Overview

This is a review of the Stanley Kubrick exhibition which is on until 15 September 2019. On this visit I only visited the Kubrick exhibition but there is lots to see on other floors which are accessible by lift. The Design Museum relocated to its current building in 2016. It's housed in the re-furbished Commonwealth Institute building, which I'm old enough to remember, and the museum has excellent access. My overall visit was extremely positive, as generally access was easy and the exhibition was amazing. However I did speak to staff about access and that is why this review is quite detailed about the small things that could be improved on.

Transport & Parking

The Design Museum is located on Kensington High Street and is next to Holland Park. The nearest tube is High Street Kensington, which is not step free, as it involves a flight of stairs with handrails to exit/ enter all its platforms. If you do use High Street Kensington tube exit the station, walk through the small shopping centre immediately in front of you and on exiting onto the street turn left. It's about a 5 - 8 minute walk and the museum is on the opposite side of street to the tube station. It is a level road with drop kerbs, but remember this is a busy shopping street. There are a number of buses that stop very close by.

Access

We entered directly from High Street Kensington and it was step free. There is also an entrance from Holland Park, but I didn't use that. On the concourse on the way to the museum entrance look at the pavement, as the names of the Commonwealth countries are dotted about, as a reminder tot he building previously being the Commonwealth Institute. Also on the way to the entrance you will pass a separate museum shop, which is step free. There is also a water feature but the space is wide enough to avoid getting splashed and just outside the museum there is some bench seating, with most of it not having a supportive back rest. There are 2 sets of automatic entrance doors and the ticket desk is immediately on your left when you enter. The Kubrick exhibition is immediately in front and is all on the ground floor with step free access. On the ground level there is also the shop, accessible toilet and a stepped seating area with no back support, which I was only able to access sitting on the front row. I had looked on the website before I visited and saw that wheelchairs could be reserved, so I pre-booked this. I was asked to collect the manual wheelchair from the ticket desk and it was waiting for me on arrival. My experience with the wheelchair was rather unfortunate. After being in the exhibition about 10 minutes the left foot rest came out. My friend but it back in for me but it came out again about 10 minutes later and we were unable to fix it. I returned to the main entrance and explained to the member of staff what had happened and asked if I could return the wheelchair and have my crutch back, I had asked and they had looked after it while I had the wheelchair. The member of staff was unable to leave her location and had to radio another member of staff, who came quite quickly. However I had to wait a few minutes for my crutch to be returned and that was quite difficult as there was no where to sit. I re-entered the exhibition and continued with using my crutch. While I was going round the exhibition in a wheelchair I observed that my legs were unable to fit under the display cabinets and this meant I had to view the objects in the case side on. Also the cabinets had black casing which added to the difficulty in viewing the objects, this could have been avoided if the cabinets were see-through. I'm only an occasional wheelchair users so not very competent in steering, but I found I often kept catching myself on the sharpness of the corners of the display cabinets. Where there was text this was often too small a font and too high up for me to read it clearly while I was a wheelchair user, also the contrast between the text and the background was hard to see due to the colour of the writing. There was very limited seating in the exhibition as it was only in the areas that were showing film clips. They were small dark cinema style booths with a single bench seating with no back support. There are no subtitles for the video clips. The exhibition is fairly large, there's lots of things to see and we were there for over 2 hours, and also there were fold up stools available some additional firm seating areas, which make transfers easier would have been welcome. I do not know if this exhibition was typical of the museum's other galleries, as the Kubrick exhibition has been traveling the world and I'm not sure how much is identical to what it would be like in other venues and how much had been adapted to fit in for the Design Museum.

Toilets

Very impressive accessible toilet on the ground floor. It had push button doors, although you had to manually lock the toilet door. It was spacious, clean, with grab rails and emergency cord. It would have been nice if this brand new museum had installed a Changing Places toilet and then it would have enabled more disabled people to enjoy the museum.

Staff

Staff were excellent, from the quick response by email confirming my wheelchair booking right through to all the staff I spoke to. When I returned my wheelchair, Helena and Alex, 2 customer service officers who I hope I remembered their names correctly, came and found me in the exhibition to check everything was alight. I found this very positive as they were wanting to see if there was anything additional they could offer. I took the opportunity to tell them about Euan's Guide and that I would be writing a disabled access review about my visit and I shared with them what I put here about what small things could be done to improve the experience for wheelchair users and my feedback was received positively. I also suggested they may want to get in contact with the Wellcome Collection. I was left feeling there was a genuine wish to know and see where improvements could be made.

Anything else you wish to tell us?

If you like Kubrick's films or film in general you will find the exhibition utterly fascinating. There's a wide range of things to see from photographs, props, costumes as well as video clips. The first part of the exhibition is a general introduction to Kubrick and then there are sections about each of his films. Please be aware that some of his films are of an adult nature and this reflected in parts of the exhibition. It's been one of my favourite exhibitions. Personal highlight the Grady twins dresses from The Shining. I loved it. Highly recommend and don't forget your camera.

Photos