Cultural Olympiad 2012
12 October 2010
Culture link is a joint project by RNIB and MLA to enable blind and partially sighted people to have greater access to museums and heritage sites across the UK and play a greater role in the Cultural Olympiad in 2012.
It will match local volunteers with blind and partially sighted participants and through this co-operation a programme of visits and associated activities will develop new audiences and skills for the participating museums.
Small grants are to be awarded to the participating museums to develop and deliver activities and producing resources. All museum staff involved in the projects will receive training on visual awareness.
Coventry Transport Museum is proud to be chosen as one of 8 West Midlands venues to be involved.
The Facilitators at CTM developed a Tactile Tour of the museum earlier this year, which had been designed for blind and partially sighted people but also people with learning difficulties and school/college groups with special education needs. Coventry Transport Museum worked with a group of students from Hereward College in Coventry who visited the Museum twice to trial and evaluate the tactile tour.
The tour includes a ‘tactile tour pack ‘ with a large print guide, a magnifying glass, a pair of conservation gloves and a torch, object handling, photo opportunities, fancy dress aspects and music. The culture link project will enable the Museum to improve tactile tours through training and the £2,500 funding awarded will allow us to, amongst other things, purchase a tactile image machine enabling us to produce high quality tactile images of museum vehicles and exhibits. The project must include a creative activity and must leave a legacy. Coventry Transport Museum’s creative activity will be in the form of a photography workshop. This will take place on Monday 18th October.
The blind and partially sighted participants and their volunteers will take photographs of their experiences of a tactile tour (lead by Kristen and Naomi – CTM’s Facilitators). These images will then form a small exhibition which will be displayed at Coventry Transport Museum on Friday 3rd December (with a view to forming a touring exhibition along with the outcomes from the creative activities of the other participating venues).
The images will also be used as inspiration for new tactile images to be made which will then be used as part of future tactile tours at the Museum; this is the legacy aspect of the project.
Another pioneering project at Coventry Transport Museum!