Disability Representation in West Midlands’ Arts and Cultural Spaces

Presentation abstract

Abstract

This qualitative research investigates disability representation in West Midlands’ Arts and Cultural spaces, focusing on museums, galleries, and arts centres. Over the past two years, high-profile museums such as the Wellcome Collection and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London have hosted exhibitions on disability history and justice, encouraging new ways of thinking about disability as an identity and as an integral part of the human experience. However, outside of specific thematic work and exhibitions, disabled people appear to be excluded from and underrepresented in the arts. Given that 17.8% of disabled people in England live in the West Midlands, this project aims to examine how museums, galleries, and arts centres in the West Midlands promote equitable spaces for disabled people through accessibility, work with disabled artists, display and exhibitions of disability arts, curatorial and commissioning practices, and language of indexing disability arts. We interviewed selected staff and management personnels in museums, galleries, and arts centres in Birmingham, Shropshire, and Digbeth. Findings show that the selected arts and cultural spaces have considerations for disabled people in terms of accessibility provisions, however, only a few specifically work with disability artists and display disability arts. Themes across the data show that funding, capacity, and knowledge gap are some of the challenges that present in progressing equitable disability representation in arts and cultural spaces. Thus, although there appears to be valuable work already being undertaken across the region in terms of making arts and cultural spaces accessible, gaps remain to be filled in integrating disability arts and supporting disabled artists in the region. This presentation reflects on how these barriers to disability representation can contribute to the erasure of disability history and heritage, sometimes even unknowingly due to fears of real or perceived tokenism.