King's College London

The Layers of Vision impact programme is dedicated to improving access and inclusion for blind and partially sighted visitors in UK museums. Building on the success of Impact Phase I (2020-22), which co-designed the Layers of Vision exhibition at King’s College London in collaboration with partners with lived experience of sight loss, the project now moves into Impact Phase II with a refined focus on co-production.

The disability movement's call for co-production, summarised in the slogan Nothing About Us Without Us, seeks to rebalance power, amplify voices, and create more equitable services for the disabled community. However, co-production remains rare in the UK museum sector. Existing access guidance provides recommendations but does not outline how museums can co-design accessible exhibitions, nor are these guidelines themselves co-produced. This results in disabled people continuing to feel unwelcome in cultural spaces.

To address this gap, this phase of the project aims to co-produce guidance that enhances and co-designs access and inclusion programmes for the BPS community in UK museums. Through a collaborative research approach, the project will deliver three key impact outputs: an access guide, developed during a dedicated workshop, outlining best practices for co-designing museum accessibility; access training workshops, designed based on this guide and delivered to 40-50 UK museums; and a postgraduate seminar, introducing museum accessibility principles to students in the Department of Culture, Media & Creative Industries.

By embedding co-production at every stage, this project is committed to fostering meaningful systemic change in museum accessibility, ensuring that BPS visitors feel welcomed and represented in the UK’s cultural institutions.

"As a team, we are grateful and excited to be able to continue working towards our shared purpose - ‘Enhancing Access for blind and partially sighted visitors to UK museums’. We learned so much when we co-designed our Layers of Vision exhibition a couple of years ago. Now, we have the opportunity to share our learnings with museum professionals in the UK."

- Dr Katharina C. Husemann, Reader in Marketing  

Expected Impact

This project will:

• Train approximately 100 participants from 40–50 museums through 10 workshops, enhancing awareness of museum access and best practices for blind and partially sighted audiences.
• Improve museum accessibility by equipping professionals with the tools to integrate inclusive features like soundscapes and co-designed audio descriptions into exhibitions.
• Equip postgraduate students in Culture, Media, and Creative Industries with an access toolbox, preparing them to implement inclusive practices in their future careers as curators and exhibition-makers.
• Implement immediate improvements in professional practice, with organisations like King’s Culture adopting the access guide in their curatorial work.
• Enrich the King’s student community experience by ensuring art exhibitions are welcoming and inclusive for all, fostering engagement and accessibility across campus.

Partners and Collaborators

A network of multidisciplinary partners from across and beyond King's are working together to maximise the impact of the project. These include:

• King’s Business School
• King’s Faculty of Arts and Humanities
• Department of Culture, Media and Creative Industries (CMCI)
• King’s Culture
• Disabled Student Society
• Postgraduate King’s Student
• Dr Anica Zeyen – Royal Holloway (Marketing academic, accessibility and disability theory expert)
• Dr Leighanne Higgins – Lancaster University (Marketing academic, accessibility and disability theory expert)
• Jeff Rowlings – Head of Programme, Shape Arts (NGO supporting disabled artists)
• Zoe Partington – CEO, DADA - Disability and Deaf Arts at charities commission & Visual Artist, Access Consultant, and Disability Activist
• Fiona Slater – Head of Access and Equity, Science Museum Group
• Nine Layers of Vision Artists – Experts in accessible artwork design and lived experience of sight loss

Project Team

• Dr Katharina C. Husemann, Project Lead
• Dr Serena Iervolino, Project co-lead 
• Leanne Hammacott, Project co-lead 
• Emilia Britain, (King's student and President of the Disabled Student Society), Project co-lead 
• Professor Anica Zeyen, Royal Holloway, University of London, Project Investigator.
• Dr Leighanne Higgins, Lancaster University, Project Investigator

 

This project is supported by the One King’s Impact Fund

The One King's Impact Fund is part of One King’s Impact, King’s strategic programme to support and accelerate work within and beyond the University which creates positive change for people, planet and society.

Layers of Vision responds to the following Impact Priorities: 

Whole life health for mind and body | Advancing Equality and Social Mobility