A one-day symposium at the Museum of the Home will explore how experiences of disability, D/deafness and neurodiversity interact with domestic space, through a range of methodological approaches including art and social history, literature, geographies of home, and inclusive curation. From new readings of Elisabeth Frink's 'Blind Beggar and His Dog', to the complex feelings generated by the intersection of modern hearing and domestic technologies, this event will shed light on disability and the home in historical, contemporary, and theoretical contexts, affording insights and exchange between a broad range of disciplinary approaches.

Program

10:00 Welcome and introductions
Alison Blunt (Co-Director, Centre for Studies of Home / Queen Mary University of London)
Aurelien Enjalbert (Museum of the Home)
India Whiteley (Queen Mary University of London)

10.30 Session 1

Nicole Matthews and Jess Kirkness (Macquire University, Sydney) Narrating Less than Beloved Objects: Domestic Spaces, Everyday Mobile Media and Amplification Technologies

Lauren Alderton (Royal Institute of British Architects)
Housing Precarity and Health Inequalities Amongst Gypsy and Traveller Communities

Katherine Brickell and Rosalie Warnock (Kings College London)
Sensory Lives: Neurodiverse Children and Families in Temporary Accommodation

Q&A

11.50 Break

12.10 Session 2

Iris Sirendi (University of Westminster)
“What it Means to Us": Exhibiting Assistive Technology Inclusively Through a Social History Lens

House to House Art Project

Q&A

13.10 Lunch

14.00 Session 3

Muneera Alkhelaifi (Queen Mary University of London)
Imagining a Way Out: Disability and Domestic Space in Raja Alem’s ‘The Dove’s Necklace’

Rosamund Lily West (University of Manchester)
The Figure of Elisabeth Frink’s ‘Blind Beggar and His Dog’

Q&A

15.00 Session 4

Alice Conibere (University of Kent / National Trust)
‘Invalid Furniture’: Embodying ‘Disability’ in Domestic Spaces of the Long Nineteenth Century?

Jessie Buckle (University College London / Motionspot)
Epilepsy, Stigma and Institutionalisation

Jane Hamlett (Royal Holloway University of London)
‘I Must and Will Come Home’: Writing Home from Bethlem Hospital in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries

Q&A

16.20 Closing remarks

16.30 Drinks reception

18.00 END

Tickets are £20 or £15 concessions
Contact: i.whiteleyqmul.ac.uk