Congratulations to the Manx Museum & the House of Manannan who have been awarded silver under Crossroads Care Tiered Award Scheme. The Tiered Award Scheme helps organisations identify access barriers within their organisation, recognise and help implement those changes to encourage equality of access and disability smart thinking.

Katie King, MNH Community Outreach Officer and Learning Support Officer who also chairs the MNH Access and Inclusion Team said:

‘We have found the Tiered Award Scheme very helpful as we continue to improve access to our sites and collections. It has enabled us to really engage with access issues, seek expert advice and to gain confidence in trialling new ideas. We have always had an inclusive philosophy at Manx National Heritage and we wanted to ensure this became embedded in our daily work practices and became formalised within our organisation. We formed our Access and Inclusion Team in 2015; it contains representatives from across our organisation. The team have worked together to identify and implement simple and easy changes to improve access at our sites and has also identified larger improvements which can now be fed into our long term planning. One of the most important tasks for the team was to prepare thorough Access Guides to all our sites to help visitors plan their visits. These are available via our website and at each site. We will be rolling out our ‘helping hands’ initiative at the Manx Museum and the House of Manannan to ensure our visitors know what services we have put in place to ensure everyone has a great time when they visit with us. We hope to undertake further inclusive work at our other sites throughout 2017. We are currently hoping to set up an access forum made up of heritage loving individuals who also have a disability – so we can continue to learn and improve. Please contact me at the Manx Museum if you would like to find out more.’

The award is completely free of charge and open to any business or organisation no matter how big or small.

If you are interested in the Award and would like more information please contact Crossroads Care Access office on 673103 or email us tas@crossroadsiom.org, the Access office also offers online Disability Awareness training to local businesses and organisations.

Pictured: Some members of MNH Access and Inclusion Team (left to right – Gaynor Haxby, Terry Beech, Katie King, Alan Kinvig and Suzie Walker).

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