Choose to be Curious Ep. #251: Curiosity & The Sensational Museum, with Alison Eardley
Oct 3, 2024
Alison Eardley, a psychologist specializing in access and inclusion, dives into transforming museum experiences to be more sensory and engaging. She discusses rethinking traditional museum formats to embrace sensory inclusion, especially for individuals with disabilities. Eardley highlights the importance of co-creating audio descriptions to enhance understanding and visitor engagement. She shares innovative ways museums can spark curiosity, aiming for a deeper connection to culture and promoting wider societal change in representation and accessibility.
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Inclusive Workshop Experience
- Lynn Borton joined a co-created audio description workshop with blind Black participants at the National Museum of African American History and Culture.
- They spent hours deeply exploring a few artifacts together, engaging curiosity in ways typical museum visits don’t allow.
Vision Bias Limits Museums
- Museums prioritize vision due to historical colonial and Enlightenment biases, limiting access for many people.
- Most visitors don’t know how to look deeply and typically spend about 20 minutes per exhibit, with 20 seconds on each object.
Collaborative Sense-Making
- The co-created audio description workshop encouraged participants, blind and sighted, to explore objects collaboratively rather than relying on neutral sighted descriptions.
- This process revealed emotional, detailed, and contextual insights invisible in traditional museum approaches.