“But who wants to know this?” Interactive exhibitions and telling stories about the inclusive city

Conference Presentation Annual Meeting of the Royal Geographical Society in Birmingham (26-30 August 2025)

Abstract
In this presentation, we focus on the development of an interactive exhibition about the lived experiences of accessibility and inclusion in urban spaces for people with (mobility) impairments. The exhibition, as a form of storytelling, brings together various arts-based, participatory research and educational projects with different stakeholders carried out within a broader project ‘Everyday Geographies of Being and Becoming Disabled’. We highlight ways in which physical, socio-cultural, affective, economic and policy dimensions affect everyday experiences in urban spaces using data from conversations, workshops, photos and videos, as well as smartphone based mapping.

A central part of our projects is the involvement of people with disabilities as co-researchers throughout all phases of the research. Specifically, we work with (electric) wheelchair users who also experience muscle spasms. Some do not have the ability to produce sound using one’s larynx and communicate with speech assistance instead.

The aim of our interactive exhibition is to raise awareness among non-disabled audiences using an experiential and affective storytelling approach. In particular, we aim for our audience to engage with moments of disruption and carry these into their own everyday lives. During the research process, we identified a number of smaller and bigger, more and less visible stories. In our presentation, we address some examples of these while focussing on how different positionalities and power relations entered the process of creating our exhibition, and to what extent our group felt able to develop transformative perspectives on society.