How the People’s History Museum is telling the history of disabled people’s rights

A new exhibition has opened at Manchester’s People’s History Museum exploring the history of disabled people’s rights. Nothing About Us Without Us will be running until October 2023 to highlight the campaigns and actions carried out by people with disabilities to affect change and make society more inclusive.

The exhibition has been led by four community curators who all identify as disabled. They have used their expert knowledge and deep understanding of their history to create an accessible environment and select objects and protest material they believe to be significant to the disabled people’s movement.

One of the four community curators, Anis Akhtar, said: “This whole idea that we’re broken, that people need to pity us, other us, that we’re less.

“Disablement and disabling barriers are created by society. It’s not us who are the problem, it’s the attitudes of society and we live in a world that’s designed for non-disabled people.”