canopy from Seats at the Table
Helen Stratford is an interdisciplinary artist who blends methods from art, architecture, ethnography, performance and civic action in her work. She spoke about her work, which aims to expand public participation in architecture and civic design.
Helen’s viewpoint as an artist stems from her chronic illness which required her to rest prone in public spaces. On encountering negative reactions to this, and realising that there was no provision to rest in many public spaces, Helen created a quilted blanket that she could lie down on that included a diagrammatic representation of her illness. It served as a mobile resting place that Helen could take with her and use whenever she needed. From this stemmed Seats at the Table, a project aimed at co-designing inclusive spaces in the public realm. It included workshops and collaboratively designing a resting place which included quotations of the viewpoints of people who live with disabilities and chronic illness.
Helen was also part of a project called Designing on Crip Time, which touched upon the issues surrounding expected productivity and pacing in normative design, and how this works in practice with the additional emotional and physical labour needed to sustain living in those with illnesses and disabilities. This resonated with me as a disabled person, with the understanding that the way in which our society and public spaces are set up from a normative viewpoint can be the disabling factor for those whose needs are not accommodated.
Helen makes use of her technical drafting skills in much of her work, which often has a clean and diagrammatic aesthetic, but despite this, there is a human aspect that acknowledges individual need.
Organisational Diagram from Everyday Life exploring what makes a ‘productive’ life
Market Meditations is a project based around the redevelopment of a market in Celje, Slovenia. The market was described as an unstable self-made structure and due to be replaced, however this would erase its history and the stories of the traders that adapted the space to their lives. Helen worked with local students to undergo a performative exploration of the space and investigate other potential uses in case it were stand empty. In this way, human sentiment is accounted for in the design process. I appreciated the way that Helen’s projects are centred on this approach, and that she includes local residents and relevant people in discussions that are pertinent to them. She takes topics that are of personal significance to her, and expands them into collaborative efforts, building communities and empowering them to influence the systems that sustain them.