Earlier this year, The Exhibitions Group awarded ten grants to help organisations improve exhibition accessibility. Six months on, the results are starting to show – from a sound shower that solved a problem blind visitors had been quietly living with for years, to bio-plastic tactile replicas made in partnership with people with lived experience of sight loss, to a co-created “Quiet Zone” still taking shape for neurodiverse young people and their families.
What comes through across the ten projects below is that access isn’t a single fix bolted on at the end. It’s audio description scripts tested and refined with Vocal Eyes; BSL interpretation trialled in the gallery with Deaf EXPerience and Deaf Access; sensory kits that turned out to work best for SEND schools; touch tours built on trust and permission from artists.
Some projects have already opened and welcomed thousands of visitors; others are still in the planning stage, laying groundwork for exhibitions that won’t open until 2027. Together, they offer a working record of what accessible exhibition-making actually involves – the training, the partnerships, the trial and error – rather than a finished formula.
Here’s where each project stands.
Primary | Queer Texture
The group exhibition, Queer Texture, has just closed at Primary. The exhibition brought together practices that move between textiles, sculpture, installation and performance, inviting ‘texture’ to be understood not as surface quality, but as relation – between bodies, materials and histories. Newly commissioned works by British artist Raisa Kabir and Swedish Eritrean duo Amina Seid Tahir and Adam Seid Tahir were shown alongside tapestries by American artist Qualeasha Wood.
With support from The Exhibitions Group access grant, we trialled a range of improvements to the access offer, including accessible formats and measures to support hearing, visual, sensory and mobility access. This has given the Primary team practical experience of putting these measures into place and exploring how they can be incorporated more consistently into future exhibitions. We are now in the process of evaluating the changes through feedback from artists and audiences, using this learning to help shape our approach and develop a more consistent access offer.
More information about the exhibition (including short videos) can be found via Primary’s website: weareprimary.org/projects-archive/queer-texture
Clifton Suspension Bridge Museum | The Quiet Zone
At Clifton Suspension Bridge Museum, we are still in the planning stage of our Access Grant exhibition, which will be open April – October 2027.
Our exhibition will be called the Quiet Zone and will be co-created with a group of neurodiverse young people and their families and carers. The content of the exhibition will be driven by the participants and their special interests, and may include reusable outputs such as interactives, a sensory map, and information for visitors. Designed as a sensory regulation and respite space, the Quiet Zone will support neurodiverse visitors to explore their interests in a welcoming, accessible environment, shaped directly by the young people the project aims to support.
Nottingham Contemporary | Augustas Serapinas, Physical Culture
With the Access grant Nottingham Contemporary is embedding access for blind and visually impaired visitors through audio description, audio-described talks and tours and on-request sighted guiding. Staff from across curation, marketing, visitor experience and learning and engagement teams have taken part in training with Vocal Eyes and been developing and testing scripts alongside our current and future exhibitions.
Next steps are to reconnect with local consultants with lived experience and for the trained in-house team to develop and deliver scripts and establish our offer for each future exhibition.
Wakefield Museum | Plastic Fantastic?
The ‘Plastic Fantastic?’ exhibition opened at Wakefield Museum on 20th July 2026 and runs until 19th June 2027.
From Bakelite TVs to Barbie dolls and retro kitchenware, ‘Plastic Fantastic?’ explores Britain’s plastic obsession and showcases Wakefield Museums & Castles’ remarkable collection of colourful mid-20th century plastic homewares.
Visitors to the exhibition can admire fun, quirky and nostalgic objects in creative room setting displays. The exhibition explores the impact of plastic on our homes, lives and the environment. Visitors will discover the development of plastics and be encouraged to think about the role of plastics in everyday life and their effect on the planet.
The exhibition is accessible, hands on and interactive. Thanks to the Access to Exhibitions Grant, it includes tactile replicas and audio descriptions.
Local artist Ruth Fones has created 3D printed replicas of key objects using a sustainable bio-plastic made from plant protein. She worked with members of Wakefield District Sight Aid’s Art Beyond Vision group to develop the resources. The members all have lived experience of sight loss.
The resources are accompanied by high contrast, tactile and Braille labelling and audio descriptions. They will allow more visitors to explore and engage with the exhibition, using touch, sound and sight.
The Access to Exhibitions funding has also supported D/deaf awareness training for the museum team. Staff members from across the Curatorial & Exhibitions, Learning & Programming and Visitor Experience teams attended a day of fun and interactive learning delivered by Deaf trainers from Deaf EXPerience (DEX). We are additionally working with DEX and Deaf Access to pilot British Sign Language in the gallery. BSL interpretation is due to be added to the exhibition in the autumn.
Opening hours and visitor information can be found at: Plastic Fantastic? – Wakefield Museums and Castles Wakefield Museum – Wakefield Museums and Castles
V&A Dundee | Design & Disability
Following the opening of Design & Disability in June, V&A Dundee are delighted to report that over 5,600 people have visited the exhibition so far and the museum has already received a range of valuable and positive feedback from both audiences and reviewers regarding both the content and design of the exhibition, in relation to accessibility. This was made possible through support of an Access Grant from The Exhibitions Group and we look forward to sharing our learning from our experience and experiments around the exhibition with the group and its network in due course. Our approach was informed by working closely with The DisOrdinary Architecture Project, a group of Disabled, D/deaf and Neurodivergent architects, artists and designers who also worked on the first iteration of the exhibition delivered at the V&A in South Kensington.
vam.ac.uk/dundee/info/design-and-disability-exhibition-opens-at-v-a-dundee
Quentin Blake Centre for Illustration | Queer as Comics
Queer as Comics is one of Quentin Blake Centre for Illustration’s opening exhibitions, exploring the comics, strip cartoons, graphic novels and zines that have represented LGBTQIA+ perspectives since the 1940s. In the exhibition, visitors can access inclusive BSL interpretation supported by the Exhibitions Group. Open now until 4 October 2026.
Book here: qbcentre.org.uk/exhibitions/queer-as-comics
Grundy Art Gallery | Monet x Magic Club
The Exhibitions Group Access Grant funding has enabled Grundy Art Gallery to enhance their existing accessibility offer and introduce new resources for visitors for Monet x Magic Club. With this support, they have delivered more tours and talks, including BSL interpretation and Audio Described sessions.
They have also introduced sensory kits containing audio and tactile materials inspired by artworks, allowing visitors to engage with artworks in a physical and interactive way. These kits have been particularly valuable for young visitors and SEND schools, providing an alternative form of interpretation and engagement.
As a result of these improvements, Grundy Art Gallery has seen increased engagement from local SEND schools and a greater uptake of their accessible programming.
thegrundy.org/whats-on/single/monet-x-the-magic-club
Rugby Art Gallery and Museum | Unveiled: The Rugby Collection
This exhibition has now concluded, and Rugby Art Gallery has received great feedback on the audio equipment they incorporated as a result of the grant funding, including this:
“I was absolutely delighted to stumble across the sound shower in your gallery space, I thought it would be a really good tool to recommend to other venues. It is potentially a good solution for our audiences, where often audio is available via QR code, which can be a challenge for blind visitors to locate and access.”
ragm.co.uk/unveiled-the-rugby-collection
The Arthouse | The 2025 Gilbert Bayes Awardees Exhibition
As part of the access grant support from The Exhibitions Group, members of The Art House team took part in specialist training with Minds Eye, developing new skills in guided looking and touch tours for blind and partially sighted visitors to engage with their exhibitions.
The training focused on audio description, tactile engagement and inclusive approaches to experiencing contemporary art, helping them to create more meaningful ways for visitors to engage with exhibitions beyond sight alone. Since the training, they have welcomed members of Wakefield District Sight Aid to the gallery for a touch tour and audio-described exhibition visit of the Gilbert Bayes Awardees Exhibition. With permission from artists, visitors were able to engage directly with selected artworks through touch, alongside detailed verbal descriptions and discussion with the team. The visit formed part of their ongoing work to develop more inclusive ways of experiencing contemporary art and was met with an overwhelmingly positive response from participants.
the-arthouse.org.uk/exhibitions/the-royal-society-of-sculptors
Ten organisations, ten different starting points, and no single template for what “accessible” looks like – that’s the throughline across this first round of updates. More projects are still in progress, and we’ll share further updates as they open and evolve.
Image courtesy V&A Dundee. Photograph Grant Anderson
