The report drew on disability workshops and surveys to consider certain benefits that have emerged in the wake of the pandemic
A new report exploring English museums’ engagement with disabled people has found that the shift to virtual platforms benefited disabled museum workers, and has initiated increased desire from institutions to improve their understanding of recruiting disabled staff.
The study Curating for Change: Disabled People Leading in Museums led by the disability programme Accentuate, has highlighted the benefits to D/deaf, disabled and neurodivergent people in digital ways of working, though warns of the risks of not keeping up with changes.
Respondents cited the flexibility of remote working and new forms of online engagement as improvements in accessibility for disabled museum staffers. The report drew on disability workshops and surveys involving 170 groups and individuals as well as partner institutions such as the Imperial War Museum and the Museum of Liverpool.
Many of the disabled people surveyed said that they would like to see better representation within museum collections, exhibitions and events too, alongside the opportunities to produce these.
Last November, Chris Sharratt profiled the collective disabled artists’ manifesto Not Going Back To Normal for ArtReview. ‘The problem [for disabled people] is that we can’t afford to be artists,’ Edinburgh-based writer and performer Harry Josephine Giles said. ‘We need an approach to arts funding that prioritises work that is happening at a grassroots level; work that is always more inventive, more productive, more diverse, more inclusive.’
