors, we link disability arts and activism to wider artistic and campaigning practices for inclusion. We explore what alternative kinds of museum and gallery spaces we need, and also their underpinning archival, curatorial and educational practices. How can we unlock the potential for change by ensuring excluded people are at the heart of decision-making? What are the barriers? What kinds of critical and provocative creativity can unlock disabled people’s stories and artifacts, as a vital part of our heritage and learning?

KEYWORDS:

• Disability arts
• disability activism
• The DisOrdinary Architecture Project
• disability archives
• disability histories
• disabled stories

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Zoe Partington was awarded an Arts Council England (ACE) funded and an Unlimited micro-fund in the Summer of 2020 and November 2021 to create three experimental audio description sound files for a project that explored how ordinary domestic objects could form the basis of an archive centred on disabled women’s own experiences of their lives. The work has since been used to inform an exhibition installation in Madrid in 2022 that shares these untold stories through creative audio description, using non-visual experimentation through language, stories, sound, and colours.

2 Together with Jon Astbury, architecture and design curator at the Barbican Centre in London, Jos Boys co-curated an exhibition entitled “How We Live Now: Reimagining Spaces with Matrix Feminist Design Co-operative” that ran from Mon 17 May 2021 to Sun 30 Jan 2022. In addition, in support of this show, she facilitated the development of an online archive of Matrix artefacts and an associated UCL-funded research project called Opening Up Architectural Archives.

3 See Research Centre for Museums and Galleries (RCMG), University of Leicester. https://le.ac.uk/rcmg

4 See The Disability Archive, University of Leeds. https://disability-studies.leeds.ac.uk/library/

5 Amanda Cachia is an independent curator, writer and art historian who specialises in disability arts activism through research and exhibitions. https://amandacachia.com/

6 See section written by Katie Lloyd Thomas in Boys Doing Disability Differently, 164–5.

7 See National Disability Arts Collection and Archive (NDACA), https://the-ndaca.org/

8 See Invalid Carriage Register, https://www.invalidcarriageregister.org/

9 See, for example, interview with Stefan Dickers in Kershaw, “Principles into Practice.” https://hcommons.org/deposits/objects/hc:43620/datastreams/CONTENT/content

10 Recent publications include Sheply, Advancing Disability Equality and RCMG/Wellcome Collection, An Ethical Approach.

11 Collecting Otherwise is one of the research projects currently being developed by Het Nieuwe Instituut as part of the Rethinking the Collection initiative, funded by the Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture and Science (OCW). https://collectingotherwise.hetnieuweinstituut.nl/en

12 In our discussion, Zoe gave the example of the UK’s Disability Action Network (DAN) whose 1990s activism has been made into a fictionalized film called Then Barbara Met Alan shown on BBC TV in March 2022. As to be expected, this account has been both valued and argued over, by the disabled people involved as well as by others. There are similar differences of opinion over the representation of disability action in the States in the film Crip Camp (2020).

13 See Matrix Open feminist architecture archive (MOfaa) prototype in development. http://www.matrixfeministarchitecturearchive.co.uk/

14 See Kafer, Feminist Queer Crip.

15 Disability lifehacks are increasingly being explored in design histories. See for example Williamson, “Electric Moms”; Accessible America; and Williamson and Guffey, Making Disability Modern.

16 https://www.zoepartington.co.uk/

17 The term “bodyminds” is often used in disability activism and research to avoid treating our bodies and minds as if these are separate. See, for example Price “The Bodymind Problem.”

18 The term “microagressions” refers to comments or actions that subtly and often unconsciously or unintentionally express a prejudiced attitude toward a member of a marginalized group, such as a racial minority, or disabled people.

19 See Fuss and Sanders, “An Aesthetic Headache.”

20 See Boué, Am I Autistic? https://bom.org.uk/2022/03/19/am-i-autistic/

21 See Crow, “On Lying Down Anyhow.”

22 See Meseguer, Crash Course in Cloudspotting. https://uncharteredcollective.com/performance and Towards a Restful City https://uncharteredcollective.com/restful-city

23 See Finnegan “Do you Want Us Here or Not?” For background, see Eisenhauer Richardson & Kletchka, “Museum Education for Disability Justice.”

24 The exhibition was called Chronic Conditions: Body and Building for the Lisbon Architectural Triennale. Palácio Sinel de Cordes, Lisboa, 12 October to 11 December 2021 https://www.trienaldelisboa.com/programme/events/bben See also: https://annaulrikkeandersen.com/2021/10/26/chronic-conditions-body-and-building/

25 Crip time is a concept that comes out of many disabled people’s experiences to recognize the ways that disabled/chronically ill and neurodivergent people experience time (and space) differently to normate and neurotypical bodyminds. See also Eisenhauer Richardson and Kletchka for discussion of these and other terms in a museum education context.

26 See, for example, Samuels, Six Ways of Looking.

27 See Boué, Neither Use Nor Ornament.

28 See Cachia, “Disability, Curating and the Educational Turn” and Curating Access.

29 See Wellcome Collection “Being Human”. https://wellcomecollection.org/exhibitions/XNFfsxAAANwqbNWD

30 See Young, I’m not your inspiration. https://www.ted.com/talks/stella_young_i_m_not_your_inspiration_thank_you_very_much?language=en

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jos Boys

Jos Boys studied architecture and has worked for many years in feminist and community-based design practices, as well as working as a researcher, educator, journalist and photographer. She was co-founder of Matrix feminist architecture collective in the 1980s and an editor and author of the Matrix book Making Space: women and the man-made environment (Pluto 1984, Verso 2021). She is the 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) which brings together the best writing on built space from disability studies with innovative ideas about inclusive design, so as to create an important new resource for built environment students, educators and design professionals. She is currently Director of the Learning Environments Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Centre (LEEDIC) at The Bartlett, University College London, and is a visiting professor in inclusive design practices at the Royal Danish Academy, Copenhagen.

Zoe Partington

Zoe Partington is an activist and an artist who works with viscerally powerful audio, visual and tactile representations to explore disabled people’s perceptions and experiences of space. Her practice is informed by her own experiences of her chronic condition and sight loss that has taken her and her work on a journey as a tool for change. Zoe also works as a curator, consultant, researcher, auditor and creative equality trainer for the cultural sector. She is an international advisor and trainer, co-consulting, for Shape Arts London, including involvement in the creation of the online National Disability Arts Collection and Archive (NDACA). She has also assisted the British Council in Brazil to develop disability arts equality frameworks for their 2016 Cultural Olympiad and Japan in preparation for the 2020 Cultural Olympiad. She has supported the British Council in Armenia, Azerbaijan and Turkey and in 2021 wrote the Cultural Accessibility Guidelines for Georgia.

www.zoepartington.co.uk.