“Rethinking Disability Representation in Museums and Galleries (RDR) was a large scale, experimental project which developed new approaches to the interpretation of disability and the representation of disabled people’s lives and experiences in museums and galleries in the UK. It aimed to develop politically aware approaches to interpretation drawing on the social model of disability. Working with nine partner museums the project resulted in exhibitions, displays and educational programmes which offered to visitors, and to society more broadly, alternative (non-prejudiced) ways of thinking about disability.”
The nine projects were:
- Talking about… Disability and Art, Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery
- Life Beyond the Label, Colchester Castle Museum
- Lives in Motion, Glasgow Museum of Transport
- Conflict and Disability, Imperial War Museum London
- I stand corrected?, Northampton Museum and Art Gallery
- Behind the shadow of Merrick, Royal London Hospital Archives and Museum
- Daniel Lambert: an ‘exalted and convivial mind’, Stamford Museum
- One in Four, Tyne and Wear Museums
- A Whitby Fisherman’s Life: ‘Stumper’ Dryden through the lens of Frank Meadows Sutcliffe, Whitby Museum.
Report edited by Jocelyn Dodd, Richard Sandell, Debbie Jolly and Ceri Jones for the Research Centre for Museums & Galleries, 2008.
Rethinking disability representation in museums and galleries