In November 2020, Liz Crow, Zoe Partington, Noemi Lakmaier and Jos Boys collaborated with Fem_Arc in creating a week-long design workshop for their studio atUniversität der Künste Berlin. The aim was to start from the disruptive effects of the pandemic on everyday lives and spaces, as a means of engaging with difference; and to imagine spaces that could liberate and value diverse bodyminds, rather than merely going back to perpetuating a world designed for normative bodies and relationships.

Through an online workshop, and a short design project, the aim was to learn critically and creatively from the experiences of lockdown. Everyday 'normal' lives have been shifted out of place by Covid-19; as what is conventionally public and private, inside and outside, visible and invisible, included and excluded has been re-mixed across assumed locations, spaces and encounters. This has produced an intense awareness, requiring the paying of new kinds of attentiveness to the simplest tasks, noticing dis/ordinary encounters with others, and with local built and natural spaces, and explicitly taking a position over issues of care an interconnectedness.  

Students first made personal work about their diverse responses to the unpredictability and uncertainty of going to the shops or the park, or finding a place to have online meetings. This requires creative skills in navigation and negotiation - an expertise many disabled people would say they already have just by living in that 'normal' world.

They then worked individually or in small groups on a creative provocation, developed from their initial studies. These were presented as audio files, as well as photos and short video clips. You can see more about this workshop, including recorded talks and the resulting student work, here.