Feminist Ecologies

From ‘Lesbian Capital of the North’, to ‘Happy Valley’, Hebden Bridge has a big reputation for a small town.

Perhaps known more recently for manufacturing lifestyles than the textiles on which the town was built, whatever clothes it wears, the ties that bind this town to its wider landscape remain. ‘Flood waters bubbling up from the drains, closing down cafes and wine bars, seem to be saying “stop showing off”. Stinking mud is trying to put us back in our place, telling us to stop getting fancy ideas, like a bitter old relative stuck in their ways.’

The struggle for survival on this rugged and exposed strip of millstone grit has given rise to distinctive ‘non-conformist’ social structures and building typologies over time, from the hilltop smallholdings and wool weaving ‘little kingdoms’ of the upper Calder, to the huge valley based textile mills and infamous ‘up down’ terraces, recolonised by a community of squatters in the 1970s.

More recently, gentrification threatens to stifle Hebden’s capacity to evolve and adapt, leaving behind disenfranchised sections of the community. Eschewing media driven caricatures and superficial measures of success, Studio Feminist Ecologies has privileged other forms of value, (social, political, ecological), exploring the entangled stories of resistance and creativity found within this ‘rebel town’.

Joan Tronto defines the concept of ‘care’ as ‘everything that we do to maintain, continue and repair our world…That world includes our bodies, ourselves and our environment, all that we seek to interweave in a complex, life-sustaining web’. Seeing the area in terms of a rich and complex ecology, we have asked ourselves, ‘What new infrastructure, processes and architectures are needed to expand the revolutionary potential of this town?’

Studio tutor