plus tate - creative access toolkit for visual arts organisations

For the past four years I have been working with the Plus Tate team, alongside TripleC/DANC and several artists with different lived experiences of disability and deafness, to bring this Toolkit to fruition. This resource aims to provide advice and support to all staff in visual arts organisations working with deaf, disabled and/or neurodivergent artists and audiences.

The Toolkit began following a series of workshops for the network organisations led by Jennifer Gilbert (Jennifer Lauren Gallery), and TripleC/DANC (Disabled Artists Networking Community), with great input from artists Sonia Boué, Thompson Hall, Christopher Sacre and Christopher Samuel. It was also user tested by Triple C/DANC’s lived experience groups.

The original online sessions aimed to establish best practices and find solutions to common challenges shared by both visual arts colleagues and deaf, disabled and neurodivergent artists. Much useful advice was gained, therefore creating a document to house it all made sense for Toolkit users to refer back to with ease. A first edition of the Toolkit comprised of the information shared within the workshops was released within Tate and the Plus Tate network. Since then, we have held multiple feedback sessions and further workshops for the network, building additional advice into this new version (May 2026).

We are aware this document does not cover everything - but we have to start somewhere. And it will be updated every 9-12 months with language changes, new case studies and extra information. The new version will always be highlighted so it is on people’s radars.

A note for visual arts organisations:

While the document is lengthy, there is a contents page with clickable links, and we encourage everyone to read the overarching advice in the Toolkit (for example, sections covering definitions, language and terminology, the Equality Act, and general access advice) along with the sections most relevant to their role. This includes front of house staff and volunteers.

We recommend that, when comfortable, you share this Toolkit with artists and external partners that you work with to show commitment to access. They may also find it useful in their own working life; for instance, if they need support in building an access rider or require a straightforward guide in what to expect from contracts.

Note: Plus Tate is a dynamic network of 42 visual arts organisations stretching across the UK that exchange ideas, knowledge, skills and resources and collaborate on joint programmes. The network is facilitated by Tate’s National Partnerships team based at Tate Liverpool.