Sheffield Institute of Education researchers

Dr Jen Slater, Dr Charlotte Jones

Partners

Accessible Derbyshire, Action for Trans* Health, Drake Music, Gemma Nash, Queer of the Unknown Arts Collective

Visit the 'Around the Toilet' website to learn more about our work and to see profiles of team members in our partner organisations.

Project date

2016

Toilets, ‘place’ and utopias

Our ground-breaking 'Around the Toilet' research has explored what makes a safe and accessible toilet space. Nobody thinks about toilets when they think about utopias. Yet, the notion of ‘place’ emerged continually throughout the project. Participants spoke of planning journeys, not leaving the house, not drinking and losing jobs due to a lack of accessible toilets. There was, in its most literal sense, ‘no place’ for them to go (and hence sometimes, they went ‘nowhere’). Fundamentally then, the project linked to the concept of 'utopia' as about 'a good place' or 'no place'.

The AtT project has highlighted the importance of toilets to any utopian imagining. The Toilet Traveller Tales project had two aims: 1) follow in the tradition of utopian travellers' tales by gathering and telling toilet traveller tales; and 2) generate more and richer findings for the wider Around the Toilet project, by building on and expanding AtT networks, engaging with other toilet projects, as well as considering faith, age and labour more explicitly. An animated soundscape alongside short clips of people discussing their toilet journeys have been produced and shown at various events including the CC Utopian Festival and The Loiterers Resistance Movement's People's History Museum Exhibition.

Find us on Twitter @cctoilettalk.

Funder

Arts & Humanities Research Council

Document links

Around the Toilet: a project report about what makes a safe and accessible toilet space