Open Heart Clinic
In October 2024, founder of Open Heart Clinic, Yaa Addae facilitated a 2 part creative lab in the project space of Alice Billing House to explore the themes of Speculative Re-Memory. The first part of the lab was a reading group called the ‘Open Heart Clinic: Care Futures Reading Group’ which included a reading list to help participants explore the politics of technology and architecture through the lens of black feminist theory.
The second part was ‘The Open Heart Clinic workshop: Designing Loving Worlds’ which was guided by the question, 'what does it look like to return love to the systemically underloved?’
Participants were invited to first, consider how design upholds structural violence and armed with this knowledge, begin to carefully imagine new ways of being together towards personal and collective healing - leaning into how these themes intersect with the local Newham community, as well as their own, if coming from elsewhere.
Drawing on case studies of community care practices, Black feminist cultural references and personal experiences, the group collectively theorised around the politics of love and co-design blueprints for future care infrastructure.
Participants were also introduced to introductory trends forecasting methods (for liberatory strategising) and speculative design principles.
About the workshops , Yaa Addae said:
“Because the first workshop was a reading group focused on care futures and the second centring on how design can be used to create more loving worlds we were able to apply these thoughts and think more concretely about how the neighbourhood of Stratford has changed rapidly–delving into who is involved in those changes and why we think community infrastructure is necessary and what it could look like in various neighbourhoods, connecting the themes to both the locality of Newham and other parts of London.”
Yaa Addae (she/they) is a writer, researcher, and participatory curator, whose practice is centred on social design and creative technologist.
The Speculative ReMemory project was led by artist and programme facilitator, Sandra Falase, as part of a year-long engagement programme in 2024 at Alice Billing House, supported by the Creative Land Trust and Heritage Lottery Fund.