Equality

A research project is supporting a set of museums and galleries to make their collections more accessible for people with disabilities.

The Sensational Museum is a £1m project funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. It will support museums in creating sensory interventions that are accessible to all and created for people who cannot experience museums in traditional ways.

According to the project’s website, twelve museums, galleries, archives and heritage sites are involved in the pilot.

Among them is Cambridge’s Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, which is planning four workshops in September and October.

The museum’s Head of Public Engagement and Learning, Sarah-Jane Harknett, told the BBC it will work with local people to "shape not just this museum, but museum practice".

"It will be the ideas from the participants that will really help make it more engaging, more accessible, just better for lots of different people," Harknett said.

The Sensational Museum project will also work to showcase best practice examples of museums and heritage sites across the UK.

Creative employees say freelance precarity and power dynamics foster a toxic environment where one in five people experience serious sexual assault in the workplace, according to new data from Bectu.

The media and entertainment union surveyed 225 workers from across the UK’s creative industries in May 2024, revealing that 92% of the workforce has witnessed or experienced bullying or harassment related to their sex or gender in the workplace. 

For the majority, the perpetrator was a colleague and most likely someone senior (55%) or the person’s manager or head of department (26%). More than 60% chose not to report an incident because they were worried it would negatively impact their career.

Almost 85% of respondents said it was harder to report incidents of sexual harassment as a freelancer due to a lack of job security alongside an absence of employee support structures.

The prevalence of temporary contracts across the sector meant that more than half of freelancers said they did not report incidents because they were worried that they might lose work as a result. Over two-thirds worried it would negatively impact their career, compared with under a third of those on full-time contracts.

The overwhelming majority of respondents felt that behaviours that would be considered toxic and inappropriate in public life are often tolerated in the creative sector.

In response to the findings, Bectu is launching a new helpline for members who experience sexual harassment at work after a trial in its freelance areas.

“It’s no secret that sexual harassment remains a scourge on the creative industries. While we hear lots of warm words and well-meaning policies and procedures abound, it is clear that a radical step-change is needed for the sector to meaningfully tackle this issue," said Head of Bectu Philippa Childs.

“In a sector where power imbalances are particularly extreme, it’s critical that victims can have confidence that their allegations will be taken seriously, investigated and dealt with swiftly, and perpetrators held to account.”