Blog by Luke Smithson, Registrar for Long-Term Loans at the National Galleries of Scotland

It’s been almost thirty years since I visited the Royal Armouries Museum at Leeds but I clearly remember, all those years ago, watching the museum professionals (that at the time I took to be knights) dressed head-to-toe in plate armour, instructing a crowd of visitors how best to get the point of a longsword into the lesser protected armpit or groin of your opponent. It was as if no time had passed at all then when I found myself in the exact same spot watching, in the half-hour I had to kill while waiting for the UKRG to begin, two heavily armoured characters demonstrating similar techniques only this time utilising the point of a six-foot poleaxe.

A more fitting prelude than I might have predicted for Poppy Levison’s talk introducing the idea of museum architecture and exhibition design that goes beyond purely the visual to better engage with disabled audiences through a considered, multi-sensory, experience.

Poppy Levison (joined on stage by her guide dog Summer) is a designer, researcher and disability activist working across the creative industries but was speaking at UKRG in her capacity as advisory board member of DisOrdinary Architecture, ‘an informal platform that foregrounds disabled creativity, to shift modes of practice beyond conventional notions of access’.[i] Essentially, as Poppy explained, a group advocating and advising for seeing beyond disabled access and engagement as merely a legal requirement and, instead, using disability and the inherent diversity of human experience as a creative force for architectural and exhibition design from the ground up.

While we, as registrars, rarely find ourselves able to influence the architectural fabric of the buildings in which we work or the spaces in which the collections that we care for are displayed, we do have a role to play, of course, in the way these objects are exhibited. Poppy’s work with the V&A South Kensington for their Design and Disability exhibition (June 2025 to 15 February 2026)[ii] illustrates how this exhibition, showcasing ‘radical contributions of Disabled, Deaf, and neurodivergent people and communities to design history and contemporary culture’, through enhanced audio descriptions, tactile displays and innovative rest areas (just to scratch the surface) went about providing a space built to champion the experience of disabled visitors.

For a registrar it’s a lot to think about! It will be interesting to see how the exhibition is adapted for the V&A Dundee[iii] when it makes its way to Scotland in June 2026. What Poppy made very clear was that this way of thinking about an exhibition and its audience was in its infancy and more engagement with audiences, and more willingness to experiment from institutions, was needed to refine the concept.

Wandering through the closing exhibition spaces after the event I start thinking about how some of these concepts might be applied to a collection like the Armouries’. Certainly the objects that have surrounded us all day are largely practical and meant to be held or worn as opposed to merely looked at. To be fair the museum does a good job of giving the visitor opportunities to (in a very restricted and safety-conscious manner) feel the weight of a longsword, for example, or test the articulations of a plate gauntlet. Definitely welcome additions for unsighted visitors then, in an environment where for safety’s sake exhibits must largely remain behind glass, though I can’t help thinking, given the practical demonstrations I witnessed a few hours previously, there is a limit to the extent I’d want to experience any of this weaponry up close!

Luke Smithson, Registrar for Long-Term Loans at the National Galleries of Scotland

[i] https://disordinaryarchitecture.co.uk/

[ii] https://www.vam.ac.uk/exhibitions/design-and-disability?srsltid=AfmBOooUzGOyTrZC5A_sZmDTrvijnm6Ea1oY3pwb6-vwJOjExNrEECRq

[iii] https://www.vam.ac.uk/dundee/whatson/exhibitions/design-and-disability?srsltid=AfmBOopg_rjiMgNQCGDTflFKP4xC3kaveailNVm07GkpSTIzh1TR7Oh5