Touching Art aspires to create an example of how museums can be open and truly inclusive spaces for everyone.
The Touching Art program is a new initiative by AMAKA Civil Non-Profit Company, in collaboration with the Basil & Elise Goulandris Foundation, aiming to enhance the accessibility of audiences with visual impairment through a multi-sensory approach to the museum experience.
Active participation of people with visual impairment in the artistic process — in creating tactile artworks and in guiding tours — is at the core of our vision, as we explore equal access to culture through alternative means:
- Creation of tactile, multi-sensory visual artworks based on Β&Ε Gouladris Foundation’s permanent Collection, on display at its Athens Museum. These works will be specially designed to be “read” through touch.
- A multi-sensory temporary exhibition, accessible with a companion. The exhibition will include tactile works, a soundscape experience, audio description, and braille texts.
- Development of a portable educational kit (museum-in-a-box) to facilitate access to materials both inside and outside the Museum.
- Guided tours and workshops at the B&E Goulandris Foundation’s Museum in Athens, combining exploration of the exhibits with artistic elaboration of the experience through adapted creative workshops.
- Training people with lived experience of blindness to become guides for the temporary exhibition.
- Research & focus groups at the B&E Goulandris Foundation’s Museum in Athens, aimed at designing accessibility services in collaboration with people with experience of blindness, artists, and researchers. If you are interested in participating in the focus groups (research), you can register here.
- Training for professionals — including museologists, educators, researchers, artists, mental health professionals working in psychosocial integration structures, and professionals working with people with disabilities — on museum accessibility issues.
The dedicated project team consists of visual artists, art therapists and psychologists, experienced in approaching art as a tool for inclusion, empowerment, and communication as well as experts by experience, people with visual impairments.
The Touching Art program is implemented under the framework of the “Creative Greece — Promoting Universal Accessibility of Persons with Disabilities in Culture” program, with funding and under the auspices of the Ministry of Culture.
