Curator
“How can you tell authentic stories if you aren’t engaging with people with lived experience?”
I am committed to improving and growing the representation of disabled people’s stories in cultural spaces through my curatorial and co-production work. I want to ensure that these, and other, stories are accessible to as many people as possible. Collections have a huge variety of stories to tell - we just need to ask them the right questions!
I am particularly interested in the intersection of disability and art, and how those subjects might interact within the cultural space, as well as reinterpreting objects through the lens of disability and other historically absent groups.
I was the curator of the exhibition ‘Go as you Please’ at the National Railway Museum. I worked with a community co-production group of people with lived experience of disability, using the museum’s art collection to tell stories of disabled peoples experiences of rail travel. This work was part of the Curating for Change project, a programme which supported disabled curators in museums across England to develop new exhibitions about disability stories.
Not being limited to engaging with stories of disability, I am always interested in using my perspectives to generate alternative ways of interpreting and working with a variety of collections.
‘Go as you Please’ at the National Railway Museum, York. February 2024
Image courtesy of National Railway Museum, Science Museum Group
‘Go as you Please’ at the National Railway Museum, York. February 2024
Image courtesy of National Railway Museum, Science Museum Group
‘Go as you Please’ at the National Railway Museum, York. February 2024
Image courtesy of National Railway Museum, Science Museum Group
Knowledge
Areas of knowledge and interest:
Disability heritage, stories and lived experience
20th Century art history
Landscape and environment
Community co-production and engagement
Reinterpreting collections through alternative perspectives
Previous Work:
Curating for Change Curatorial Fellow at the National Railway Museum - click for more
Curator of ‘Go as you Please’ at the National Railway Museum - click for more
Curatorial placement at Leeds Museums and Galleries - Sports Project, ‘All to Play For’
Speaker at the Museums Association’s ‘All-Inclusive: Championing Accessible Museums’ symposium
Contributor, The SENsational Museum
Arts and Crafts Volunteer at Learning for the Fourth Age
Video credits: Screen South
Objects researched and collected for Leeds Museums and Galleries,
‘All to Play For’
“Any and every object in a museum can be a ‘disability object’, so long as we look at it within the context of disability, and involve disabled people in that conversation…
…Similarly, any object can be looked at through an alternative lens, and contextualised within that. But we have to involve those with lived experience in that contextualisation process”
Reviews
“I thought Amy was really good at explaining everything and she had everything well prepared – with posters and images for us to discuss. She explained things well and she gave us a really good idea of what she wanted. At first we weren’t sure about the project and thought what is this all about. She communicated well via emails during and after and provided lots of information. Amy was a joy to work with. I found her really interesting – she had a vision and she pulled it all together.”
— Josie, co-production participant on the ‘Go as you Please’ exhibition project at the National Railway Museum
“Quote”
— Karen