Documentary highlights Lewis Honors College custodian and her philosophy on cleaning and life
“The Keeping Space,” a 15-minute documentary that shines a light on the often-unseen work by UK custodian Shelia Lackey, will be featured 6 p.m. Thursday, April 2, at Lexington’s Lyric Theatre & Cultural Arts Center. University of Kentucky Documentary co-directors Jena Seiler, Ph.D., Lewis Honors College lecturer, Nicole Martin, Ph.D., former honors college director of academic affairs, will be at the screening and participate in the discussion.
The screening is sponsored by the Gaines Center for the Humanities.
Seiler described the film as a celebration of “the often-invisible labor and rhythm of cleaning by focusing on the work Lackey does every day in the Honors College and her perspective on cleaning and life.”
The project started near the end of 2023 when Seiler, who was interested in the work it takes to maintain a space and the idea of certain roles being visible versus invisible, approached Lackey to document her daily routine in the garden level of Donovan Hall.
“Cleaning is an essential human activity that is marginalized,” and through the documentary, Seiler created a “testament to the work that is valuable and that matters.”
“I don’t mind letting people know what goes on on a day-to-day basis,” Lackey said. As someone who spent more than 14 years in the cleaning business, following in the footsteps of her great-grandmother, mom, brother, and stepfather, Lackey said that cleaning is in her genes.
Martin said she hopes viewers learn more about Lackey.
“I think she is so special and I have such sweet memories of her in the space during the early hours at Lewis Hall before folks arrived,” Martin said.
As Seiler filmed as early as 5:30 a.m., she said, “I got a sense of the solitude being in these spaces.”
They filled those silences with conversations about how cleaning is central to who one is. Lackey shared her perspective that “anything that you do in life, you have to clean. You’re housekeeping.”
“Whether someone is working in an office, staying in a hotel, dining in a restaurant, or living in a dorm at college, housekeeping is something that everyone does to a certain level,” she said.
Framing custodial work as part of everyone’s life makes Lackey question how others leave behind messes for others to handle.
“Some people just don’t care,” Lackey said. “Just because I have a job to do doesn’t mean that you can’t help.”
Lackey said she gets frustrated at having to pick up a coffee cup stuffed under a chair when a waste receptacle is less than a foot away.
“I take pride in what I do, but people still look down on my work,” she said.
Lackey hopes the documentary will help others be more mindful and understand the position in which she is placed as a result of how others treat the spaces around them. Lackey treasures the interactions she has with those who recognize her efforts.
“I enjoy what I do,” she said. “I love the feedback I get from others.”
Seiler learned how deeply Lackey thinks about cleaning as a practice and a way of being in the world, a perspective Lackey said she learned from her mom.
“This recognition emerged through the process of being with and listening to Shelia as she tended the space,” Seiler said.
Martin added that “I want people to recognize the way the camera catches and appreciates the daily movements that Shelia embodies — maybe ritualizes — in how she cares for the space.”
“There’s a rhythm to Shelia’s work,” Seiler noted, and that inspired her to use music by Louisville’s River City Drum Corps in the documentary. That music was paid for by Celebrating University Research Across the Enterprise (CURATE) funding. The CURATE Program, administered by the Office of the Vice President for Research, provides recurring funds to support research in areas of excellence.
The film has been accepted to two festivals — Single Channel’s fifth annual Video Festival and the 18th International Moving Film Festival. For the latter, which was hosted in Mexico, Seiler worked with honors freshman Angela Angulo-Rugerio to translate the film for a Spanish-speaking audience. While Angulo-Rugerio has not formally translated a project like this before, she has spent her life interpreting and translating documents for her immigrant parents.
Angulo-Rugerio’s greatest challenge with this project was the spelling. “I had to double-check my grammar to make sure it was right,” Angulo-Rugerio said. “Another thing is that there are some terms that we (Mexican Americans/native Spanish speakers) use that don't actually exist in the Spanish language or are more informal terms derived from the actual word, so I had to make sure the words I was using were the formal words and not the informal ones.”
The documentary hit close to home for Angulo-Rugerio, whose mother is also a housekeeper.
“When I was younger, and even now, although rare, I would go with her to work, and I would help her clean,” Angulo-Rugerio said. “I have fond memories of those times when we would finish early, and we got lunch or a treat somewhere after work.”
As Martin shared the film with others, she quickly realized Lackey’s impact as viewers demanded more time with her. Martin attributes viewer interest in Lackey to Seiler’s cinematography.
“Jena knew what to capture.”
Seiler is a teacher and interdisciplinary artist. She has a Ph.D. in interdisciplinary arts and a Master of Fine Arts in painting from Ohio University. Seiler’s teaching experience includes interdisciplinary seminar courses in Honors, 2-D and moving-image studio art, as well as art appreciation and art history. Working across various media, she developed an expansive practice that led her to exhibit in solo exhibitions, collaborative group shows, and film festivals. This has also opened the opportunity for her to collaborate with other artists and scholars. Seiler and filmmaker Tijah Bumgarner’s 2022 feature documentary “Picture Proof” was recognized through the Lindsay Theater & Cultural Center's Emerging Filmmaker Showcase and programmed on KET and WVPB networks. Last year, Seiler’s 2024 experimental short film “Plastic Wake” was screened in the Big Muddy Film Festival.
Martin is a reimagined scholar and facilitator whose work lives at the intersection of performance, pedagogy, and equity. She holds a Ph.D. in performance studies from the University of Texas at Austin. Prior to leaving higher education, Martin spent six years at the University of Kentucky as an instructional consultant with the Center for the Enhancement of Learning and Teaching, a facilitator of anti-bias workshops, and as Lewis Honors College’s director of academic affairs. She currently lives and works in Austin, Texas. “The Keeping Space” is her first documentary.