Royal West of England Academy

I visited the RWA in the evening for the Bristol Light Festival, so I did not see the entire gallery. I was quite pleased to find a lot of accessibility features, though, so I wanted to let people know about them. Even though the beautiful large building is elevated compared to the street, it was easy for me to get up to it in my powerchair thanks to spacious and smoothly paved ramps from either side. There is a set of large wooden double doors at the main entrance. They were open when I visited and a member of staff was right there and advised me unprompted that the lift was in the café through the gift shop to the left. There is also a large double staircase straight ahead when you enter. The lift in the café is very large and has a wooden fold-out seat on the left side that has a maximum capacity of 100 kg. There is a Changing Places toilet in the basement that I did not have time to look at. Because of the location of the lift, which opens into a small gallery space on the first floor, I got to see the exhibition "Elemental", which I found more exciting than the Light Festival exhibit I had originally come for! The three artists in the exhibition are inspired by questions around nature and science and use really interesting and organic materials. Unfortunately I did not see any large print labels or other alternative formats, but this might just be because the gallery was not open as normal. There was also no seating in the one small gallery space I saw, but there was some seating at the entrance and of course in the café.

The RWA gallery is currently closed for a big building project and will reopen in spring 2022. When I was in the building before the building work began, it still made a good visit despite Covid restrictions. Beautiful Grade II listed building, being upgraded with accessibility in mind. The staff are friendly and welcoming. The grand-looking building hosts exhibitions of both new and old art, and there are workshops and activities run by artists for adults and children on and off-site. Automatic doors at the entrance to the building, very old lift being replaced soon with a brand new one. The accessible toilet is fine but a new changing places toilet is additionally being installed during the building project. When reopened, RWA will continue to have a new exhibition every three months. During Covid restrictions you needed to prebook a time slot, so this might continue for some events/shows.

I visited here on Disabled Access Day. I used the stair, but I think they had lift access in the building for people with mobility impairments. There was step free access around the rooms of the gallery, although there are glass doors separating the rooms. As with most galleries the access for visually impaired visitors was bit limited due to small text on the information cards next to each piece of work. An audio description would be great in these situations.