Art and Accessible Learning

The I Am Network invites those working with Deaf, disabled and neurodivergent young people to regular meetings in cultural venues across London. At our most recent gathering, Tate Modern hosted an artist-led session on Art and Accessible Learning - this is what we did.

29 October 2025

The texture of memory

How do you feel about play? Take up to three sensory objects; let’s say a rubber glove, a bucket containing water and some yarn. Invent a new sensory experience with them by combining, building, wrapping, filling… Does this kind of transformation task excite you or fill you with apprehension?


Now you’re in a gallery looking at a large artwork built of radios and music players. You probably know the one. You’re asked to talk about the childhood memories it evokes. Me: 1967. I’m nine years old listening to my very small transistor radio under the eiderdown in my dark bedroom. I land on random channels: there’s a big world out there. Next to me: Z remembers playing with a friend with a tower of clay-like material in the street. Not sure how it got there. Not sure if it was supposed to be played with.

How did you play then? Alone, together, outdoors, indoors. And how do you play now? What are the conditions you need to be playful and what gets in the way?

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Artists India Harvey and Keeley Williams are invite educators and facilitators to a CPD session about sensory learning and what they bring to it from personal experience. (As personal as is comfortable, anyway!) I’m guessing your typical CPD is often all about bite-size take-aways, new knowledge/insights and practice share. It’s about benefit to the students you work with. To talk about yourself might seem a bit indulgent. But today you’re also recognising your own worth as the greatest resource in the classroom, re-connecting with your playful side and gathering treasure from memories, choices and interactions: this CPD works on many levels.

Laid out on a grid on the floor are about a hundred colourful everyday objects. Torches, yarn, pegs, foil, paper, feathers, tape, lolly sticks, shiny stuff, stretchy stuff, stuff with wires coming out. Help yourself. Create an activity that uses some of these items.

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Webs are made, things are pegged, pulled apart, unwound, combined, wrapped up. Conversations are had about how this translates into classroom practice. The blending of personal and professional. And, funnily enough, you get there in an organic way with:

Bite-size take-aways

  • Acknowledge and value the experiences that you bring to the classroom
  • Make time and space for yourself and dare to play

New knowledge and insights

  • Everyday items are full of sensory potential
  • Presentation of objects can elevate them
  • Galleries are accessible: it’s okay to gather and chat (a reccy beforehand can identify quieter spaces when things get a bit noisy)
  • Everything is better after a good lunch!


Practice share

  • You’re having conversations with peers from a range of settings

  • You are part of the I Am Network: free to join and a pathway to further CPD sessions

    Our session coincides with the launch of Tate's digital schools platform with some amazing SEND-first resources, including a fantastic film, All the Feelings.

    All images courtesy of Lynne Brackley. With thanks to the Tate Schools team, India Harvey and Keeley Williams. If you work with Deaf, Disabled and neurodivergent young people in a London school and could benefit from being part of the I Am Network, join us here!

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