15th December 2011

Accessibility for All

This month we attended the conference on Culture and Social Responsibility ‘3.0 Communication and Total Accessibility’, organized by the Museu Marítim de Barcelona. With the participation of experts, people with disabilities and developers of associated technologies, the conference dealt with some of the keys to achieving a ‘virtual/digital’ world without barriers.

Although great advances have been made, much remains to be done and our cultural institutions have a crucial role to play in facilitating access to culture for everyone. In this article we will focus on the issue of accessibility in relation to the web.

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12th December 2011

Picasso for everyone: tailoring our workshop visits for children with cerebral palsy

Throughout the month of November the museum’s Education Service ran a new pilot programme to enable children with cerebral palsyto take part in our special workshop visits.

A few months ago twoteachersfrom the Escola Nadís SCS school, Llum Tormo and Maria Traid, contacted us to ask about the possibility of adapting the content of the activities we offer to schools to cater to the specific needs and abilities of their students, and in particular of two groups, one aged between 10 and 19 and the other of children aged from 4 to 10.

Workshop at the room Las Meninas Read more »

20th July 2011

“Feasting on Paris. Picasso 1900-1907″. An exhibition readily accessible to all

Here at the Museu Picasso we have at last got round to tackling a very important pending aspect of accessibility: accessibility of communication. We have long been aware of the need to make accessible to everyone not just the physical space of the museum but also our content, and had marked it out as a priority, as we noted in a previous post.

Preparation of the exhibition “Feasting on Paris. Picasso 1900-1907” gave us the perfect opportunity to incorporate communication accessibility measures and implement these in the exhibition process. In this task we have benefitted from the invaluable input of Barcelona’s Institut de Cultura (ICUB), guiding us through the process and providing support at each step. For some time now the ICUB has been providing the city’s museums with the tools they need to improve in this facet of communication in general, and especially in the production of temporary exhibitions. Read more »

9th April 2010

Museums as part of society – and vice versa

As head of the Visitor Services department I have just spent three days visiting some of the most famous museums in the city of London – the British Museum, the National Gallery, Tate Britain and Tate Modern.

In all of these museums I had the pleasure of meeting the heads of the various departments responsible for visitor services and of discussing with them issues to do with guided tours, audio guides, activities, accessibility, complaints, signage and tour management, including others.

Like the vast majority of cultural institutions in Britain, these museums believe that art and culture are not a luxury but a part of the DNA of a country or city and, as such, a necessity. Read more »

30th October 2009

Making Museums More Accessible

How can we help blind people see art? Is there a way for people with impaired hearing to hear the power of artistic expression? How can we enable a person with a mental disability get the most out of art? In short, how can we improve access to museums and exhibitions for everyone? These and many more issues were the subject of a very intense Conference Day on 26 October, devoted to learning about and discussing the lines of work and the experiences of art museums to become more accessible. The venue: Gaudi’s building, La Pedrera. The speakers and audience: museum professionals and representatives of various disabled people’s associations.

The findings will be presented at the Museums Workshops: Culture and Best Practices. Accessibility and Inclusion to be held in the Museu Marítim de Barcelona from 4 to 6 November. The following is only a summary of some of the presentations.

A lot of us were looking forward to hearing the speaker from the MoMA, and no one was disappointed. Francesca Rosenberg, Director of Community and Access Programs in the Museum of Modern Art’s Department of Education, gave a clear and complete exposition of the many initiatives they are involved in, such as

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