Available to take away in the Disobedient Objects exhibition and download from the V&A website, these ‘how-to’ guides highlighted the status of disobedient objects as tools for action. They were inspired by the long tradition of social movements recording and sharing their design knowledge in pamphlets and guides for others to remake and modify, a process we termed ‘swarm design’. 

In August 2014 the V&A guide for making a tear-gas mask from a water bottle was shared and used by people protesting in Ferguson, Missouri, against the fatal police shooting of unarmed black teenager Michael Brown. A month later, during the Umbrella Movement in Hong Kong students ran workshops using the guide to fabricate hundreds of masks that were handed out during street demonotarios to protect people from the effects of tear gas. As the use of tear gas as weapon of crowd control has escalated around the world, the guide has continued to circulate. 

Download the guides.

Made in response to the exhibition Disobedient Objects this commission reflected the idea of a people's history of art and design from below. It invited visitors, as they crossed the threshold of the museum, to consider activist social movements as an important part of our culture. 

Quotations inserted between the steps leading up to the main entrance represented the voices of activists and political thinkers, from 19th-century anarchist Emma Goldman to an anonymous slogan on a 1970s badge. On either side of the entrance, two ‘ceramic posters’ collaged together images of protest in Britain, past and present, including actions that Reichardt, her friends and family were involved in. They intentionally covered over an inscription commemorating the inauguration of the building by the ‘Empress and Emperor of India’ (Victoria and Albert).