The Sensational Museum: The Practice and Provision of Trans-Sensory Collecting and Communicating

英国文化遗产部门希望为所有游客提供难忘、包容、迷人和愉快的体验。博物馆越来越多地为每个人提供参观其展览、叙述和文物的机会，其不断发展的做法包括为无法以传统方式体验博物馆的人提供无障碍服务（如音频描述和BSL、音频指南、互动内容和广泛的社区和教育节目）。然而，这种依赖于“通道”的规定来支持非传统的游客，使“有能力”和“残疾”的人之间的二分法永久化，使非规范的体验博物馆的方式边缘化。当博物馆为特定受众提供其他访问内容的方式时，他们无意中将那些想要或需要通过视觉以外的感官访问博物馆的人排除在主流提供之外。因此，尽管博物馆的目标是为所有游客创造欢迎的体验，但他们认为视觉是最佳博物馆体验的必要组成部分，这可能会疏远那些喜欢以不仅仅是或不完全是视觉的方式获取和处理信息的人。一个挑战仍然存在：博物馆如何能够创造包容性的干预措施（每个人都可以获得的干预措施），而不必花费时间和金钱为少数群体观众创造“无障碍”的节目。感性博物馆旨在通过重新思考感官在博物馆中的作用和地位来解决这一系统性问题。它摒弃了正统的经典假设，即身体的五种感官是固定排列的（这些感官拥有视觉的特权，并简化地包含了我们的其他感官），而支持一种新的感官逻辑。它利用了“感官增益”的解放概念，以及每个人都可以从传统上只提供给残疾游客的“访问”中受益的想法。因此，本研究的目标（雄心勃勃且大胆地）不仅要阐明这种“跨感官”思维和实践可能是什么，而且要在现实世界的博物馆收藏和交流背景下演示和测试这种方法-证明其对从业者，政策制定者和标准机构的价值。它通过汇集博物馆研究、关键残疾研究、心理学和设计的见解和方法，利用跨学科研究，采用共同创造、包容的方法，残疾人和非残疾人利益相关者参与研究设计和交付的每个阶段。它汇集了英国领先的专业机构和标准机构（博物馆协会和收藏信托基金），全国残疾人组织网络（包括残疾人协作网络，埃森哲计划和VocalEyes），以及20个合作博物馆和画廊的集体，致力于创造性和深刻的博物馆实践变革（由埃森哲的“变革策划”网络领导）。由NLHF支持)，以及世界领先的文化咨询公司之一巴克朗廷（Barker Langham）。这个多方合作的项目不仅仅是一个让残疾人能够进入博物馆的项目。这是一个利用我们对残疾人的了解来改变博物馆为每个人服务的方式的项目。本研究将使用设计逻辑来组织和推动其工作。首先，我们将为新的感官逻辑准备蓝图。然后，我们将制作一个包容性的、共同创造的工具包和跨感官数据模型和界面的原型，然后在英国各地的博物馆专业人员和游客中试用和评估这些原型，最后在出版物、会议和展示活动中完善和推广产出。通过回应这一系统性的部门问题，利用跨学科的学术研究，激活“跨感官”这一激进的概念，并遵循创造性和实践主导的探索路线，TSM将为从业者和参观者提供一种全新的博物馆体验思维方式。

The UK heritage sector wants to offer all visitors memorable, inclusive, engaging and enjoyable experiences. Museums increasingly provide access to their exhibitions, narratives and artefacts for everyone, with their evolving practice including accessible offers (such as audio description and BSL, audio-guides, interactive content and a wide range of community and educational programming) for people who cannot experience the museum in traditional ways. Yet, this reliance on 'access' provision to support non-traditional visitors perpetuates a dichotomy between 'abled' and 'disabled' people that marginalises non-normative ways of experiencing the museum. When museums provide alternative ways of accessing content for specific audiences, they unwittingly exclude from mainstream provision those people who want or need to access museums through senses other than sight. Consequently, even as museums aim to create welcoming experiences for all visitors, their assumption that sight is a necessary part of the optimal museum experience, risks alienating people who prefer to access and process information in ways that are not only - or not entirely - visual. A challenge remains: how can museums create inclusive interventions (interventions accessible to everyone) without having to spend time and money on also creating 'accessible' programming for minority audiences.The Sensational Museum aims to address this systemic issue by rethinking the role and place of the senses in the museum. It declines the orthodox classical assumptions of the fixed array of 5 bodily senses (that have privileged sight, and reductively contained our other senses) in favour of a new sensory logic. It leverages the liberating notion of 'Sensory Gain' and the idea that everyone can benefit from the 'access' traditionally offered only to disabled visitors. Consequently, the research aims (ambitiously and audaciously) not only to articulate what such 'trans-sensory' thinking and practices might be, but to demonstrate and test this approach within the context of real-world museum collection and communication - evidencing its value for practitioners, policymakers and standards agencies. It leverages inter-disciplinary research by bringing together insights and methods from museum studies, critical disability studies, psychology and design and embraces a co-creation, inclusive methodology where disabled and non-disabled stakeholders are involved in every phase of research design and delivery.It brings together the UK's leading professional bodies and standards agencies (Museums Association and Collections Trust) along with a national network of disability organisations (including the Disability Collaborative Network, the Accentuate Programme and VocalEyes) and a collective of 20 collaborating museums and galleries committed to creative and profound transformation of museum practice (led by Accentuate's 'Curating for Change' network, supported by the NLHF) as well as one of the world's leading cultural consultancies (Barker Langham). This multi-partner project is not just a project about making museums accessible to disabled people. It is a project that uses what we know about disability to change how museums work for everyone. This research will use a design logic to structure and drive its work. First, we will prepare a blueprint for a new sensory logic. We will then prototype an inclusive, co-creation toolkit and trans-sensory data model and interface, before piloting and evaluating these prototypes with museum professionals and visitors across the UK and finally refining and promoting the outputs in publications, conferences and at showcase events. By responding to this systemic sector issue, leveraging inter-disciplinary scholarship, activating this radical concept of the 'trans-sensory', and following a creative and practice-led line of enquiry TSM will produce a radically new way of thinking about museum experience for both practitioners and visitors.