Do you want to create inclusive activities for families with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND), but don’t know where to start?

About this training

In the UK, 11% of children are disabled and in England, 17.3% have special educational needs. Adding non-disabled siblings to that number increases this potential audience to a fifth of the UK child population. This simple fact is a powerful advocacy tool to make a business case for SEND inclusion in your museum.

Inclusive and accessible activities, resources and programming, as well as confident staff who value the needs of all visitors, are the cornerstones to creating a SEND inclusive museum.

In this session, SEND in Museums Consultant Sam Bowen will guide you through what inclusive activities look like, the positive impact they have on SEND families and how to develop them at your site. Drawing on her own professional museum learning knowledge and lived SEND parent experience, Sam will inspire you to think practically about how you can embed this accessible practice in your own organisation, show examples of best practice and then lead you through a planning exercise.

During this virtual training event, we will:
– find out what SEND is and how to support this audience and their families
– explore what good and bad experiences in museums feel like and why this work matters
– share how to make quick business case points for advocating for SEND activities in your museum
– think about how to develop a range of activities both within your programming and as self-led options for SEND families
– plan in the short and medium term how you can put this work into practice.

This training builds on our previous SEND training events and has a focus on inclusive museum programming.