Free event: Interrogating queer, crip and the body: an international symposium, July 3rd, Sheffield

Interrogating queer, crip and the body: an international symposium

Friday 3rd July, Room 7138/7139, Stoddart Building, Sheffield Hallam University, Howard Street, Sheffield, S1 1WB

This is a free event but please sign up via the Eventbrite here. Feel free to distribute (Poster that can be downloaded and printed available here: Queer Crip Poster).

Robert McRuer (2006), perhaps controversially, tells us that the crip is always queer and the queer is always crip. Whilst the politics of queer, LGBT*, crip and disability research have been debated in north America, rarely do such discussions happened in the UK. This international symposium therefore brings together queer and disabled researchers, activists and artists to discuss queer/crip politics, and their relation to the body.

We do this at a particularly pertinent time in the UK. A time where heightening austerity measures have and will continue to disproportionately affect already marginalised groups, including disabled and LGBT* people. Therefore we see this symposium as a chance to ask how academia, activism and the arts can work together for social justice. We are particularly lucky to have friends and pioneering disability and gender activists, Freyja Haraldsdóttir & Embla Ágústsdóttir, to join us for the afternoon to give us insights into queer/crip activism in Iceland.

We hope you can join us for the day.

12.00 – 12.45: Arrival & Lunch – a chance to chat to one-another before the talks and/or look at visual displays of initial findings from Around the Toilet Research Project.

12.45 – 1.00: Welcoming Address

1.00 – 1.30 Freyja Haraldsdóttir: The wheeling of shame: The political action of sexing up disability and cripping up femininity

1.30 – 2.00  Embla Ágústsdóttir: title tbc

2.00 – 2.30: Kirsty Liddiard, University of Sheffield and Jenny Slater, Sheffield Hallam University: “Like pissing yourself isn’t the most attractive quality, let’s be honest” Learning to contain through youth, adulthood, disability and sexuality

2.30 – 3.00: Break – Tea and Coffee

3.00 – 3.30: Julia Daniels, University of Sheffield: Conditions of Reciprocity: The Possibilities and Potentialities of a Feminist Perspective on Theorising Dis/ability

3.30 – 4.30: Performance from Queer of the Unknown Arts Collective: title tbc

4.30 – 5.00: Book Launch – Youth and Disability: A Challenge to Mr Reasonable by Jenny Slater

We endeavour to make this event as accessible as possible for all involved. There is step-free access to the building, and car parking is available underneath the building by prior arrangement (lift access). The event will have BSL interpretation. Please also get in touch with any specific dietary requirements.

If you have other access requirements then please get in touch and we will endeavour to work with you to meet these.

Free Seminar: Toilet Talks: a speaker event on bodies, identities & design, Mon 29th June, Manchester

Toilet Talks: a speaker event on bodies, identities & design

Monday 29th June, 1-5.30pm, Brooks Building, Birley Campus Manchester Metropolitan University

‘Around the Toilet’ is a cross-disciplinary, arts-based research project exploring the toilet as a place of exclusion and belonging, by thinking particularly around gender and disability. To celebrate the launch of the project we are holding our first free public event in Manchester: a half-day speaker event featuring key figures in the field of toilet research, as well as an exciting range of cross-disiplinary voices on the history, design and role of public toilets.

Speakers will address questions, such as:

– What makes an accessible toilet?
– What can toilets tell us about social constructions of gender identity and disability?
– How have designers approached this most private of public spaces?
– What do the hidden histories of toilets in the city reveal?

List of speakers

– Jo-Anne Bichard (Royal College of Art), ‘Extending Architectural Affordance or How to Spend a Penny’
– Leo Care (University of Sheffield), ‘Around the Toilet: From Social Mess to Architectural Touchstone’
– Barbara Penner (Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL), ‘Redesigning for the User: Alexander Kira and the Ergonomic Bathroom’
– Morag Rose (University of Sheffield and co-founder of the Loiterers Resistance Movement), ‘Are You Engaged? The Secret World of Manchester’s Toilets’
– Clara Greed (Emerita Professor, University of Bristol), Closing Remarks and Discussant

The event is free and open to all members of the public, but please sign up for a ticket via Eventbrite. This page also tells you more about the location and accessibility. 

You can download the full abstracts via the project blog where you can also find out more about the project.

New Research Project on Access and Toilets! #cctoilettalk

Disability Research Forum members may be interested to know that today marks the ‘online launch’ of an Arts and Humanities Research Council funded project called, Around the Toilet. This project, led by Dr. Jenny Slater, Sheffield Hallam University, is a collaboration between Sheffield Hallam University, The University of Sheffield, The University of Leeds, Greater Manchester Coalition of Disabled People, Action for Trans* Health and Queer of the Unknown Arts Collective.

Over the next few months people from these organisations will be coming together to ask what it means to have access to a safe and pleasant toilet space. Later in the year architecture students from Sheffield School of Architecture will make a public installation based on the findings of the project, to get others thinking about access and toilets.

You can find out more about the project on the project blog, or following @cctoilettalk on Twitter. The group are also asking you too join in by tweeting your own toilet stories and pictures using the hashtag #cctoilettalk or via the project blog.

This video explains more: