Moments of Resistance and Renewal curated by Jos Boys
Jos Boys has been a life-long design activist. She is co-director of The DisOrdinary Architecture Project, an informal platform bringing together disabled artists with built environment educators and practitioners to critically and creatively re-think access and inclusion. Originally trained in architecture, Jos was co-founder of Matrix feminist design co-operative in London UK in the 1980s, and has also been a journalist, researcher, consultant, educator and artist. Jos’s work centres on co-developing creative interventions that challenge norms about who gets valued and who doesn't (in society, in the design of built space and in architecture as a discipline).
In a built world where land and property are so often treated as financial assets, my curated collection for the 2025 Open House Festival celebrates groups and projects that value alternative ways of living, working and learning, beyond the profit motive. These– often small-scale and hard-won - moments of resistance and renewal have been collectively created across time and space, mainly by and for those disenfranchised by conventional capitalist norms. Many such radical places have since disappeared and left only traces; while some continue to creatively adapt to changing social, economic and political circumstances. For me, each project in this collection aims to reveal, as radical activist David Graeber put it, that “the ultimate, hidden truth of the world is that it is something that we make, and could just as easily make differently.”
Disability is often assumed to be a series of fixed, immutable categories – something that just is - rather than being socially constructed with its own histories of change and challenge. First established in 1868, the Langdon Down Centre in Teddington plays a vital part in that history. At a time when most people with learning disabilities would have been shut away in asylums, Dr Langdon Down adapted his own house to support the potential of those with learning difficulties, and to explore the performing arts as a creative form of rehabilitation and development. The museum has recently been remodelled and includes a beautiful Grade II* listed Victorian theatre, a rare example of a private theatre with original painted scenery and other ornate fixtures and fittings.
2. Art Workers Guild
The Art Workers Guild was founded in 1884 by a group of architects, artists and craftspeople associated with William Morris and the Arts and Crafts movement. Its activities continue to be underpinned by Morris’s radical beliefs in the unity of art and design practices, in the healing and humane value of craftsmanship and in ‘learning by doing’. The Guild has supported traditional skills when they might have disappeared and also maintains a dialogue with contemporary design. It continues its original traditions - members are ‘brothers’, the Guild is led by a Master on a rolling yearly basis (women were only admitted in 1964), and programmed events have an enjoyable old-fashioned quality. The organisation has occupied the current building in Queens Square since 1914, where in the main Hall, the Master sits on a seat designed by Lethaby and at a table by Benson; with the names of all members up to the year 2000 painted on a frieze around the walls.
3. Newington Green Utilitarian Church
This church is the site of progressive, political and religious causes for over 300 years. Founded by the English Dissenters in 1708, it is the longest running non-conformist church still in use, now operated by New Unity following a large-scale renovation in 2020. Utilitarianism is a liberal religious movement that emphasizes individual freedom of belief, and has a lack of formal creeds or doctrines, encouraging members to form their own beliefs based on reason, conscience, and personal experience. A celebrated member of its congregation is Mary Wollstonecraft who campaigned for the rights of women, with the church often described as the birthplace of feminism. A refurbishment, completed by Richard Griffiths Architects in 2021, restored the Church and Schoolhouse respecting traditional methods of repair, as well as creating new spaces for multiple uses, and making the building fully accessible.
Audio guide/description available.
4. Graeae Theatre Company, Bradbury Studios
Graeae (pronounced grey-eye) is a radical theatre company, founded in 1980, by deaf and disabled artists and theatre makers, that places accessibility at the centre of its work, including in the design of the building. As well as producing innovative theatre productions which it tours nationally and internationally to traditional theatres and outdoor spaces, Graeae runs a large and varied training programme for deaf and disabled artists, and – after a recent refurbishment, - offers space for artists to produce and develop their work, build careers and share ideas. Whilst Graeae deliberately does not have its own theatre space (instead, it works with other theatres to make them more accessible), the building does contain accessible rehearsal space and other flexible facilities. As well as Graeae, the building is now shared with two other disability-led campaigning arts organisations, Access All Areas and Attitude is Everything, bringing as they say “a collective 100+ years’ experience in opening up the arts to those who otherwise would not have access.”
BSL interpretation and audio guide/description available.
5. Museum of Transology, Bishopsgate Institute
The Museum of Transology is the UK’s most significant collection of objects representing trans, non-binary and intersex people’s lives, curated by its founder E. J. Scott. It began in 2014, through a series of grassroots community workshops, and by 2025 incudes over 1000 artefacts that have been gathered from the everyday life and experiences of trans, non-binary and intersex people; with the aim of increasing visibility and awareness, "de-spectaculariz[ing]" transgender issues, and to provide a spaces for trans people to “talk for themselves about themselves.” The collection is hosted by the Bishopsgate Institute in the City of London, based in a building designed by Charles Harrison Townsend and opened to the public in the 1890s as a cultural centre and library. Since then, its Special Collections and Archives have documented the experiences of everyday people, as well as individuals and organisations who have strived for social, political, and cultural change.
6. Walworth Garden
In the 1980s an area of derelict ground in South London was developed by local residents into a community garden and growing space. It continues today, nearly forty years later – still thriving – as a plant centre that also offers environmental gardening and garden therapy courses, as well as other gardening services. The original project included plans for a timber framed pavilion designed and built by Matrix feminist design collective, based on a previous (unbuilt) scheme for another community garden, the Calthorpe Project in Kings Cross. Part of the intention was to use an entirely female construction team, who undertook some initial work erecting the frame, before funding became unavailable. The building was finished at a later date by other architects, but still retains traces of the original design.
7. 7 Meadow Lane
This house is the home of Charmaine McNally, one the self-build leaders in a 14-home women-led self-build scheme. It is part of the third in a series of housing schemes created by a pioneering Black-led self-build movement, Fusions Jameen throughout the 1990s, to challenge discrimination against black people in the housing market and to co-produce affordable and community-controlled places to live. Formed by African and Caribbean Londoners as a co-operative, the goal was to build their own homes, and in return receive long term discounted rents. The houses are based on an adaptation of the famous Walter Segal modular timber frame construction method.
8. Phoenix Gardens Community Centre
This garden was originally established in 1984. It was the last of seven garden sites created by the local community on vacant lots in the 1970s and 80s at a time when the Covent Garden fruit and vegetable wholesale market was being re-located and the area was in state of dereliction that is hard to imagine today. This was in the face of Government plans to redevelop the entire Covent Garden Area, with community groups playing important roles in both challenging plans for large scale demolition of London’s historic centre as well as influencing alternative regeneration initiatives. Phoenix Garden – the only one of the community gardens to survive - transformed a car park site that had previously been a bomb site from World War II and remains a quiet space in central London, illustrating the ongoing strength of local and grassroots action in resisting whole scale redevelopment.
More recently the group that now manages the site, The Phoenix Garden Trust, raised funding for a new community centre, designed by Office Sian and completed in 2016. Replacing basic storage sheds, the building provides space for running the charity, and offering community events and workshops as well as two toilets (one accessible); and integrating sustainable technologies and a biodiverse brown roof.
9. The Tate Institute
This initiative, by ReSpace Projects, continues their 10-year practice of taking derelict buildings and repurposing them for alternative uses. ReSpace recently won the tender to refurbish the abandoned Tate Institute, part of the old Tate and Lyle sugar factory in Silvertown. Only closed in the 2000s, the building fell into disrepair, and was then squatted in 2016 and partially maintained by Craftory, an artists’ collective. When the building reverted to council ownership in 2018, it remained vacant for another four years, whilst organisations were asked for community-based proposals.
ReSpace, together with some members of Craftory, now aim to transform the Tate Institute into a new centrepiece for the community, centring on repurposing waste materials as well creating key facilities that mitigate social and economic disparities. As they say the hope is to “not only breathe new life into a cherished landmark but also [to] pave the way for a more sustainable and inclusive future.”
