This is a transcription of the Toolkit welcome podcast, produced and recorded by The Sensational Museum team members, Dr Alison Eardley and Dr Charlotte Slark.
Audio
Vocal descriptions
Alison speaks authoritatively and enthusiastically. She has a north London accent and speeds up when she’s excited. While her voice is not particularly high pitched, it is a much lower octave in her head than in reality.
Charlotte speaks animatedly and talks faster when she’s excited. She has a southern English accent, which a local person would identify as a somewhat polished combination of Slough and Staines upon Thames (think quite hard consonants!). It’s the accent of someone from a working-class background who has spent a lot of time having to fit-in in middle class spaces.
Notes on transcript style
- Punctuation is used to indicate the way the content was delivered, rather than necessarily being grammatically correct. Please try and read it with these pauses (or not as the case may be) in mind.
- Words in square brackets and in italics, [like this], indicate delivery types (e.g. softly; animated), audible occurrences (e.g. laugh; sigh), and sound differences (e.g. quieter delivery) in the recording.
- Ellipses (like… this) indicate a short break between sentences.
- Italicised words (like this) indicate emphasis placed more heavily on the words as they are delivered.
- Quotation marks (“like this”) mean we are suggesting this is something someone might have said (e.g., she said, “oh, that was weird”, and I could see why)
- Whereas quotation marks (‘like this’) mean we are emphasising it as a useful term (e.g. ‘the fourth wall’).
Transcript
[The podcast starts with The Sensational Museum audio logo: A conspiratorial female voice says ‘The Sensational Museum’. Lower in volume, almost distant, people are chattering excitedly in a large, echoey space. A warm, major chord chimes and fades out]
Charlotte 00:06
[Enthusiastically] Hello and Welcome to the Sensational Museum Multisensory Interpretation Toolkit. I’m Charlotte Slark
Alison 00:11
And I’m Alison Eardley
Charlotte 00:13
This podcast is designed to introduce you to the toolkit process. But first we’re going to start with introducing ourselves and the project. Alison, would you like to go first?
Alison 00:22
Thanks Charlotte. So, Charlotte and I led the co-development of this toolkit, together with disabled, neurodivergent, deaf and non-disabled museum professionals, stakeholders, experts and academics. I am an interdisciplinary academic at the University of Westminster. I am also neurodivergent, with auditory developmental dyslexia. I am based in Psychology, and although my early research was on cognitive psychology, my work is now on the museums and heritage sector, focused on access and inclusion within museum practice and audience experience.
Charlotte 00:55
I’m Charlotte and I’m an interdisciplinary researcher whose work focuses on museums and structural inequality. I have also worked both front and back of house in museums. [with a hint of laughter in her voice] I’m also neurodivergent. I have dyspraxia. You’ll be encountering me quite a bit on this journey as one of the hosts for the Sensational Shorts podcasts, which introduce some of the key concepts behind The Sensational Museum project.
Alison 01:17
This toolkit is designed to support museums to produce sensational museum interventions and, ultimately, fully sensational exhibitions. That means you will be working with disabled, neurodivergent, Deaf and nondisabled people to co-create museum interpretation, where no one sense is necessary or sufficient. The toolkit is based on research that suggests this will enhance the museum experience for [elongating the word] all visitors.
Charlotte 01:45
This toolkit is split into five modules which you will work through together. The facilitator will have access to some additional notes to support the smooth running of the modules.
Alison 01:54
The first four modules are for you and your internal staff. Each includes an in-person workshop and some pre- and post-workshop activities. These will include activities for you to do both individually and as part of a group. [pauses to take a breath] The group work will hopefully allow you to have some great conversations with your colleagues, and the individual activities will give you the opportunity to reflect on what you’ve been exploring.
Some of the pre-activities include a number of short podcasts. As a group, you may decide it is easier to listen to these together, just before the group workshop. [elongating the word] Or you may decide to listen to them individually before you get to the workshop. This is entirely up to your group. All of our podcasts – including this one – are available as a descriptive transcript so you can choose whether you would rather listen, read, or do a combination of both.
Charlotte 02:46
The fifth module is a little different. Firstly, this module includes working with community co-creators in workshops, to be run by the museum staff. These community members will be made up of people with a range of different lived experiences of disability. Secondly, there are a minimum of four workshops within this module.
In these co-creation workshops, having a pan-disabled group is vital. These workshops draw on the concept of disability gain, which is explained more in the podcast in module 1. The expertise in your co-creation group will enable you to reimagine the ways in which senses are used and exhibitions are created.
Alison 03:21
In these workshops, your co-creation group can develop multisensory interpretation for whichever project you are currently working on. This process can be used for a small temporary exhibition all the way through to a new permanent gallery, or a museum redevelopment! The key thing is making sure you embed your co-creation into the early stages of this process.
Charlotte 03:44
Modules 3 and 4 will help you prepare for these co-creation workshops. These two modules focus on how to make sure that you’re not inviting co-creators to think about multisensory accessibility, in a space that is inaccessible to them!
Alison 03:57
So, thinking about who should take part in the internal modules, we would suggest as many people across the different teams in your organisation as possible. Making sure that everyone in the museum is supportive of the shifts of thinking, is an important part of this process. It is also important that everyone goes into the co-creation sessions with a good understanding of a sensational mindset. So, the first two modules of this toolkit focus on setting out some core concepts.
Charlotte 04:26
We hope that this has got you ready for the toolkit and that you’re excited for the process ahead. We can’t wait to experience your multisensory museums!