Voices on anti-ableism

Jess Thom

Artist, writer and activist Jess Thom is the co-artistic director of Touretteshero, which she co-founded in 2010. The organisation celebrates the humour and creativity of Tourettes, increasing understanding of an often misunderstood syndrome through cultural practice. Touretteshero creates and tours live performances that explore disability culture and recently completed a series of shows in eight towns across the UK.

What does anti-ableism mean to you?

It is about acknowledging that we live in a world that privileges and prioritises a normative body and mind that doesn’t really exist, and that people with impairments are disabled by systems, structures and attitudes, not by their bodies. It’s about taking action in an ongoing and integrated way.

Can you give an example of initiatives in the cultural sector that have engaged with and helped to advance disability rights?

Over the past decade, the arts commissioning body Unlimited has radically changed the opportunities and experiences for disabled artists in the UK by constantly investing in high quality, dynamic and challenging disabled-led work. Crucially, its funding is administered by disabled people who have a deep understanding of and love for disability culture.

If you could change one thing about museums and galleries, what would it be?

The most important thing for me would be for them to change their approach to recognising the existence of disabled and other marginalised groups. We need more disabled leaders, curators, thinkers and artists in all our cultural output.

What would an anti-ableist museum of the future look like?

Simply put, it would fairly reflect the population that it is serving in all its diversity. This would be felt within the workforce, the audiences, the artists, and those on whose histories, experiences and stories are being centred. It would hold itself to account to existing and emerging issues within the community, and would continually seek to become more inclusive and accessible, both physically and in terms of its systems, attitudes and distribution of power and authority.

Vici Wreford-Sinnott

Vici Wreford-Sinnott is a writer and director for stage and screen. She has been a passionate campaigner for the cultural equality of disabled people for almost 30 years.

What does anti-ableism mean to you?

It is an urgently needed, active process that dismantles thousands of years of cultural ideals about the “perfect” human – a journey that almost always leads us to dangerous areas of eugenics. For far too long, society has identified us negatively with emphasis on our medical diagnoses.

Anti-ableism is about flipping that thinking and seeing the fact that society systemically disables people through assumptions and barriers in the way it is organised. Recognising disability in intersectional contexts is essential. There is no anti-ableism without anti-racism, anti-homophobia, anti-misogyny and so on.

Can you give an example of initiatives in the cultural sector that have engaged with and helped to advance disability rights?

The Disabled Peoples’ Movement has been active in the UK since the 1970s from which a coalescence of disabled activists, academics and artists developed thinking and practice bringing about most social change. A vibrant community continues this work. The disabled-led production company, Little Cog, developed a three-year Cultural Shift programme in partnership with arts venue ARC Stockton, which presented a microcosm of what disability equity can look like in the arts.

If you could change one thing about museums and galleries, what would it be?

I strongly invite museums and galleries to consider how disabled people see themselves involved and reflected in the work of the organisation – in the decision-making structures, how our voices are invited and involved, how we see ourselves in the staffing of museums and galleries, and where we are on walls, collections and commissions.

Create spaces for disabled people to respond to current exclusion, negative bias, othering and active discrimination, and to advise on what needs to happen to transform that. It’s important to understand the different models of “inclusion” and “equity”. And please acknowledge that disability expertise is not free.

What would an anti-ableist museum of the future look like?

It would be principled, courageous, committed and involve disabled people at every level. It starts its work on disability equity today to acknowledge its position in historical misrepresentation and stops thinking that change can only happen in the future.

The anti-ableist museum of today recognises that this is fundamentally about the organisation’s values; involves disabled experts and artists; plans for change in stages; and actively restructures its budgets accordingly.

All of its communities create, and are reflected in, exciting and dynamic exhibitions, performances and activities. It is unafraid to ask questions and to be challenged.

Vici Wreford-Sinnott is this year’s host for the Museums Association Conference in Newcastle-Gateshead (7-9 November)

Ashokkumar Mistry

Ashokkumar Mistry is a multidisciplinary artist, writer and curator working in the UK and internationally. Mistry’s work centres on how we as human beings make sense of the world and the dichotomous nature of humanity.

What does anti-ableism mean to you?

The concepts of ableism and anti-ableism have developed in my mind over the many years since I started campaigning about disability. For many people, ableism is not invisible but is in fact indivisible from the human values we live by because it has been deeply ingrained in our culture. Anti-ableism needs therefore to be defined as an innate ability to question a situation and to have the bravery to correct the situation without the need for thanks.

Can you give an example of initiatives in the cultural sector that have engaged with and helped to advance disability rights?

There are many examples of initiatives that support disability rights. However, they are useless unless we can change attitudes among non-disabled people to value disabled people without acting like heroes for doing so.

I have worked on a few initiatives myself such as Dash Arts’ future curators programme and the key question I ask is what is the core intention? Is it to remould disabled creatives in the form, ways, culture and roles of non-disabled creatives, or is it to allow them to make their own space? Next time you get involved in an initiative, ask yourself that same question.

If you could change one thing about museums and galleries, what would it be?

I would change the celebrity culture that values art and artists based on their infamy. This is not how we deliver the best ideas, nor is it how we activate inclusion. It only feeds the venal and sycophantic traits in human beings that help no one.

What would an anti-ableist museum of the future look like?

When we talk about anti-ableism in the contexts of museums and galleries, we need to ask in which context? Is it in audiences, programming, operational contexts, or is it in its entirety? It would be pointless to make a place more accessible to audiences if the programming and operations keep their ableism intact.

The feel of an anti-ableist institution would make space for everyone whatever their difference and in all contexts. The first thing we need to do is understand where barriers (intellectual and physical) lie and understand that this is the responsibility and has relevance to disabled and non-disabled people.

Heather Peak

Heather Peak is an artist and the chief executive and artistic director of Dash, a disabled-led visual arts organisation that works with artists, audiences, communities and organisations to challenge inequality and implement change.

What does anti-ableism mean to you?

I think that addressing anti-ableism is the key to liberation, happiness and a healthy society. I start with anti-ableism as a foundation to my practice. I try to approach all my work and personal life from this place and grow my ideas, actions and reflections from the compost this makes.

Can you give an example of initiatives in the cultural sector that have engaged with and helped to advance disability rights?

The Contemporary Visual Arts Network’s Fair and Equitable Programme and its aims and objectives are extraordinary. This vital, timely and important work is essential to the visual arts and is long overdue. We live in a complex and challenging world that is in perma-crisis for those that also experience inequalities and barriers.

It is essential that training, skills development and mentoring equips us all for work in these turbulent times. This is not an area of labour that can be ignored or worked on through projects. It needs constant, persistent practice based on reflective and regenerative toil, and the fair and equitable programme has made an extraordinary and impactful start on this.

If you could change one thing about museums and galleries, what would it be?

I think that many people find even getting to a museum or gallery difficult. You have to be super-motivated and prepared, and have enough money and energy to even try. Stepping outside your house is like entering a storm for most disabled or neurodivergent people. So, a simple change, such as offering a free accessible taxi to pick people up and drop them off, would make a significant impact for artists and arts audiences.

What would an anti-ableist museum of the future look like?

One conversation I have a lot with artists is how they get to be exhibited. Who chooses, why they choose and clarity on what art is important and why, would be clear in the museum or gallery of the future. Going through these questions would be a hugely Important reflective piece of work for our institutions.

Alexandra F Morris

Alexandra F Morris, PhD, co-founded the UK Disability History and Heritage Hub in 2022, is an associate lecturer at the University of Lincoln and honorary research fellow at the University of Nottingham.

What does anti-ableism mean to you?

Anti-ableism means working to ensure that disabled people are neither marginalised nor discriminated against, and to create inclusive environments for all.

Essentially, I want the future promised to us in the sci-fi TV series Star Trek, as well as one that was perhaps part of our ancient past, especially in ancient Egypt, that has since been lost.

Disability will be seen as part of a person’s everyday identity and lived experience. This is accepted without judgment or stigma. And it will be seen as an asset.

Can you give an example of initiatives in the cultural sector that have engaged with and helped to advance disability rights?

Two examples are the UK Disability History and Heritage Hub and the Museum Education Roundtable. Unlike most other spaces in the cultural sector, I am not the only disabled person in a leadership position in these two spaces.

This offers a position of safety, and helps guard against burnout. Both of these organisations have put in the careful planning and foresight needed to conscientiously and ethically think about access and anti-ableism from the beginning.

This is in direct contrast to these other projects and organisations that have not done so, and are continuing to make choices that have negative impacts.

This includes, but is not limited to, trying to make things up as they go along, saying they’re passionate about creating change and then continuing ableist hiring practices, and acquiescing to ableist and inaccessible conditions rather than choosing to be a leader.

To remain silent about the problematic practices is to be complicit. We should not be complicit. If we are to actively create and sustain change in the field, then this needs to be addressed.

If you could change one thing about museums and galleries, what would it be?

It would be to have spaces spotlighting those disability narratives that I know already exist, and are often completely overlooked and neglected within their collections.

They can accomplish this in a fully accessible manner that is open to everyone instead of hosting segregated programming for disabled individuals that is often designed through a medical model approach to disability.

What would an anti-ableist museum of the future look like?

It would be accessible and inclusive to all in terms of the narratives on display, the programming offered, and the staff and employees hired to work within that space.

This means actively working to address past collecting practices that were influenced by colonialism, eugenics and racism, and returning artefacts to groups who have claim over them.

It also means recognising and utilising the disabled talent that is already present in the field through paid opportunities. We exist, hire us.

Meredith Peruzzi

Meredith Peruzzi is a public historian and museum professional. Her primary research field is D/deaf access in museums and she works in the field of D/deaf history in the US.

What does anti-ableism mean to you?

Anti-ableism is the active reduction of ableist power structures. The key word here is “active” – the specific, intentional, ongoing efforts to make our communities safer and more equitable for disabled people.

The vast majority of people are not consciously ableist, seeking to harm disabled people – but they remain passive and do not contribute to disability justice.

Anti-ableism takes many forms, but perhaps the most important is keeping disability rights at the forefront of our consciousness. We must learn about them and discuss them at every opportunity, so no one can claim they have “forgotten” to practice inclusion.

Can you give an example of initiatives in the cultural sector that have engaged with and helped to advance disability rights?

Christine Sun Kim is one of the best-known Deaf artists, and her work continually hits home for me as a disability rights activist. Her 2018 drawing Degrees of My Deaf Rage in The Art World is a must-see for anyone in the cultural sector.

The Time to Act report by On the Move for the British Council is another crucial work – it does an outstanding job highlighting how our field frequently excludes disabled people, and it explains how we can fix it.

If you could change one thing about museums and galleries, what would it be?

They need to hire more disabled staff. Bringing in a group of consultants – disabled or not – is an othering experience. The consultants are outsiders, even if they are “experts”, and can be used as a resource and dismissed when they are not wanted. Bringing disabled people into the museum’s permanent workforce allows a shift in the institutional mindset.

What would an anti-ableist museum of the future look like?

If our field is going to commit to disability justice – if we want to honour the A in DEAI (diversity, equity, access and inclusivity) – we need to stop asking disabled people to do extra work to visit the museum.

If a D/deaf visitor is required to request interpreters two weeks in advance, they cannot make last-minute decisions to attend. If a museum’s accessible bathroom is a single stall, visitors with carers, ostomy bags, or other unique needs must prepare their day around restroom access.

The anti-ableist museum of the future will take away this additional burden by having solutions already in place when a disabled visitor walks in the door, so they can focus more on the stories, art, and history of disabled people represented on the gallery walls.

Tom Shakespeare

Tom Shakespeare trained in social and political sciences at Cambridge University, later studying for an MPhil and PhD. He has taught and researched at the universities of Sunderland, Leeds, Newcastle and East Anglia.

What does anti-ableism mean to you?

I don’t use the term “ableism” or “anti-ableism” because, frankly, it feels like confusing jargon. Instead, I think in terms of discriminatory barriers and prejudice, of which there remains too much. Thanks mostly to the arts council insisting that all lottery-funded venues have to be accessible, I think that UK museums and galleries have done very well in terms of access.

Can you give an example of initiatives in the cultural sector that have engaged with and helped to advance disability rights?

I love how the Natural History Museum opens out-of-hours for autistic people and their families. Visitors avoid the crowds and intrusive lights and sounds that can be disconcerting for some neurodivergent people. I am very pleased that Kettle’s Yard gallery in Cambridge has improved access as part of its refurbishment.

I applaud all the great work that has gone on with Leicester University’s Rethinking Disability Representation project, working with nine partner museums. And I love how many museums have worked with disabled people to explore reactions to historic images of disability.

If you could change one thing about museums and galleries, what would it be?

It would be a ban on mobile phones. I wish more people simply looked at the work on show, rather than having this urge to photograph everything.

Thinking of the five senses, one of the most amazing experiences I have ever had in a museum was when a British Museum member of staff brought me a Neolithic hand axe, and put it on my palm.

Feeling this heavy stone artefact that had been made by another human being thousands of years ago was very humbling.

What would an anti-ableist museum of the future look like?

What would a non-discriminatory museum of the future look like? I think we are mostly there in terms of access. But I would like to see more programming of work by, or about, disabled people that recognises that the artist or artefact has a disability connection.

I was proud to be painted by Lucy Jones, a disabled artist, and even prouder that the work sold to a national collection. 

In Ancient Egypt, there were gods with achondroplasia, my condition, and yet I have seen amulets of the Egyptian god Bes in museums, with labels that do not acknowledge the deity’s dwarfism. Much of our shared culture was made by or about disabled people, and we should acknowledge and celebrate that.

David Hevey

Media, arts and heritage professional David Hevey became the chief executive of Shape Arts in April 2017. He has worked with the BBC, Arts Council England and National Lottery Heritage Fund, among others.

What does anti-ableism mean to you?

I come from the generation who pushed for “the social model”; that it is society that disables, not impairments.

Along with class and race (I come from an Irish immigrant under-class family of nine and was brought up in poverty), disability is probably the key definer of my life. But more than that, using creativity to fight back defines me even more, and became my career and passion.

So, anti-ableism has hugely defined me. It’s about using creativity and radical culture to take on the boring ableist norms, and it’s about disrupting that ableist privilege by radicalising the issues to create political and creative change.

Can you give an example of initiatives in the cultural sector that have engaged with and helped to advance disability rights?

Yes, there are a lot of them. Shape Arts works on the social model and we advocate creativity as a tool and way of political storytelling; creativity can break up the often very ableist cultural sectors and change them to be far more inclusive.

Our National Disability Arts Collection and Archive is, in my view, a big contribution to helping advance disability rights, which has reached about eight million people to date. It is exciting.

If you could change one thing about museums and galleries, what would it be?

Get the management to find the radical political content in their collections and turn this into new interpretations and stories about how we live now. If they can’t do this, get them to find out why the masses, the outsiders and the weird are not in their collections (or are buried behind glass without radical interpretations).

Get them to engage with angry heritage, radical historical and contemporary outsider political stories: the stories of mass struggle, of disruptive outsiders, of great outsider change-makers.

What would an anti-ableist museum of the future look like?

It would look like a hybrid between a circus, a Soho nightclub of the old school, an arts cafe, a revolutionary political cell, a political print shop printing out rad manifestos, and have a great indie band playing all day, with a cafe selling a range of fab food at non-profit prices – with huge open access for all. And it would have flat structures, free flow of ideas, and live in a utopian nationalised society of plenty for all. Simple.

Selene Burn

Selene Burn is the access lead at Wellcome Collection, London. Previous roles include access and equality manager at the British Museum and arts manager at the National Deaf Children’s Society.

What does anti-ableism mean to you?

Ableism is a term that is only just becoming widely used. How can I know how to be anti-ableist if I don’t understand what ableism is and its impact on our society, culture and workplaces?

So, part of anti-ableism for me is doing the work to understand what ableism looks like and its impact in society, as well as in our venues and collections.

Accessibility is an essential foundation of anti-ableism. It is crucial to identify and remove or reduce physical, sensory and cognitive barriers.

But we need to build on that by working to remove attitudinal, behavioural and structural barriers as well as acknowledging and understanding the historic and contemporary exclusion of disabled people.

Can you give an example of initiatives in the cultural sector that have engaged with and helped to advance disability rights?

At Wellcome Collection, I’ve been working on the Social Justice Curriculum, a significant learning programme for staff. It was co-developed with Teresa Cisneros, who was the inclusive practice lead at Wellcome, as well as other disabled and neurodivergent colleagues and collaborators.

We are delivering Phase One of a multi-phased process. The purpose of the first phase is to give everyone a starting point: a shared language and understanding of key concepts, with opportunities to discuss race and disability and their intersections and learn some of the histories of how we got to where we are now.

If you could change one thing about museums and galleries, what would it be?

That everyone working in a museum or gallery took an approach to designing their work in a way that put Deaf, disabled and neurodivergent people at the centre. If we all prioritised disabled people and the social model of disability when designing our work, our museums and galleries would be more accessible for all.

What would an anti-ableist museum of the future look like?

It would be a place where access and inclusion for Deaf, disabled and neurodivergent people is not seen as a tick-box exercise, but as a vital way of engaging with and respecting our fellow humans.

Everyone can engage fully at all levels and disability and disabled people are visible and celebrated.

We have a long way to go, but through my work I have had the privilege of working with some incredible Deaf, disabled and neurodivergent people – once they are in charge, then we’re good to go.