Next Thursday and Friday, August 14 and 15, I'll be back in Toronto with Interaccess and the Inclusive Design Research Centre, to give a lecture and run a workshop and panel based on my ongoing project, Slope : Intercept. All of it is free and open to the public, held at 49 McCaul Street, so please come! A public lecture is from 4-5 on August 14th, and the workshop and panel runs on the 15th, from 9-12. More details at Interaccess.
The workshop and forum in particular are what I've been planning as the next step in the project—to make my material design become a catalyst for highly localized public discussions about built environments for leisure and access, politics and play, wheeled mobility in multiple senses. Skateboarding and wheelchair use.
I'm particularly excited about the workshop and panel on Friday, from 9-12 noon. We'll be exploring a set of city blocks in central Toronto and making an alternate map of that part of the city with new eyes: thinking about deliberate, overlooked, and even accidental features of the architecture and landscape that make cities hospitable or hostile to wheeled mobile gear.
Joining us will be Ariel Stagni, Toronto skateboarder, skating advocate, and design & programming advisor for skate spaces; Luke Anderson from the Stop Gap project, an activist wheelchair-ramp design initiative; and others from the Toronto architecture and planning professions. We'll meet at 49 McCaul Street in Toronto at 9, and we'll spend from 9 am - 11 am exploring the city and making a collective alternate map.
At 11, the discussion becomes a formal panel, with Ariel, Luke, and others talking about the future of Toronto and other cities: whose bodies are welcome, and how, and why?
the Stop Gap project.
Ariel Stagni in Toronto. Image credit: Tanis Toohey for the Toronto Star.
