Over £110,000 Awarded to Lincoln School of Design for The Sensational Museums Project

Lincoln’s School of Design will receive at least £110,000 as part of an Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) grant to research innovative and ambitious ways to rethink museums’ approach to accessibility.

The School of Design, which is part of the University of Lincoln, UK, is one of four UK University partners that has collaborated with over 20 Universities on The Sensational Museums Project. The Project, which connects and informs subjects including Museum Studies, Critical Disabilities Studies, Design Studies and Psychology, was successful in securing a total of almost £1 million from the AHRC, of which a minimum of £110,000 will go to Lincoln’s School of Design, along with at least a further £30,000 to facilitate project workshops.

Professor Anne Chick, the project’s Co-Investigator from the University of Lincoln, UK School of Architecture and Design, said: “The University of Lincoln is delighted to be involved in this innovative, interdisciplinary, co-creation project which has museum audiences at the centre of the research. The Sensational Museums’ outcomes will encourage and support museums to provide a positive and inclusive experience to disabled audiences and practitioners alike.”

While museums are increasingly offering services including audio guides and British Sign Language provision to encourage accessibility, the project believes that this presents a division between ‘abled’ and ‘disabled’ people which marginalises non-normative ways of experiencing a museum.

The project will promote a ‘trans-sensory’ logic in which no one sense is prioritised. This challenges museums’ traditional reliance on primarily visual exhibitions. One of the key objectives stipulated by the team, therefore, is to create a “new inclusive trans-sensory literacy in museums, which assumes no one sense is necessary or sufficient for museum experience”.

The team emphasise in their application that “this multi-partner project is not just a project about making museums accessible to disabled people. It is a project that uses what we know about disability to change how museums work for everyone” via this new trans-sensory principle.

Professor Hannah Thompson is the Principal Investigator from Royal Holloway, University of London and commented: “Many people want or need to access and process information in ways that are not only – or not entirely – visual. But museums are very sight-dependent places. Let’s imagine a museum experience that plays to whichever senses work best for you. The project aims to give all visitors inclusive, engaging, enjoyable and memorable experiences.”

Disabled and non-disabled persons will be consulted throughout every stage of The Sensational Museums’ co-creation by embracing a ‘nothing about us without us’ approach. Museum professionals, designers, current and potential visitors groups will all comprise of both disabled and non-disabled people while disability rights and access organisations and leading sector organisations will also be involved to ensure that the project meets its aims.

The research project will produce a variety of main outcomes including a discipline-specific dissemination, co-authored interdisciplinary book proposal, range of academic literature, Case Study Material and an exhibition or installation.

These assets will map innovative ways for museums to enter a new way of regarding their exhibitions, heightening the overall visitor experience for everyone.