The Sensational Museum

The Sensational Museum: using what we know about disability to change how museums work for everyone.

Regular readers of this blog will know that I have a love-hate relationship with museums, especially those whose promises of disability access don't live up to the reality.... now I have a chance to share my thoughts and experiences in a more productive way...

From April 2023 I will be leading major new research project The Sensational Museum

This £1M project wants to transform access and inclusion within the museum sector by putting disability at the centre of museum practice and acknowledging the diversity and difference of all visitors. The team of academics and sector partners will work with disabled and non-disabled visitors, staff, and organizations to prototype and test a range of new ways of accessing museum collections and cataloguing objects. The 27-month long project (April 2023-July 2025) will focus on two key areas: how museums manage the objects in their collections and how the stories behind these objects are communicated to the public. At workshops and events across the UK, The Sensational Museum will develop a sense-based approach to collection and communication. This approach assumes that no specific sense is necessary or sufficient to work with or experience museum collections.

Many of my museum-based blog posts show that museums are very sight-dependent places. But many people want or need to access and process information in ways that are not only - or not entirely - visual. With this project I want to imagine a museum experience that plays to whichever senses work best for each individual visitor.

The Sensational Museum is funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and I'll be working with wonderful colleagues Anne Chick (University of Lincoln); Alison Eardley (University of Westminster); Ross Parry (University of Leicester as well as Esther Fox from Curating for Change and Matthew Cock from VocalEyes.

I'm particularly excited about the range of partners we'll be working with:

AVM Curiosities

AVM Curiosities® has been exploring the relationship between art and the senses through a series of events and interventions since 2011. Founded by award-winning artist and food historian Tasha Marks, AVM Curiosities advocates for the sensory museum, championing the use of food and fragrance as artistic mediums. Projects range from olfactory curation and scented installations to interactive lectures and limited-edition confectionery.

Barker Langham

Barker Langham is one of the world’s leading cultural consultancies, creating pioneering and sustainable projects around the globe. Across all our work, we look at questions from every angle and challenge assumptions to create unexpected, imaginative and thought-provoking outcomes.

 
Eric Langham, Founder, Barker Langham says:

“We are delighted to be part of the Sensational Museum project, and are eager to explore the prospect of redefining ‘accessibility’ not as an add-on but as an integral part of everyone’s experience. By identifying more equitable ways for all visitors to engage with museum content in a trans-sensory way, together we can begin to reimagine the museum through a new sensory logic.”

Collections Trust

Collections Trust is a small, but influential charity whose mission is to help museums work with the information that connects collections and audiences. With Art UK and the University of Leicester it is building a Museum Data Service that will pool and share object records from UK collections as the raw material for countless end uses.

Kevin Gosling, The Collections Trust says:

“While we welcome all aspects of the project, we are especially excited that it will develop an inclusive, open-access documentation interface linked to the Museum Data Service. Not before time, this will make it easier for a wider range of users to work with the information at the heart of museum practice."

Curating for Change

Curating for Change is a 3-year National Lottery Heritage funded project at Screen South. It wants to create strong career pathways for d/Deaf, disabled and neurodiverse curators in museums.

Esther Fox, Head of the Accentuate programme, lead for Curating for Change says:

“We are delighted to partner with the Sensational Museum on this exciting initiative to really examine what museums mean for audiences and staff. Our work with Curating for Change puts disabled people at the heart of leading change within museums and we are excited to support the Sensational Museum in building on this approach.”

Group for Education in Museums (GEM)

 
GEM is a membership-based sector support organisation for everyone interested in learning through museums, heritage and cultural settings. Our mission is to support and empower our community of colleagues to connect and develop their knowledge and skills to deliver learning. Our services to deliver our mission include professional membership; training and professional development opportunities; 1-1 support; annual conference and events; dedicated representatives across all four Nations of the UK; publications and digital resources, support for sector recruitment; conversations and advocacy about practice and the development of learning.

Museums Association

The Museums Association is a membership organisation representing and supporting museums and people who work with them throughout the UK. Our network includes 10,000 individual members working in all types of roles, from directors to trainees and we represent 1,500 institutional members ranging from small volunteer-run local museums to large national institutions. Founded in 1889, the MA was the world’s first professional body for museums. We lead thinking in UK museums with initiatives such as Empowering Collections and Museums Change Lives and we provide £1.4m per year of funding for museum projects via our Esmée Fairbairn Collections fund and other grants.

The Museum Platform

The Museum Platform aims to democratise how museums can make their collections - and stories about those collections - available online as cheaply, as efficiently and as easily as possible.

Mike Ellis, Founder, The Museum Platform says:

“At the heart of The Museum Platform is an aim to improve usability and access - not just for the public but also for time-pressed museum staff who need to maintain this content. We’re therefore delighted to be involved in The Sensational Museum, and are excited about getting deeply involved in the project with you and with all project partners over the coming months.”

Scottish Museums Federation

The Scottish Museums Federation is a membership body for anyone interested in the Scottish museums and galleries sector. We provide our members with networking opportunities, a dynamic forum to share information and discuss current issues in the sector, and encourage creativity, enjoyment and personal development in the sector.

Quonya Huff, President of the Scottish Museums Federation says:

“We're excited to be part of this pioneering project and even more so that it will bring tangible training to the Scottish museum and galleries sector.”

VocalEyes

We believe that blind and visually impaired people should have the best possible opportunities to experience and enjoy art and heritage. Our mission is to increase those opportunities, make them as good as possible, and ensure that as many blind and visually impaired people as possible are aware of them, and that the arts and heritage sector know how to create them, and welcome blind people as a core audience.

Matthew Cock, Chief Executive, VocalEyes says:

We’re thrilled to be involved in The Sensational Museum, which promises to be a ground-breaking project for the museum and heritage sector, turning traditional practice on its head and placing the experiences of disabled people at the heart of the process. VocalEyes’ role will be as Sector Impact Lead, helping to disseminate the project’s research findings to people working within museums and heritage sector organisations, raising awareness of the findings, resources and toolkits, and influencing and bringing about change to practice.

Wellcome Collection

Wellcome Collection is a free museum exploring health and human experience. Its mission is to challenge how we all think and feel about health by connecting science, medicine, life and art. It offers a changing programme of curated exhibitions, museum and library collections, public events, in addition to a café. Wellcome Collection publishes books on what it means to be human, and collaborates widely to reach broad and diverse audiences, locally and globally. Wellcome Collection actively develops and preserves collections for current and future audiences and, where possible, offers new narratives about health and the human condition. Wellcome Collection works to engage underrepresented audiences, including D/deaf, disabled, neurodivergent, and racially minoritised communities.

Georgia Monk, Senior Project Manager, Exhibitions, Wellcome Collection says:

"Wellcome Collection has been in the process of developing its approach to inclusive and accessible exhibition making for several years and this is the perfect moment for us to engage with the Sensational Museum project and learn collaboratively with this extraordinary group of peers and partners."

This is an image of the logos of all the university and heritage sector partners involved in the Sensational Museum

AHRC Fellowship Annoucement: Inclusive Description for Equality and Access (IDEA)

I am delighted to announce that I have been awarded one of 10 new Arts and Humanities Research Council funded Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Fellowships for my project on inclusive audio description at the theatre. In this year-long initiative, I will be working with audio-description providers VocalEyes and Mind's Eye, access champion Vicky Ackroyd from Totally Inclusive People, and theatre companies including Mind the Gap Studios, The Octagon Bolton, the Donmar Warehouse and Shakespeare's Globe.

This project developed out of the 2019-20 Describing Diversity research project jointly run by VocalEyes and Royal Holloway University of London with additional support from Shakespeare’s Globe and Donmar Warehouse. Its key output was a report, Describing Diversity: An Exploration of the Description of Human Characteristics Within the Practice of Theatre Audio Description. [download the report here].

Between March 2019 and May 2020, we investigated how diverse human characteristics might best be described in the audio introductions used by theatre audio describers to introduce blind and partially sighted audience members to a play’s characters before the play starts. Along with touch tours and live audio descriptions, audio introductions provide blind and partially blind theatre goers with essential information about the play’s setting, costumes, props and characters. Our research found that references to protected characteristics such as gender, race, disability and age are not always made in inclusive and ethical ways. Either describers avoid mentioning such characteristics for fear of ‘saying the wrong thing’, or they inadvertently use loaded or negative language to describe them. In both cases, blind audience members are not given access to the visual markers of diversity available to their sighted peers. Our Describing Diversity project addresses this lack of equity by using the research findings, as well as consultation and workshops with audio describers, to develop a set of recommendations about best practice in AD for both audio describers and theatre professionals. These recommendations are designed to promotes equality, diversity and inclusion both for people being described and for people listening to the descriptions. The report was published in September 2020 and has already informed ITV’s accessibility policies.

This AHRC Fellowship project ‘Inclusive Description for Equality and Access’ (IDEA). will support and enable theatre professionals and audio describers to engage with and explore our findings in order to promote the creation of inclusive descriptions which celebrate diversity in ethical ways.  We will work with directors, casting directors, actors, access professionals, front-of-house teams at producing theatre companies as well as audio describers and blind and partially blind theatre goers, to promote the value of AD as both a communicator and a driver of equality, diversity and inclusion. IDEA will also seek to increase the diversity of audio describers, blind and partially blind theatre goers and theatre professionals by engaging under-represented groups with the creation and reception of inclusive audio description.

We will focus on the following key questions:

1) How can audio describers describe diversity characteristics, especially race and disability in an inclusive and ethical way?

Race was the diversity marker which attracted the most comments in our survey and interviews and integrated casting (sometimes referred to as ‘non-traditional casting’ or ‘colour-blind casting’) is a key issue to explore in IDEA. Whilst IC can refer to situations in which an actor’s age / gender / disability / body shape are not taken into account by casting decisions, in the survey responses it was most often evoked with reference to race. The recent rise to prominence of the Black Lives Matter movement in the UK and the increased awareness of the effects of white privilege are further evidence that the question of how and when race is described to blind and partially blind audience members is a pressing issue which will be at the heart of IDEA. 

2) How can audio descriptions take account of the creative team’s vision for the play?

The importance of consultation with actors and directors at an early stage of the audio description production was frequently highlighted and practical difficulties such as cost and staff availability were cited as the key barriers to this happening. IDEA will facilitate better consultation between audio describers and the creative team by

• Embedding an awareness of and interest in AD in the DNA of theatre
• Helping theatres to understand what is at stake if AD is not inclusive and ethical
• Raising awareness of and interest in aspects of diversity that ADs may not yet have direct experience of it
• Connecting individuals and organisations through exploration of shared interests and initiatives

The aim of IDEA is to promote inclusive audio description by taking the report’s describer-led recommendations back to theatre professionals and blind and partially blind audience members in a series of workshops, discussions and performances.

IDEA will:

• engage a diverse range of theatre professionals, blind and partially blind audience members and audio describers with the report’s findings and the practices of audio description more broadly
• strengthen existing networks of audio describers and theatre professionals by creating a safe space for discussions and a shared set of resources on the project website
• create new partnerships with theatre professionals and audio describers who were not involved in the preparation of the ‘Describing Diversity’ report but who are interested in developing their own understanding of and practice in inclusive audio description
• provide support (through mentoring; training; peer support; access to resources such as a video and a MOOC; support for community engagement; help with audience feedback) to theatres, theatre professionals and audio describers who want to implement the recommendations of the Describing Diversity report
• promote the value of inclusive audio description for a range of audience member groups beyond blind and partially blind audience members and in so doing increase the visibility of audio description in the theatre
• encourage the use of inclusive audio descriptions, particularly audio introductions, in films and on television, for both live and pre-recorded content.

To achieve the above aims, we will work with a diverse range of theatre companies to produce 2 audio-described productions per partner. We include theatres outside the south-east of England; theatre companies who work with or represent under-represented groups; theatres who are interested in extending their audience base to under-represented groups and theatres who would like to strengthen their equality, diversity and inclusion practices.

The project will also employ post-doctoral researcher Rachel Hutchinson as Project and Community Engagement Manager. Rachel received her PhD from the University of Westminster in 2020. Her thesis examines the impact of inclusive audio description on engagement and memorability in museums for blind and sighted people. She is was a post-doc research assistant on the Describing Diversity project and lead author of the report.