ABSTRACT
‘Feeling Our Way’ is a series of in-person and online events and creative encounters co-curated by Touretteshero and Wellcome Collection in 2022. During the series, a cohort of disabled and neurodivergent artists created new performances, visual artwork, workshops, resources, and audio pieces, each with access embedded from the outset. The series was informed by six powerful disabled-led ideas created by disabled artists and writers and aimed to situate these ideas within the context of the contemporary museum – challenging the normative expectations towards new experiences in which a diversity of bodies and minds are supported to meaningfully take up space together.
This chapter uses Feeling Our Way as a case study to examine the current state of accessibility provisions in UK museums. The case study describes specific provisions from the series and considers how existing theoretical ideas such as ‘crip time’ and ‘critical access’ have informed new approaches to accessible curation and programming. This chapter concludes by sharing a series of anti-ableist provocations for the future of museum practices. Collectively, these suggest that by orientating accessibility in the museum sector towards disability justice we begin to imagine futures where the museum operates as a site of collective liberation.
