Disappointed to find discrimination in a museum... again
I was curious what the Ashmolean experience would be like for casual visitors who are blind or deaf or who have a learning difficulty. There, I witnessed blatant exclusion as I did at the Darwin Centre (Museums Journal, December 2009, p18).
There is no touch tour for blind visitors with supporting information in accessible formats. There is no audio tour with audio description. British Sign Language is not provided and unsurprisingly there is nothing for people with a learning difficulty.
The message is clear: disabled people don’t belong. At best, they can enjoy the odd segregated tour, at a time that is not of their choosing. Staff did not know about the guided touch tour that needs to be booked in advance.
Crucially, it is not advertised on the website. Access information is tucked away under the mysterious heading “about us”. You need to be a clairvoyant to make that one out!
Not a single penny has been spent on intellectual access for disabled people for this £61m scheme. The Ashmolean is by no means alone in ignoring disabled people while spending lavishly on new exhibition design. The cumulative effect is discrimination on a grand scale.
The scandal is that this has been allowed to happen at all. The Disability Discrimination Act (1995) requires that museums take reasonable steps to make collections accessible.
Many new exhibition spaces barely seem to engage with associated legal duties: often no “auxiliary aids” are provided for the casual visitor. Many appear oblivious of the “anticipatory duty”. This requires knowledge of the requirements that disabled people might have and responding to them “within reason”.
Public authorities, such as local authority and national museums, the Heritage Lottery Fund and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport have specific duties under the Disability Equality Duty (2005). These are about involving disabled people in matters that affect them, as well as about strategic and systemic change.
National public funding for new exhibition design is not being used strategically to provide disability equality. As a result, existing apartheid is being further entrenched. When disabled people are no longer seen as the problem, but as part of the design solution, new galleries will become a shared experience.
Marcus Weisen, freelance consultant
Art can make us better
Following on from the Working Knowledge on therapeutic museums in Museum Practice, I thought Museums Journal readers might be interested in a project we have been running in the North West.
We have available for loan a thought-provoking mental well-being art exhibition, made by people using NHS mental health services who have used gallery collections to help them explore mental health issues.
The exhibition is available to galleries and museums free of charge, apart from the transport costs. The exhibition, Held, was made in partnership with Manchester Art Gallery and is inspired by the idea that we hold the keys to our well-being in our own hands.
Ceramics, lightboxes, animations, textiles and paintings are interwoven into a beautiful set of work, of a highly professional standard, made by people who have experienced severe mental distress and are learning to use art to manage their health.
It was seen by 125,000 people at Manchester Art Gallery, and succeeded in influencing the gallery staff’s and the public’s views on mental health. Staff said that they received nothing but positive feedback from colleagues and visitors.
Held is currently on display at Blackburn Art Gallery until the end of February, after which it will be available for loan elsewhere.
The team behind the exhibition are award-winning arts-based mental health team Start, part of Manchester Mental Health and Social Care NHS Trust.
We are a team of artists who work directly with people with severe mental illness, to enable them to learn how to use art as part of their recovery. We work closely with galleries and museums, using their collections to help patients explore well-being issues.
Through working with the cultural sector, we are able to reach wide audiences, and we constantly strive to improve public education around mental health issues, as well as to offer top class treatment to our patients.
As a service, Start has recently been hailed as one of 10 top services offering innovative care across the whole of the NHS, by the NHS Institute for Innovation and Improvement.
Wendy Teall, Start lead artist
Why we love Musa
Regarding the review of the Museum of the University of St Andrews.
Home-Start East Fife is a charity that supports families with at least one child under five years of age. We recruit, prepare and support volunteers who support families in their own homes. In addition we run Family Support Groups.
In March 2009, staff from the Museum of the University of St Andrews (Musa) contacted us to discuss the possibility of working in partnership. We met them at the museum and agreed on a project, the first part of which involved our Family Support Groups visiting the museum.
A total of 23 adults and 25 children ranging from birth to four years went to Musa and visited all of the galleries in May last year.
The session ended with story-time relating to the museum artefacts. The photographs taken by Home-Start East Fife clearly demonstrate that even the smallest child enjoyed the experience.
Discussions with parents revealed that although they would never have considered taking their pre-five’s to a museum before, they had all thoroughly enjoyed the morning and would be keen to visit again.
One of the main things that impressed our parents and staff is the fact that each gallery hosts at least one interactive element as well as the additional exhibits which are found in the many drawers that the children enjoyed pulling open. The interactive elements help to engage children of a wide range of ages as well as adults.
Museum staff visited the groups over the subsequent weeks and introduced activities such as paper making, message in a bottle and shell crafts. All materials produced were then considered for display in the community case.
The staff also arranged for a traditional storyteller to come along to the groups, which was fantastic. Musa also hosted a volunteers event, which was organised by us to show our gratitude for the work that they do.
Our experience of this museum has been altogether positive and I am perplexed by the negativity which exudes from the review by Nichola Johnson.
We will be continuing to work in partnership with the museum and will continue to recommend this tremendous facility to families and individuals alike.
Joanne Roddam, senior coordinator, Home-Start East Fife
