2003 Governors Arts Awards

Cultural Access Leadership Award Recipient
Children's Museum of Portsmouth

The Children's Museum of Portsmouth successfully provides access to the museum experience. Every exhibit at the museum is designed so that visitors can explore them through touch, sight, sound and sometimes smell. Large print exhibit signs in easy-to-read fonts and high-contrast colors are employed throughout. Some signs include raised letters and Braille. Exhibits that are not physically accessible to people using wheelchairs have moveable, tactile components that can be brought out to the visitor.

The museum's Reach All Initiative eliminates the barriers that might otherwise keep visitors away - cost, lack of transportation and feeling uncomfortable and unwelcome in a museum environment. The museum began a Funded Membership Program in 1994, providing free access to clients of human services agencies. In 2002 the museum introduced a new facet of the Reach All Initiative called Museum to You, an outreach temporary museum in towns throughout the region. The museum has also worked with VSA arts of New Hampshire and became one of the state's first cultural sites to develop a formal Access Plan. An outcome of these efforts has been the creation of the disability awareness video entitled Same, Not Special, a study in cultural access produced by teens.

Last updated: January 15, 2015