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Welcome to The Sensational Museum

A conspiratorial female voice welcomes us to The Sensational Museum: in the background, in a large atrium, people are chattering excitedly. A chord chimes.

Using what we know about disability to change museums for everyone

  • Are you a collections professional?
  • Are you a museum curator, designer, or someone who works with visitors?
  • Do you want to understand more about how the senses work?
  • Do you want to understand more about how working with the senses can make your museum more accessible?
  • Do you want to know how working in a multi-sensory can benefit a museum?

The Sensational Museum covers all areas of museum work; from recording the sensory characteristics of collections, to the design and co-creation of multisensory, accessible experiences, to equipping museum professionals with sensory fluency, a language and framework to discuss the importance of working sensorially, and their own access needs.

Tools

If you are a heritage professional who wants to use our open access tools to make your organisation more multisensory, go to Tools, which include:

Sensational thinking
Collections demonstrator
Interpretation toolkit

Resources

If you would like to engage with the ideas and examples of multisensory work created by The Sensational Museum, go to Resources, which include:

Pilot museum digital content
Podcast episodes and transcripts
Publications

The Project

The Sensational Museum received £1M funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), allowing the initial project to run between April 2023 and October 2025.

The resources developed during the project remain open access and available to all, providing support for all heritage professionals to work in a multisensory way and build multisensory museums that benefit everyone.

Read more about the project