Museum musings: Wellcome and accessible

As part of my role as the Writer In Residence at the 2019 Bloomsbury Festival in London last week I visited The Wellcome Collection.

Located opposite Euston Station I am ashamed to say that, despite two and a half years of almost passing it on my daily commute when I lived in London, I never knew the place was here.

Describing itself as "the free museum and library for the incurably curious"it's a fascinating and highly recommended visit (and the library on the top floor makes a fantastic workspace for the freelancers among us).

The Welcome Collection Library

Medicine Man

This is a permanent exhibition containing the collected ephemera of founder Sir Henry Wellcome who amassed more than a million paintings, books and objects related to health and medicine, from his travels around the world.

The collection makes me think about how all museums have an agenda. This one, ultimately funded by a multi-national drugs company, aims to show how human health is central to our lives by it's very nature. It presents a host of oddities and curiosities to offer an insight into the company's founder which is both challenging and fascinating with warnings about real human remains and an abundance of scary looking instruments.

Being Human

The Being Human exhibition has been curated to include exhibits that really make you think about what it is to live now. I really felt that the nature and content of this exhibition invited you bring your own issues and preconceptions to the material and enjoyed how this enabled me to engage with challenging material about climate change, mental health and

Accessibility

I can't help but notice a couple of things about how the museum is run in terms of making it accessible to a host of visitors.

Firstly the Medicine Man exhibition has an impressive multi-lingual electronic guide featuring images, text and videos.

Medicine Man Audio Guide

Secondly there's a tantalisingly under-development but almost finished space for a tactile map, tactile book, audio descriptive guides, large print guide and BSL (British Sign Language) resources.

Coming soon: greater accessibility

Finally there's been a redesign of the disabled icon, making it far more dynamic . The story of this catch my eye in the galleries and I'm delighted to discover that the sign is in use out on all the disabled toilets in the building, alongside toilets for anyone to cater for the LGBTQ audience.