Yael Padan is a Research Fellow at the Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London, working on the project KNOW – Knowledge in Action for Urban Equality project. KNOW is an international research programme to deliver transformative research for innovation in policy and planning to promote urban equality in selected cities in the global south (https://www.urban-know.com). Within the KNOW programme, Yael is part of a work package that focuses on the ethics of research practice. Her other research interests lie in the interface of architecture, planning, cultural studies and sociology. She holds a PhD in sociology, an MSc in architectural history, and a professional qualification as an architect. She has also worked in civil society organisations and partnerships promoting human rights and justice in planning. 

 

Vanesa Castán Broto is Professor of Climate Urbanism at the Urban Institute, in the University of Sheffield. Her work explores the governance of climate change in urban areas with particular attention to questions of environmental justice. She engages both with a critique of the exclusionary aspects of climate policy and with the potential embedded in activist responses. At Sheffield, she leads the teams of the projects Low Carbon Action in Ordinary Cities (funded by the European Research Council) and Community Energy and Sustainable Transitions in East Africa (funded by the UK Global Challenges Research Fund). She is also a Co-Investigator in the project KNOW, leading a work package on city-based co-production research. Vanesa’s latest authored books are Urban Energy Landscapes (2019, Cambridge University Press) and Urban Sustainability and Justice (w/Linda Westman, 2019, ZED Books/Bloomsbury).

 

Jane Rendell (BSc, DipArch, MSc, PhD) is Professor of Critical Spatial Practice at the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL, where she co-initiated the MA Situated Practice and supervises MA and PhD projects. Jane has introduced concepts of ‘critical spatial practice’ and ‘site-writing’ through her authored books: The Architecture of Psychoanalysis (2017), Silver (2016), Site-Writing (2010), Art and Architecture (2006), and The Pursuit of Pleasure (2002). With Dr David Roberts, she leads the Bartlett’s Ethics Commission; and with Dr Yael Padan, ‘The Ethics of Research Practice’, for KNOW (Knowledge in Action for Urban Equality). 

David Roberts is a Lecturer in Architecture at the Bartlett School of Architecture and Research Ethics Fellow for the Bartlett Ethics Commission led by Professor Jane Rendell. Alongside his teaching and research, he is part of collaborative art practice Fugitive Images and of architecture collectives Involve and BREAK//LINE. David’s research, art and cultural activist practice engages community groups whose homes and livelihoods are under threat from urban policy, empowers ethical reasoning in built environment practice, and extends architectural education to primary and secondary school children. This work has been exhibited, performed, screened and presented at Tate Modern, Hayward Gallery, Whitechapel Gallery, ICA, Somerset House, De La Warr Pavilion and National Gallery of Lithuania.

A ‘Minifesta’ as the Promise of Collective Voice

This polyvocal paper describes the collective writing of a manifesto for urban equality by an international and interdisciplinary team of researchers who met in Kampala, Uganda, in November 2019. It explains the methodologies that inspired the process of writing, reflects on the contradictions that permeate the generation of collective voices, and discusses the relationship between collective voice and situated knowledge. In doing so, it proposes a move from grand manifestos to situated minifestas, arguing for minor literature in the generation of feminist, subaltern knowledge.

Keywords: manifesto; minifesta; collective voice; minor literature; subaltern voices