Wandering With
Wandering With
Yasmin Saoirse
London Transport Museum, After Dark
London Transport Museum, After Dark
The evening of Thursday 8th October myself and a friend visited The London Transport Museum for their weekly After Dark session that they are running until Thursday 12th November. After a couple of accessibility hiccups that were relatively quickly resolved we had a wonderful evening of learning, quizzing and exploring.
Accessibility, keeping it general.
Accessibility, keeping it general.
Accessibility is really important to me. Not just because I need it, but because I believe it is integral to creating the inclusive society we should all be aiming towards. I have found that most museums, galleries, and attractions in London have excellent accessibility pages on their websites. But when it comes into practice they often have no idea what to do. And thats ok. We are all still learning. But at this point, in the year 2020, we are starting to get bored of the system errors and the lack of functional information. It is possible to organise an inclusive attraction, especially at a fraction of the foot fall that comes with an after hours event AND when we are booking accessible tickets way in advance letting you know we are coming.
My experience at The LTM After Dark is not unique. It happens all of the time to all disabled people. I'm just the one here writing about it right here. Right now. I firmly believe these incidents would decrease significantly if all of these establishments consulted with disabled people when writing their policies and communicating them to the general public.
So what happened?
Firstly. it was impossible to book a carer's ticket without contacting the museum. Which I did. But I didn’t get a reply at first. A lot of places won't reply to you unless you have already spent money with them. So I took an anxious chance and booked two tickets and reached out again to the museum via email. This time a little bit blunter. It didn’t take long before they refunded one of my tickets and replaced it with a care's one. Which was great. They also asked what my improvement suggestion for their website was. I said:
It could be clearer on the website what the procedure is for a carer’s ticket on both the accessibility page and perhaps if there was a carers ticket option when buying tickets for the lates events.
It is now possible to book a carer's ticket with your own ticket on the booking page.
On the night
On the night
On the night we arrived entering the museum we were told the 2nd floor is closed so we must proceed to the 1st floor and that there is a lift. We got to the lift, and it only went to the 2nd floor. 😆 After a brief moment of thinking we were in a Carry On film, we searched around for a member of staff eventually shouting out for one. They were as confused as we were about the lift not going to all floors, after suggesting we use the stairs and me then having to tell them I am disabled. I don’t know if i can do all of the stairs especially as i have no idea how many there are. The member of staff then had to radio to see if there was another lift available.
They then rushed us over to a different lift. Which took us to the 1st floor. Where we were then going in the opposite direction to everyone else, the opposite direction to the one way system put in place due to COVID. I was concerned and embarrassed, and this really effected my enjoyment of the evening.
Things quickly turned around though. When we retuned to the ground floor we were invited to take part in that evenings quiz! Lead by Commissioner of Transport for London Andy Byford. The quiz was a lot of fun, and we had our drinks tokens that came with our tickets to use. We were a little bit ashamed of our quiz score! As two London tour guides we thought we would have done a little bit better than 50%.
🐔🍺 = ? Proved to be a bit too much for us. 😆
After the quiz we had time to explore the ground floor and see some truly magnificent buses. I do have a soft spot for buses. And get very excited by vintage ones.
To conclude. I would like to visit the museum again. Perhaps during standard opening hours, to really get to see everything and also to see if the experience as a disabled visitor is any different during the day.
Are you a disabled person who has visited the LTM, how did you find it? Drop me a message on instagram, tweet or email me. I would love to hear your experiences!