Around the toilet: Co-creating intersectional understandings of gender, disability and access

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While toilets are often thought to be a mundane space, for those for whom a lack of adequate or accessible toilet provision is a crucial practical issue on a daily basis, toilets are 'the big necessity' (George, 2011). For some, a lack of adequate or accessible toilet provision is a crucial practical issue on a daily basis. Disabled people, for example, frequently report that accessible toilets are 'not accessible enough' (there may be too few, or they may be too small for larger wheelchairs, or not have a hoist or changing space) (Changing Places, 2013), while other studies show that diminishing numbers of public toilets can prevent older people leaving the house (Knight and Bichard, 2011, Department for Communities and Local Government, 2008). Thinking around toilets, and their function as material as well as socio-cultural environments, presents an opportunity to think in multi-faceted ways about forms of identity. Toilets often present a stark visual and material enactment of a gender binary ('Men's Toilets', 'Women's Toilets', 'the Ladies') in ways that can be problematic for trans, genderqueer, or non-binary people who do not identify with the gender they were assigned at birth. Conversely, it is often the 'accessible' (disabled) toilet that provides a gender-neutral space. For some disabled people, this can serve as an example, reflected in the built environment, of the oppressive assumption that they are genderless and asexual (Kafer, 2013).In recognition of the fact that the social issue of toilets is about practical access and personal affect, this project uses arts- and practice-based approaches to experiment with 'toilet talk' as a method of investigating issues of 'access' and 'identity' in relation to gender and disability. While the research and activities will focus around gender and disability, we also seek to consider additional intersections of identity including race, ethnicity, age, religion and faith. Five research workshops based around the arts practices of reflective storytelling, making/creating and performance, will take place between April and September 2015, in collaboration with three community partners: Greater Manchester Coalition of Disabled People (GMCDP), Queer of the Unknown (a performing arts collective) and Action for Trans* Health. Following these workshops, ideas and reflections will form part of an Architecture Live Project undertaken by MA Architecture students at the University of Sheffield, resulting in a number of installations/provocations. These installations will be displayed in public spaces in Manchester with the intention of stimulating city users to reflect on issues of access and identity in social spaces. The activities and installations will be captured in innovative visual and material forms that will be displayed at an end of project event targeting urban planners, architects and other city professionals. The aim of the project is to explore and disrupt received notions of 'access' and 'identity' and to find ways of articulating the idea that 'peeing is political' (Molotoch, 2010, 2).