Manchester Art Gallery, Manchester
Kate Day, 15.09.2011
At Manchester Art Gallery we have a touch trail, audio description on our audio guide, a series of creative interpretation workshops called Making Conversation and regular collections and exhibition tours - all for blind and visually-impaired people. These events are supported by a partnership with Henshaws Society for Blind People.
We recently ran a tour for blind and visually-impaired people of the 11 Rooms exhibition for Manchester International Festival 2011. This was a series of 11 performances each taking place in a separate room within our temporary exhibition space at Manchester Art Gallery.
The displays included a large revolving door made out of people, which participants could enter into; a swap room where the person inside encouraged participants to swap a possession; and a room where a naked woman inspected herself from head to foot with a hand mirror.
We soon realised that our usual tour group size of over 25 blind and visually-impaired people, volunteer drivers and carers (as well as the odd guide dog) would be far too large for the exhibition space and for the level of intimacy required.
Instead, the group met before going up to 11 Rooms in a quiet gallery space and were given an overview of how the event was going to be run and an introduction to the show itself so that people were prepared to potentially become participants.
We broke up into small groups of four or five; each group was led by members of the gallery team who had audio description training. The guides were prepared to ad lib depending on what exactly was happening in each room.
In addition, we decided that some description would take place outside of the room to allow participants to experience the room without mediation.
While we had carefully prepared, we hadn’t delivered an event like this before and we were anxious that the participants would experience the show with as little outside intervention as possible while also supporting their individual needs.
When the day of the event came there was a little distracting noise coming from our lively stairwell for the introduction, but that was where our worries ended.
The participants absolutely loved the show – the combination of participatory rooms, spoken performances and music was spot on, and smaller groups meant participants had more choice over what they wanted to take in.
Most importantly, all the comments were about the art rather than how we delivered the event, which was exactly what we were aiming for.
Kate Day is the lifelong learning manager at Manchester Art Galleries. The described tour of the exhibition 11 Rooms took place on 14 July.
Links
Manchester Art Gallery
Henshaws Society for Blind People
11 Rooms: Manchester International Festival 2011
We recently ran a tour for blind and visually-impaired people of the 11 Rooms exhibition for Manchester International Festival 2011. This was a series of 11 performances each taking place in a separate room within our temporary exhibition space at Manchester Art Gallery.
The displays included a large revolving door made out of people, which participants could enter into; a swap room where the person inside encouraged participants to swap a possession; and a room where a naked woman inspected herself from head to foot with a hand mirror.
We soon realised that our usual tour group size of over 25 blind and visually-impaired people, volunteer drivers and carers (as well as the odd guide dog) would be far too large for the exhibition space and for the level of intimacy required.
Instead, the group met before going up to 11 Rooms in a quiet gallery space and were given an overview of how the event was going to be run and an introduction to the show itself so that people were prepared to potentially become participants.
We broke up into small groups of four or five; each group was led by members of the gallery team who had audio description training. The guides were prepared to ad lib depending on what exactly was happening in each room.
In addition, we decided that some description would take place outside of the room to allow participants to experience the room without mediation.
While we had carefully prepared, we hadn’t delivered an event like this before and we were anxious that the participants would experience the show with as little outside intervention as possible while also supporting their individual needs.
When the day of the event came there was a little distracting noise coming from our lively stairwell for the introduction, but that was where our worries ended.
The participants absolutely loved the show – the combination of participatory rooms, spoken performances and music was spot on, and smaller groups meant participants had more choice over what they wanted to take in.
Most importantly, all the comments were about the art rather than how we delivered the event, which was exactly what we were aiming for.
Kate Day is the lifelong learning manager at Manchester Art Galleries. The described tour of the exhibition 11 Rooms took place on 14 July.
Links
Manchester Art Gallery
Henshaws Society for Blind People
11 Rooms: Manchester International Festival 2011
Add your comment