Project: Herbert Art Gallery and Museum

Scope: refurbishment / renovation / redevelopment

Client: Herbert Art Gallery and Museum

Earnscliffe worked alongside architects Pringle Richard Sharratt (PRS), landscape architect Edward Hutchinson, exhibition designers Event, and in-house curators on the £20 million transformation and extension of the Herbert Art Gallery and Museum in Coventry, which opened in October 2008.

The first task was to undertake a site-wide access audit of this complex building to identify existing access barriers that would need to be addressed within the project. We condensed a very detailed audit report into a shortlist of prioritised recommendations that would be easier to digest by the client, design team and quantity surveyor and enable them to adjust the budget and designs. This became the basis for the access statement that was subsequently included in the planning application to demonstrate how we would achieve maximum accessibility.

A key role was acting as intermediary between the local access group, local access officer and the Herbert. This involved attending access meetings, making presentations, relaying recommendations to the design team, and getting across the main features of the design. This helped foster a sense of ownership of the project amongst Deaf and disabled people.

Client testimonial

'Jayne Earnscliffe was involved from the beginning of the design process for the Herbert project. The 1950s building was very challenging in terms of access and had not been designed with disabled people in mind. We needed to come up with solutions that overcame the barriers and that would make both the old and new buildings easy to use for everyone.

'The Herbert's programme was also ambitious, with a wide range of activities: archives, reading rooms, museum, art gallery, community arts spaces, learning facilities, conservation areas and back of house support spaces.

Sometimes the back and front of house overlapped and in the case of the conservation studios, they were designed to enable disabled visitors to glimpse these activities through a shop window, to take away the mystery of these processes, yet remain practical for the staff working in them. Jayne was instrumental in achieving those aims in a practical and unobtrusive way, whilst carrying all the stakeholders in the project, including the Disabled People's Development Advisory Group, with her.'

John Pringle, Pringle Richards Sharratt Limited