Take a Walk in My Shoes

Phase One of the Project involved the following elements:

Sensory ethnography – the researcher explored how it feels to be in five different places in the Museum, observing the space through the senses and capturing the observations through drawings, photos, videos and notes.

Walking interviews – 11 staff members and community participants living with non-visible disabilities joined the researcher in a walk together around the Museum, talking about their own personal experiences of navigating museum spaces. Due to a high level of interest from community participants, a Focus Group was added to the project.

Focus Group – 7 community participants shared their experiences and explored initial reflections and participant experiences, which were used to co-produce a questionnaire, to enable people to provide a written response.

Questionnaire – co-produced by the focus group participants, the questionnaire provided the opportunity for people who were unable to join a walking interview to share their experiences of being ‘in’ the Museum, responding to a series of prompt questions.

Discussion Group – the focus group were invited back to co-analyse questionnaire responses and explore opportunities for phase two of the project.

Phase One took place March – October 2024 and was funded by the Fitzwilliam Museum Marlay Research and Impact Fund and Higher Education Innovation Funding.

Phase Two of the Project was called The People’s Museum, as chosen by the participants, who said - “it’s not really about disability, this is all about people and creating a great museum for everyone”!

In the second phase, participants were invited to join a conversation in January 2025 to discuss what they would like to focus on. The following participant-led projects were developed between January and July 2025:

Blog Series – to raise awareness of non-visible disabilities and share participant experiences. The blog series was published through the University’s Connections Collections Communities blog site.

Accessibility Webpage – participants reviewed and updated the Museum’s accessibility webpage content.

Who are We Excluding? - in collaboration with colleagues from the Department of Engineering, this element of the project involved conducting a mini-exclusion audit of the Museum and two training workshops for colleagues.

Phase Two also included knowledge exchange sessions with colleagues from Audiences and Brand and Visitor Experience Teams.

Phase Two was funded by Higher Education Innovation Funding.

Phase Three of the Project will run October 2025 – April 2026.

Project information

Principal Investigator: Emily Bradfield Practitioner Research Associate: Collections & Wellbeing
Project start date: 1 March 2024
Project end date: 30 April 2026