Tag: co-design

253: whose voice is it anyway?

On Monday afternoon I had one of those newfangled online chats with Claire Adler, a heritage, culture and community consultant who – a long time ago when she was still at Hackney Museum and I was still a teacher – was the person who got me involved in museum learning through a teacher focus group. A few months ago she posted on LinkedIn about the idea of ‘capable environments’, which are those where everyone can thrive. You can read more about them here. As I may have mentioned once or twice, my current job is at a small arts charity which is in the process of building a new home in the heart of Islington, and we are committed to being radically inclusive, and a place of belonging and welcome for everyone.

This is a big ambition for a small organisation, but one we’re passionate about and we dedicate significant time to looking at what we’re doing through the lens of access and inclusion. I spend a lot of time talking to other organisations, and to people who may not have ‘a visit to a gallery’ on their to-do list, and for whom cultural activity comes quite a long way down the list of priorities for a whole range of reasons. This is particularly so while we’re still mired in the depths of the cost-of-living crisis. Even a ‘free’ venue has things that need to be negotiated, especially when you have children who can spot a museum shop or cafe a mile off.

Cultural confidence is another blocker: is this a place for me? Will people know I’ve never been to a gallery before? What do I do while I’m there? Will there be ‘people like me’ there too? Can I take my own lunch? Is there a prayer room/quiet space/changing places toilet? What happens if my son/daughter/family member has a meltdown? For so many people, a spur-of-the-moment visit isn’t an option, and this is doubly so if it’s out of the comfort zone or a new place.

Physical access is another concern. We’re in an extremely fortunate position in that we’re not redeveloping an existing museum or gallery but rather bringing a derelict building back into use and so have a pretty blank slate when it comes to designing out any barriers that prevent access. Bolting on mitigations after the fact is always harder, especially in historic buildings. There’s lots of handy regulations and information out there to help you, too, and consultants who’ll assess your site, your offer and so on.

But…. if there’s one thing I’ve learned in the past seven years of co-design, co-creation, co-production, co-curation and conversation (isn’t that a nicer word than ‘consultation’?) it’s that you can read up all you like, you can bring your own experience to bear and that of those you care for and spend time with (‘lived’ experience and ‘loved’ experience, as it was described in a webinar I attended not long ago) but there’s no substitute for going out there and asking the people who you hope will become your core audience and the best future advocates for your site.

Obviously you can’t recruit a representative of every single group of people to sit on an ‘access panel’ and (since we believe in paying people for their time) we definitely can’t afford to. So how do we ensure that people and their needs are not only represented but included in what we’re doing? Particularly as including specific groups of people automatically excludes others, which is the opposite of what we’re going to do with the Centre.

First, we’re taking the Social Model of Disability as our starting point, and working from the principle that removing barriers and considering people’s needs before we build makes things better for everyone – for example, if you’re hanging an exhibition consider who needs to see the images before you put them up rather than having to provide ramps or steps after you’ve opened. Trust people to know what they need, and be open to hearing them. When we committed to co-creation at Young V&A we spent a lot of time considering what this meant in practice, and what it meant in the end was that everything we thought we knew – as people who had been children at some point – was wrong, so we needed to throw preconceptions out of the window and be open to being guided by the participants. I called it ’embracing the chaos’ and some of those projects were absolutely chaotic but truly joyous and mind-opening experiences. I still have the odd conversation where people want an idea of what the outcome of a co-project will be, but I remain committed to genuine co-ness. It would be easier if I could say ‘yeah, it’ll be x or y’ but that’s imposing our wants on people and not being guided by theirs.

Admitting you don’t know everything when you’re supposed to be the experts is quite hard – but people of all ages are the experts in their own lives, and doubly so when you consider intersectionality as well.

And this is where conversation comes in, of course – chatty, informal moments as part of other events such as our play activities over the summer where one of the questions we asked was what would help them to visit as families. We’d made it explicit when we recruited families that everyone was welcome, and considered their needs when we planned events. As guided by the social model rather than the medical model, we asked what they needed to make their visits easier rather than asking for unnecessary medical information. Someone telling me they have a diagnosis of this or that is meaningless, but telling me that their visit can be made easier with ear defenders, a well-signposted accessible toilet, a quiet room, step-free access etc – that’s helpful, non-intrusive and ensuring these and other facilities and equipment are freely available and that this information is easily found on a website benefits everyone.

Working with organisations like Euan’s Guide and looking to people like the accessible museum award-winning Barnsley Museums is also good practice – and one of the best things about museum and galleries and the people who work in them is that as a general rule we love talking about what we do to other people so there’s lots of advice available about how to do things well. Yes, it would be quicker if we didn’t talk to people about everything from physical access through to exhibitions via signage, play, learning programmes and what people want to do when they’re through the doors, but how can we be radically inclusive and representative of all our visitors, staff and volunteers if we’re selective about the voices we hear and the people at the metaphorical table?

My vision as Head of Learning and Participation is that when we open the doors we’ll be somewhere that’s part of people’s daily routine: on the way home from school families stop in to spend time in the gardens or trying their hand at whatever’s on offer in the creative space; that we’re the go-to for somewhere to go on a rainy day; that teens come and hang out with us because they know they’re welcome; that we get to know our locals by name. Last week’s inspiring talk by Amy Akino-Wittering at Young V&A about their successful and radically inclusive front-of-house recruitment process will hopefully guide our own process later in the year. Watch this space….

Things making me happy this week

  • Interesting inclusive faith training on Thursday
  • 12k walk on Saturday morning
  • A great meeting with someone about a project related to one of my favourite writers
  • Bumping into Jill at St Paul’s though I was unable to convince her to sack off her meeting and head home with me instead!
  • A visit to talk to the team at Langley Academy, where museum learning is built into the curriculum…
  • …which meant I got to stay overnight with London sister and have coffee with my Eton buddy
  • A visit to Lift Youth Hub to meet the team and envy their views over London
  • Coffee with Miriam on Saturday afternoon

Today I am off to Waltham Abbey Wool Show with Heather for a day of squishing and possibly sniffing yarn.

Same time next week then!

Kirsty x

What I’ve been reading:

Fearless Fourteen/Finger-Licking Fifteen/Sizzling Sixteen/Smoking Seventeen – Janet Evanovich

My Animals and Other Animals – Bill Bailey

Million Dollar Demon – Kim Harrison

Guards! Guards!/Men At Arms – Terry Pratchett (Audible)

231: are you coming out to play?

Friday was the first day of our new community co-design project. You remember, the one that was giving me sleepless nights last week in case no one turned up or it rained all day or it was a total disaster, that sort of thing. I have form for this sort of thing – on one school trip all those years ago I managed to lose two children and a parent helper – so it’s not unreasonable to worry!

Luckily it all seemed to go very well – 18 people came along and we took 18 very similar people back to Islington so I am counting it as a win. The Panda coach turned up on time – one of the children was very excited, as they had apparently ALWAYS WANTED to go on a panda bus. I didn’t know Panda Buses were a thing, but there we are. A bonus point to me… Another child had never been on a coach before so the adventure started early for her! No one was sick and we had exactly the right amount of snacks for the day. Pom-bears were the most popular – Valentina, my colleague, hadn’t heard of them before, although my director says they go very well with red wine. We’re a cultured bunch, us.

The visit this week was to Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, where they have a children’s garden which explores in a very playful way all the things plants need to grow – sun, water, earth and air – in four zones. The idea of the project is to take local families to different playful green spaces (next week is Holland Park Adventure Playground) and then in the final week we’ll work with a play artist to construct models of play opportunities which will be shared with the architects and landscape designers to inspire our own new gardens. Each day is being live illustrated by illustrators, so we can see what families engage with most, and what captures their imagination. We also gave all the participants their own sketchbooks to record whatever they wanted, and one to a small girl who was fascinated by illustrator Grace Holliday’s sketching and was peering over her shoulder. We told her dad all about the Centre – no engagement is ever wasted!

Valentina and Grace met us at the entrance to the Gardens, having left me in charge of the bus journey, and we headed off to the Children’s Garden and Earth area where we found huge sandpits, slides like earthworms and wooden playhouses as well as logs and ropes to help people up a large mound. The younger children enjoyed the sand while the older ones (the group ranged from 5 – 16) enjoyed the sunshine. The second space was Water, where there were pumps and rivulets, with a paddling zone complete with stepping stones. Climbing structures were, again, more popular with all but the youngest children. The round structures you can see in the images above were in the Sun area next to Water, along with some huge eucalyptus trees and some very cheeky baby jackdaws. I loved the use of coloured perspex in the tunnel. Few people seemed to use this area, perhaps because it wasn’t obviously ‘playful’.

We liked the ‘rules of enjoyment’ scattered through the gardens as well as at the entrances – ‘Our trees are for hugging not climbing’; ‘Our plants are for smelling not picking or eating’ and others – offering alternatives to engagement rather than ‘don’ts’. There are clear paths to each area as well as stepping stone paths through flower beds to encourage exploration. They close the space for quiet sessions but the space overall didn’t feel as if it had been designed with accessibility in mind – there weren’t obvious alternatives to climbing frames or the paddling area for wheelchair users, for example, and I couldn’t find any information on the accessibility map on the website (which is also hard to read). I would have liked to have seen this information in a variety of easy to find formats on the website, particularly as we had at least two children with Austistic Spectrum diagnoses on the visit. Kew has a great facilitated community and access programme but for independent visits the information isn’t obviously available. I am happy to be corrected on this, of course, but this is the sort of information we know our visitors need to have.

Don’t eat the pictures

We went to the Family Kitchen for lunch, where we provided children’s lunch boxes and pizzas for the grown ups. The toilets are sensibly located there too, and a playful handwashing station. Kew have also put a shop in there and an extremely expensive Hackney Gelato ice cream parlour, which I am quite sure a lot of parents could have done without, especially as entry to Kew isn’t cheap.

After lunch we went to the Air space, which was the most popular with our families – little trampolines sunk into the floor, rope swings, colourful windmills and a giant hammock, and lots of things (pollen, apparently) to jump from and on and over. Again, things to climb on were most popular – the Oak Circle, a huge oak tree ringed by a high level walkway, attracted all the children, while a bench ringing the tree provided some much needed seating and shade for us! Grace Holliday, our illustrator, captured so much movement and joy in this zone.

The usual herding of kittens through a final visit to the loos and retrieving them from the shop ensued, and then it was back on the bus to Islington through a lot of traffic which seemed to be Taylor Swift’s fault, at least according to the coach driver who had to battle back round to Harrow afterwards. I’m looking forward to the next adventure, and hopefully the families are too!

In other news…

Poor Lulu cat had to have a sleepover at the Royal Veterinary College this week, which meant a long car journey each way. She was at pains to tell us how unhappy she was about this, especially when speed bumps and potholes made their presence felt. We finally have a diagnosis though – she has not one but six bladder stones and an operation is needed to get rid of them as they aren’t the sort which can be zapped or dissolved. Thank heavens for insurance, which covered the £1548 cost of her stay. She now has bald patches on her legs, chest and belly and took a good 48 hours to forgive me.

Cat attempting to disappear

Thing 3 had his ingrown toenail operated on (and they did his other foot just in case). He was very brave and looked like a duck when he came home. No photos of this, though.

Things making me happy this week (aka ‘The Happy List’)

  • Thing 1 got an A in her first T-level exams – we are incredibly proud of her and her hard work after a rough year last year.
  • Thing 2 finally gave in and made me a lemon drizzle cake. It was excellent.
  • I put my quilt top together and stuck a lot of paper hexagons onto fabric hexagons, for which I have a cunning plan.
  • Making the Sew House Seven Wildwood dress. No photos, it needs to be on to look its best. I managed to get the skirt front backwards so it wraps the wrong way. Who knows how I did it, but there we are. It’s green.
  • Seeing the London Museum’s new logo make it into Private Eye‘s ‘Pseud’s Corner’ not once but twice….in the same issue. I love the Museum, having worked there for 12 years, but loathe the pigeon and ‘splat’
  • Three days off – some sewing, some sleeping, some KFC with Thing 1, some reading
  • The finale of The Umbrella Academy – such a good series, and great use of Megan Mullally and Nick Offerman. It made me want to rewatch DC Titans though.

And that’s it from me for the week – I must go and throw pizzas at teenagers in the hope of pacifying them. Thing 2 has three friends over for a sleepover – ‘sleep’ being a very relative term.

Same time next week then 🙂

Kirsty x

What I’ve been reading:

The Covent Garden Ladies – Hallie Rubenhold

Honeycomb – Joanne M. Harris (Audible)

1989 – Val McDermid

The Full English – Stuart Maconie

The Last Voice You Hear – Mick Herron