Much of the progress that museums have made over the past decade towards covering more representative histories has been shaped by the enthusiasm of individual curators and museum staff who are themselves part of under-represented groups.
However, the percentage of deaf and disabled people working in the cultural sector is tiny: around 5% compared to the 20% of the working population as a whole who identify as disabled.
The History of Place project, which ran from 2015 to 2018, aimed to address this situation by treating the under-employment of disabled people and their conspicuous absence in museum narratives as two sides of the same problem.
With an £878,500 grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF), History of Place produced exhibitions on the 19th-century disabled community The Guild of the Brave Poor Things at MShed in Bristol; the late 18th-century origins of Liverpool’s School for the Blind at the Museum of Liverpool; and eight centuries of design for and by deaf and disabled people, at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.
The project was an opportunity to give disabled people a voice in their own history. It featured artists leading community events, disability equality trainers and a steering group.
Overall, of 59 people recruited to paid roles, half defined themselves as deaf and disabled, as well as many of the 128 volunteers.
There had previously been no large-scale investment in celebrating the national social heritage of deaf and disabled people, and the faith of Heritage Lottery Fund (now renamed the National Lottery Heritage Fund) in choosing to invest allowed the team to concentrate on breaking new ground, rather than scrabbling around from one small funding pot to the next.
This in turn gave space for those working with the project to show what they could do.
“I think it helps to give a message about disabled people and their capabilities,” says one project partner. “We are [usually] seen as recipients of services or projects, of things that are done for us rather than by us. We are quite capable of being project deliverers.”
Accentuate, which managed the project, has ambitions to create a professional development placement programme for a cohort of deaf and disabled curators. Our experience suggests that it is only when disabled people are an unremarkable part of the institutional furniture that work such as History of Place will cease to be an exception.
There are hundreds of other stories to tell and an untapped talented workforce ready to bring their own insights and experience to the sector.
Kate Smith is the web editor of History of Place. The project has developed a set of pledges for policymakers, museum and heritage organisations and individuals, available here.
However, the percentage of deaf and disabled people working in the cultural sector is tiny: around 5% compared to the 20% of the working population as a whole who identify as disabled.
The History of Place project, which ran from 2015 to 2018, aimed to address this situation by treating the under-employment of disabled people and their conspicuous absence in museum narratives as two sides of the same problem.
With an £878,500 grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF), History of Place produced exhibitions on the 19th-century disabled community The Guild of the Brave Poor Things at MShed in Bristol; the late 18th-century origins of Liverpool’s School for the Blind at the Museum of Liverpool; and eight centuries of design for and by deaf and disabled people, at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.
The project was an opportunity to give disabled people a voice in their own history. It featured artists leading community events, disability equality trainers and a steering group.
Overall, of 59 people recruited to paid roles, half defined themselves as deaf and disabled, as well as many of the 128 volunteers.
There had previously been no large-scale investment in celebrating the national social heritage of deaf and disabled people, and the faith of Heritage Lottery Fund (now renamed the National Lottery Heritage Fund) in choosing to invest allowed the team to concentrate on breaking new ground, rather than scrabbling around from one small funding pot to the next.
This in turn gave space for those working with the project to show what they could do.
“I think it helps to give a message about disabled people and their capabilities,” says one project partner. “We are [usually] seen as recipients of services or projects, of things that are done for us rather than by us. We are quite capable of being project deliverers.”
Accentuate, which managed the project, has ambitions to create a professional development placement programme for a cohort of deaf and disabled curators. Our experience suggests that it is only when disabled people are an unremarkable part of the institutional furniture that work such as History of Place will cease to be an exception.
There are hundreds of other stories to tell and an untapped talented workforce ready to bring their own insights and experience to the sector.
Kate Smith is the web editor of History of Place. The project has developed a set of pledges for policymakers, museum and heritage organisations and individuals, available here.
