One of the key phrases that is central to disability politics is ‘Nothing About Us Without Us’, and as an exhibition that firmly aimed to place disabled culture and identity at its core, it was key that we could design how our exhibition making methods could include Disabled, Deaf and neurodivergent people. We decided to rethink how we brought in advisory groups – they aren’t a new concept to the V&A but often they can be a group of individuals that act as singular, expert advisors on a project to ensure the rigour of an idea. We were keen to go through a collective, reflective process that thought through multiple aspects of the project and involved various teams, including design and interpretation, over a long space of time, at a time that would be meaningful and make targeted contributions. Reuben Liebeskind, Exhibition Assistant on Design and Disability, led on the design of the advisory group workshop, and we worked together to ensure it would make a real impact on the exhibition as it progressed.
This was a new process for us in exhibition making, but we were learning from previous good practice that had taken place at the V&A. Excellent work has been done to involve community voices with Africa Fashion with their young people’s co-design groups in creating programming, and community engagement has been moving ahead around V&A East and Storehouse. We had many conversations with colleagues at other museums and institutions in the UK and beyond to understand what our process might be.
Nothing About Us Without Us
The advisory group’s role was to provide accountability and a point of reflection, to provide structured, deliberate feedback, and identify and redress gaps in the current team’s knowledge as well as in the exhibition’s curatorial and design narratives. The group were to be a vital mechanism to influence exhibition processes, for example the advisory group were key in influencing the exhibition design brief.
We wanted to ensure that the attendees represented a good intersection of communities, lived experience and expertise. We had a brilliant, generous group who joined us: Zainab Jumoke Abdullahi and Kym Oliver (aka The Tripple Cripples), Sonia Boué, Elizabeth Guffey, Arjun Harrison-Mann, Louise Hickman, Poppy Levison, Maggie Matić, Natasha Trotman, Jordan Whitewood-Neal, and Hannah Wallis.
In planning our advisory group, there were things which were vital to consider in ensuring that Disabled, Deaf and neurodivergent people could participate to the fullest – the first is that everyone was paid. In making the budget for this we included BSL interpreters if needed, and the cost of childcare, and also considered whether people would need to cover an access worker for the day to attend. We also ensured taxis were included in the budget as South Kensington remains a non-step free station, a good, healthy lunch, and a buffer for unexpected costs. We ensured that Access Riders – a document that details the access requirements a person needs – were securely collected and discussed, and checked in regularly to see what needed to be adjusted. We had amplification and automated captions in the room – though in retrospect we’d have budgeted for live captioning as it’s much more accurate and accessible – and plenty of rest breaks.
We organised three sessions for curatorial and content, interpretation (such as the labels and exhibition tone of voice), and exhibition design, with a final session for us to present back our understanding and get final reflections before actioning. We gave our members the choice to attend either an on or offline session, so our advisory group could attend whatever they liked based on their access requirements. We also organised the offline session after the online session, which meant that if someone wasn’t having a great day, they could cancel and attend an online session last minute. There were some things we learned in coordinating sessions themselves – particularly in managing multiple communication access needs. Chairing sessions became managing technology and people in ways that were new for many of us, both on and offline. For example, in using and correcting automated captions for Teams, and ensuring folks are mindful of giving space to others, while acknowledging the different ways and rates that people process their thoughts and ideas. As workshop leader, Reuben was an excellent, sensitive timekeeper – a role that is often overlooked but makes sure everyone’s time and energy is respected.
Creating good access structures
We had decided, based on good practice, that we needed to determine a Terms of Reference, which outlined the purpose of the sessions. It also meant there was shared ownership and care for each other through the process. The terms included values like confidentiality, respect and collective access (a principle taken from Sins Invalid’s Ten Principles of Disability Justice), and ensuring everyone came through the process together, and the group collectively added a point about tolerance around processing speeds.
It was important to us to set clear expectations and boundaries around what we were asking our advisory group to do and also what was possible in our sessions. We wanted to make the most of everyone’s time and ensure that it was clear where we could give the most space for thinking and reflection. Reuben designed multiple clear methods to collect thoughts that accounted for multiple people’s needs: Miro boards, Post-it notes and an assigned external note taker whose job was only to gather the thoughts of participants.
The advisory group also became an important way to enfranchise other departments into what we wanted to do, rather than justify or ask for things retrospectively. In our sessions, we asked that a member of Exhibitions, Interpretation and Design attend each session, so that there wasn’t a process of translation but instead advocacy and investment – everyone felt like they had meaningfully engaged in the process and developed relationships with the group. As part of the process, we wanted to acknowledge the difficulties that existed in the institution, but also the frictions that existed in exhibition making itself, for example, many objects couldn’t go on open display because of fragility or lender conditions, but what could we put on display to ensure that as many people had a tactile experience of an object? This led to 20% of our actual objects being interactive, and this was the ‘thing’ itself rather than a replica, as we wanted all interactions to be design-led. We couldn’t change the older parts of the building, but how could we make the welcome space a place for orientation and adjustment? This ‘working through’ became useful in understanding problems together and also being pragmatic about what we could and couldn’t fix in the short term, but what could be fixed in the long term. Collectively, we knew this exhibition couldn’t represent the whole of the disability community, and it shouldn’t as we present at the beginning of the show, disabled culture is not a monolith. This exhibition should show others just how much there is to make many more exhibitions about.
Our group became our critical friends. For curatorial and content we looked critically on gaps in narrative, understanding what is under or over-represented and what needed to be teased out more. For our session on interpretation, it involved tone of voice and storytelling, who the exhibition should be for (defining the focus of our audience), and defining the bookends of the show. For design, this looked at barriers that existed inside and on the way to the institution, graphic design choices, and what the exhibition should look and feel like. This led to meaningful additions and considerations, rather than feeling overwhelmed with choice.
Working through the exhibition, together
There’s a lot we could write about that happened in the sessions – a lot of it isn’t immediately clear to point to as it became so interwoven into the fabric of the exhibition, though some objects are there because of our advisory group, some examples of many include Maya Scarlette’s carnival outfit (to celebrate designers and cultural identity), the fidget spinner, and the iPhone (to talk about technology and disability). We spoke about the need to include conversations around the global impact of capitalism on the wider disabled community, and expectations of productivity and design. We discussed the place of techno-solutionism, saviourism and paternalism, and how to engage with it, as well as media narratives of disability and their complexity. We thought about what it meant to feel welcome in gallery spaces, and how you allow for people to ‘come as they are’ when there as preconceived notions of museum spaces.
We talked about how to bookend the exhibition, the group informing the simplicity and feel of the ‘Welcome’ space, arguing for it to only give access information and to be clear and clean of objects except one: Finnegan Shannon’s bright blue bench became the first thing that visitors would see as a welcome into the space. Poppy suggested it also acted as a good conversation starter for those who were new to discussions around disability compared to those who were more embedded in the community. The exit, or ‘Leaving’ space needed to be a place to rest, not do more ‘work’ in taking in more content, however it felt important to share resources, though we were conscious of the baggage that came with the word ‘library’ (in having to be quiet and that it often centred sighted people, for example). Our group wanted it to be a space that people could talk in, and be alone or with others, and to be a playful, flexible, space. Natasha suggested giant, weighted cushions, shaped like objects that you weren’t able to touch, so we made them into the objects that were slightly out of reach like the tactile paving slab and RADAR key.
In the interpretation discussions, we considered who were we talking to and landed on the fact that this exhibition was primarily for disabled people and their allies, and therefore we had to come from a place of joy, solidarity and authority, while also acknowledging that a museum isn’t a neutral space and holds a lot of baggage. We thought about where voices should be involved and wanted to be thoughtful and deliberate, which is where our Design Stories came in. We also ensured that we included more informal designer networks as they are online, as well as introducing our zine library. The tone also had to challenge those who weren’t within the disabled community, to be a discovery point of knowledge for those who had assumptions about disability and enable learning.
In the design session, it was important for us to think about the journey to the V&A – what we were asking people in terms of getting to the space? While acknowledging the limitations of we could do immediately with the built aspects of the V&A, we discussed how we might mitigate barriers and maximise access. We looked at colours, textures and materials that moved towards warmth and away from those that reminded us of medical spaces (no NHS blue!). The phrase ‘generative friction’ came up, which had continued throughout our thinking in this exhibition, where many people’s access needs are negotiated and understood, rather than just being a series of barriers. Access is seen as a productive and creative space. Decisions made in this session went on to form the design brief for the exhibition build, but also in working with our advisory process, our Design team then went on to form their own advisory group with Disordinary Architecture, a Disabled led consultancy.
Disability experience is expertise, and disability expertise is embedded. Much like with a lot of advisory processes, many objects and decisions didn’t make it through (the exhibition is only so big, and the culture around disability is vast), but this doesn’t mean they weren’t recorded or paid attention to. There’s a lot of thoughts that will inform our future collecting and displays particularly as we move forward and think about Design and Disability’s legacy. The process fundamentally changed the way we consider access-making within the V&A, which will feed into future exhibition processes, with many of us already starting to see it happen in the choices we make in our everyday work.
Thanks also to: Michael Powell, Julia Cort, Laurie Britton-Newell, Meredith Peruzzi, Katherine Ott, Bess Williamson and Drew Robarge.
