“Who Cares About the In-between?”

Liminal Space Director, Sarah Douglas, joins a panel of very special guest speakers for the London Festival of Architecture 2021.

Hosted and curated by Threefold Architects, ‘Who Cares About the In-between’ explored the design threshold that links community, the public realm and holistic thinking. Here’s what Sarah had to say…

I’ve always been fascinated by what happens in-between. In-between cultures, people, systems and spaces. Because that’s often where the most creative ideas come from.

It’s why I first gravitated to the liminal concept — for it describes the magic of the in-between — a transitional space in flux, and full of possibility.

It’s also why I founded The Liminal Space — an organisation focused on making change through lateral insights, learning from the margins and innovation at edges.

We are a purpose-led multi-disciplinary design studio that creates unique experiences that transform what people think, feel and do. Whether working with Wellcome Trust, Selfridges or the NHS, we help organisations to translate complex topics into tangible forms for public engagement.

We focus on three areas:

Firstly, we are interested in what happens in-between disciplines — this is where people with different skills come together and create something incredible.

Secondly, we are interested in what happens in-between systems — this is often where people are overlooked because they fall through gaps in the systems in our society.

Thirdly, when we can’t find any in-betweens, we like to create them — and we are especially interested in what happens when we break apart existing structures.

Let me give you some examples…

We are interested in what happens in-between disciplines. Why? When I look at the complex problems that the world faces today, I believe we need a range of disciplines to solve them. And we love creating the right conditions for people with different perspectives and approaches to collaborate and generate radically new ways of doing things.

In all of our projects we work across sectors, bringing together a range of people — from scientists, artists and social workers to digital designers, patients and philosophers. We’re doing this in an upcoming installation called Tomorrow’s Home.

Connected technologies are set to transform the way we live in and relate our homes. But the public rarely has a chance to examine the big ethical questions associated with these advances before they happen — such as — home-healthcare technologies will enable an ageing population to live independently, but who will own that health data? How will it be used? And should we care? So we have brought together engineers, clinicians, technologists, ethicists and architects from UCL and The Bartlett to work with communities to co-create a vision for our future homes.

This immersive and multi-sensory living space will open in the Museum of the Home in Autumn, and give the public the chance to participate in thinking about how we should be living in the future.

But what happens in-between systems? Work, home, health, culture — every day we move through huge interconnected systems that make up the fabric of our society. But there are many gaps in and between these systems. We are particularly passionate about working in the gaps, and working with the people who fall through these gaps.

Fred is one of an army of millions of low paid night shift workers who keep our 24/7 world running. Working nights means he has an increased risk of developing a number of health conditions — from cancer and heart disease to mental health issues — but gaps in the employment system mean he is also the least likely to receive any kind of health or wellbeing support at work.

We designed Night Club to address this gap. Backed by Wellcome Trust and a consortium of industry partners, it is a mobile health intervention programme that travels to frontline workplaces and takes place at night. It brings sleep scientists and workers together to improve health and change working practices and is attracting new employer partners across the country.

What happens when you activate the in-between spaces? We think in-between spaces are so powerful that often we prise existing structures apart to create them — or activate overlooked spaces with unexpected interventions…

We’ve done this recently at the Natural History Museum.

Getting to grips with climate change can be overwhelming. For their new exhibition on the Anthropocene, the Natural History Museum asked us to create an experience that would inspire young people to consider their role in changing the world.

We worked with the spaces in-between artefacts and exhibits to playfully disrupt their journey through the exhibition and create multiple routes through the space. Unexpected objects have snuck into vitrines and provocative questions activate in-between spaces to spark thinking.

Interventions in the in-between bring us into the liminal space — a space of open-ended exploration and transformation. Given the knotty social and environmental challenges we face, I believe we need to spend more time in this space — where new ideas are formed and new ways of doing things are possible.

Sarah Douglas, June 2021.