Design and Disability

07 Jun 2025 – 15 Feb 2026
London, UK
vam.ac.uk
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Design and Disability presents a wide-ranging survey of the ways Disabled, Deaf, and neurodivergent people have shaped contemporary design and culture from the 1940s to the present. Bringing together 170 objects across three sections, Visibility, Tools, and Living, the exhibition traces how design emerges from lived experience and political agency rather than accommodation alone. Spanning design, art, architecture, fashion, and photography, it positions Disabled practitioners as active producers who have shaped everyday life and representation.

The exhibition moves from practices of self-representation and DIY publishing to adaptive technologies and speculative forms of living. Works range from hacked prosthetics and landmark tools such as the Xbox Adaptive Controller to photographs, protest-led design, and environments conceived for rest and sensory regulation. Together, these objects foreground inventiveness, resistance to ableist norms, and collective imagination.

designboom has received this project from our event submissions feature, see more here.