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The Sheffield culture guide written by in-the-know locals

Kaleidoscope Talk: Practising Art, Practising Access with Helen Stratford

Thu. 22 January 2026 at 18:00–19:30

Free

In the 90-minute online workshop, Helen will focus on her definition of access within her art practice, which in the last few years has increasingly responded to her lived experience of a chronic pain condition. As part of her Public S/Pacing project, Helen spoke with a number of art practitioners to discuss how the conventions around labour, time and space in art practice might be challenged and will share some of those thoughts. To round it off, she will also facilitate a diagramming of what access and work means to each attendee, playfully subverting the productivity-enhancing flowchart for self-reflection.

More about her project Public S/Pacing on which a lot of this talk will be based.

Helen Stratford’s practice spans across architecture, fine art, writing and research. Through performative workshops, site-specific interventions, video, speculative writing, and discursive platforms, they propose ways of challenging spatial prejudices produced at the intersections of social, cultural, economic and political relations. Her work has been developed, presented, performed, and exhibited at international residencies and platforms, including Oslo Architecture Triennale, Yorkshire Sculpture Park, g39 Wysing Arts Centre and RIBA. Helen is also Senior Lecturer at Sheffield Hallam University.

*This is Bloc Projects Members / Kaleidoscope Network event. You must be a Member to book. Find out more about Bloc Projects' membership and community.

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