Accentuate

As the first phase of Accentuate comes to a close, I wanted to highlight Our View Project People, their achievements and what they may be going on to do next.

Liz Porter worked on Creative Landscapes as the project’s Disability Advisor for three years. She was also the Our View Project Person for this Accentuate project and had the most developed and longstanding Project Person role.

In her role, Liz guided and supported the Heritage Open Days (HODs) groups in Hastings and Gosport to make a real and practical commitment to improving access at HODs events. The emphasis was on exploring low cost solutions for access for everyone, whilst primarily considering the varying requirements of disabled people. New audiences were targeted through outreach visits and initiatives such as BSL (British Sign Language) interpreted events.

Liz was also actively involved in managing the Creative Landscapes artist commissions, undertaken in 2010 by Sally Booth, Mandie Saw and Lynn Weddle, giving three disabled artists an opportunity to create work in response to a historic location, lead participatory workshops to engage disabled people in HODs and support event organisers to consider creative interpretation. She worked closely with many dedicated volunteers and local disabled people in both locations and Creative Landscapes would not have been the success it has been without their input. Liz would particularly like to thank people such as Terry Rhodes in Gosport and Theresa Hodge in Hastings!

Liz enjoyed her role enormously:

“Creative Landscapes has been a fantastic project to work on with some huge achievements and a great team of people to work with. I have found it to be a big learning curve professionally, and the way in which I talk to museums about access has definitely changed.

The work I have done for Creative Landscapes and Heritage Open Days has led to other opportunities and recognition of my expertise within the heritage and museum sector. The knowledge and experience gained has directly fed into other projects that I’ve worked in. I spoke at the V&A In touch with Art Conference provoking the museum and gallery sector to consider the needs of disabled parents as well as children. With Shelley Boden, I jointly conducted a Feasibility study for RNIB’s Culture Link SE project - which enabled a Hastings Venue to receive training on access for visually impaired people. I am currently working with V&A Museum of Childhood helping to develop VI accessibly friendly family activity packs and I am also a member of the Brighton & Hove Museum’s Access Advisory Group which launched a new, fully accessible ‘World Stories’ gallery in June 2012.

The project has opened new ways of thinking and our Accentuate Heritage resources www.accentate-se.org/accentate-heritage offers case studies, guidance notes and tips on several low cost solutions to access and inclusion for events. The learning journey will continue.

The new Legacy Trust funding for Accentuate Heritage is also an opportunity I’m excited to be involved in as it will enable us to explore the heritage of disability in more detail and hope to generate disability heritage projects.”

Liz Porter, Disability Advisor, Creative Landscapes