Wellcome Collection’s recently published ‘The Joy of Being Disabled’ explores what it means to be joyful, defiant, and disabled. The series consists of five pieces (four articles and one film), celebrating different bodies and minds, and challenging ableist ideas of what it means to be happy.
Christopher Laing, architectural designer, activist and consultant, and the founder of Signstrokes and Deaf Architecture Front, recently took part by guiding us around his favourite building; our very own LCF East Bank campus.
Passionate about fostering engagement between the Deaf community and the architecture industry, Christopher seeks to integrate Deaf perspectives into spatial practices. In the film, Christopher outlines the five principles of Deaf space and shares his thoughts on inclusivity in architecture.
Amy Kavanagh, who guest edited, and appeared on the series herself, notes “Chris’ perspective as a Deaf architectural designer encourages us all to engage differently with spaces. Chris and I share different ways of navigating buildings, and I found that my blindness and Chris’s needs around Deaf space had many overlaps and intersections. Creating this film was an empowering collaboration between Deaf and disabled creatives.”
Disabled people often face barriers in society. A barrier can be physical, like a building not having lifts, or it could be a communication barrier, like not providing BSL interpretation or audio description. All these barriers were created by society, not by the person who is disabled. Seeing the world in this way is called the social model of disability. You can find more information about it on the Disability Rights UK website.
These are four other stories as part of this series from people who are proud and happy to be disabled, including Kate Stanforth on the joy of dance, Sinéad Burke on the joy of fashion, Roxy Murray on the joy of sex, and Amy Kavanagh on the joy of parenting.