West Midlands: Witley Court Revisited
As part of English Heritage’s commitment to diversity and inclusion, two projects in 2004 at Witley Court have sought to make the site more accessible to groups previously less able to enjoy many heritage sites.
Access at Witley Court consults on physical, intellectual and sensory access. Its focus is a group of volunteers including people who are wheelchair users, have learning disabilities, have visual impairments or are Deaf or hearing impaired. Last summer these groups were invited to Witley Court to make recommendations as to how English Heritage might improve access at the site and enhance visitor experiences. Numerous changes have already been initiated based on these visits. Work has been developed which includes an accessible orientation point and new signage scheme; a more accessible audio tour; relocating interpretation panels into more accessible spaces, an orientation leaflet/terrain guide with path surfaces, distances and gradients to help people plan their visit, and British Sign Language tours.
A CD Rom of the Witley Court case study has been disseminated nationally across the heritage sector and disability networks. Along with English Heritage’s Easy Access to Historic Landscapes publication, the CD Rom – Access to Witley Court – won two awards from the Landscape Institutue in 2006. If you would like a free copy of the publication and CD Rom, please contact Customer Services on 0870 3331181.
Visitors with visual impairments discussing the site graphics scheme. Reinterpreting Witley looks at cultural and intellectual access. The project consulted the South Asian community, Chinese elders and young people from African and Caribbean communities. On the basis of their recommendations, a series of guided tours in community languages were run over the summer in 2005. These included: Punjabi, Hindi, Urdu, Cantonese and Mandarin. Free transport from Birmingham, Dudley and Worcester was also made available to everyone, to make travelling to the site easier. The tours and transport were run as a pilot in 2005 and accompanied a trial marketing scheme, focussing on ethnic and ‘hard to reach’ communities.
The project has been successful so far thanks to the focus groups’ invaluable feedback, time and expertise. This project is focussing on Witley Court, but the lessons learnt will be disseminated across the organisation and will be fed into all the sites in the English Heritage property portfolio.
Further information on Witley Court
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