Running from 25 February 2026 to 31 January 2027, ‘I need to be more than a lesson you learned’ is a group exhibition that explores embodied disabled experiences of access in relation to ableist approaches to diversity and inclusion. The exhibition features the work of nine artists working across photography, film, sculpture, drawing and text and includes three new commissions.

The title of the exhibition is taken from a line in a poem, ‘The lesson’, by the US-based queer, crip, poet, Carrie Sarah Kauffman. In the context of this exhibition, it is speaking to the power dynamics of cultural and institutional approaches to diversity and inclusion. In cases where diversity and inclusion is performed but inaccessibility persists, this can result in a particularly insidious form of ableism. Disabled people are in the room so it appears as if the justice work is being done. However, if disabled people demand structural change or expose discrimination, it is rarely acted upon. The result is a cultural resistance to true disability justice and the preservation of a normative status quo. Diversity and inclusion approaches act as veneers for radical, collective, interdependent access; which could benefit all bodies. Through the selection of works in ‘I need to be more than a lesson you learned’, the exhibition centres disability-led embodiment, exposing ableist cracks and planting seeds of intimacy, disabled joy and interdependence to take root within them.

The art historical trope of the readymade is used in Bella Milroy and Ezra Benus’ sculptural works to transfigure, respectively, envelopes from the Department for Work and Pensions, vintage bedpans and tourniquets. The photographic lens in the work of Jo Longhurst and Becky Beasley is directed towards non-human subjects to convey the potency of what is suppressed. Christine Sun Kim and Babeworld use fanged humour to draw attention to their own experiences of the failings in access in social and institutional contexts, including the art world. Abi Palmer, Jamila Prowse and the Alt Text Selfie project use the barriers they face as material for exploring the generative potential in creatively navigating them. Unmasked and unselfconscious, the artworks in ‘I need to be more than a lesson you learned’ trouble and supplant imposed and ableist ideas of disability. Collectively, they present a disabled-led discourse on embodied experiences of diversity and inclusion, and assert a collective version of access that is restful, intimate, joyful, erotic and interdependent.

Over three virtual rooms, the exhibition features films, drawings, photographs, sculptures, and text and sound works which visitors can also experience in a variety of other ways. There will be BSL interpretation and audio versions of exhibition texts, along with easy read overviews and audio descriptions of each of the artworks.

PRESS

Deaf rage and subversive scrawling: the show where disabled artists strike back, Caroline Butterwick, Guardian, March 2026 (online and in print)