Inclusive Sensory Resources for the CBA Festival of Archaeology | February 2026
Back in 2024, we were commissioned by Discover Bucks Museum to create a sensory storytelling day for their summer programme. Given free rein, we chose the extraordinary story of the Lenborough Hoard — over 5,000 Anglo-Saxon coins discovered in a Buckinghamshire field by local detectorists.

That original session has now evolved into two free digital resources for the Council for British Archaeology’s 2026 Festival of Archaeology.

This year’s Festival theme is Archaeology and Nature. Our contributions respond with embodied, accessible approaches to discovery:

• The Detectorists Sensology — a Flo Longhorn-inspired Sensology Workout set to the theme tune of the BBC’s The Detectorists, inviting participants to become “Sensory Archaeologists” through music, movement, touch and play.
• The Lenborough Hoard Sensory Story Template — a flexible storytelling framework designed to help museums, historic sites, and community archaeologists adapt the approach to their own digs and finds.

Both resources are designed using a Sensory Heritage methodology that centres people with profound and multiple learning disabilities first, layering access outward so that everyone can participate meaningfully.

Suitable for super-sensory people of every kind — from Early Years to adults.

Download the Sensology here. Sensory Story available soon.


Announcement | Keynote & Resource Launch @ National Access in Museums Conference | Coming in April 2026

Tickets for the National Access in Museums Conference are now live here. Julia will be the Friday keynote introducing the Sensory Heritage methodology and foundational research through an interactive, playful sensory story session featuring giant yellow balls!

The session will also launch the More Than A Nice Walk toolkit and journey planner for museums, galleries, and beyond. This is an open-access resource supporting heritage and cultural sites to explore everyday opportunities to include people with Profound & Multiple Learning Disabilities (PMLD) moving beyond specialist and infrequent programming. More Than A Nice Walk has been co-produced with families of people with PMLD.


Announcement | The Scale Of The Spectrum ed. Joanna Grace | Publishing in April 2026

Joanna Grace's newest book, The Scale Of The Spectrum is coming very soon, featuring a chapter based on Julia's experiences. You can preorder here. This book draws on personal stories and insights from autistic people with high and low support needs to present these individuals as equally capable of offering useful and relevant insights, and by doing so argues against the dividing up of some autistic groups from others. With a foreword by Kieran Rose, author of Autistic Masking.


Every Body Was Welcome @ MK Gallery | Feb 2026

Commissioned to coincide with MK Gallery’s exhibition An Arc From The Eye, exploring the work of Euan Uglow, Every Body Was Welcome reimagined the gallery’s sensory offer through the lens of embodiment and access.

Acknowledging that encounters with the nude form can feel complex or challenging across ages and experiences, we undertook creative research with adults with learning disabilities and young people with visual impairment to shape an inclusive response.

The project generated an original song, a co-created self-led sensory tour designed by young people with visual impairment, tactile café resources inviting informal exploration, and a reframed public sensory tour programme. Rather than focusing solely on individual artworks, the tours explored what it means to be a body in the gallery space — looking, being seen, choosing, and responding.

Creative development incorporated tactile anatomical models, Rosie Haine’s Tate-published storybook It Isn’t Rude To Be Nude, and trauma-informed, embodied facilitation techniques.

Every Body Was Welcome launched at the exhibition private view on 13 February 2026 and runs until 31 May 2026.


Monet and the National Gallery Masterpiece Tour @ South Shields Museum & Art Gallery | Jan 2026

In partnership with South Shields Museum & Art Gallery, we co-created an immersive sensory installation to accompany the tour of Monet’s Petit Bras of the Seine at Argenteuil as part of the National Gallery Masterpiece Tour.

The work followed two intensive on-site co-creation days with nearly 100 community participants, including children and adults with learning disabilities. Drawing on Monet’s materials, palette and working process, we developed a hands-on sensory play kit rooted in a collaboratively written sensory poem and structured prompts generated with participants.

Alongside the installation, we produced a free digital teaching pack to support outreach and classroom engagement. The pack includes the co-created sensory story, guidance on low-cost and no-cost resource-making, a Massage Story, the Foley Story created by Ruth Sullivan, and extension activities spanning art-making, horticulture, sensology and cooking.

The full teaching pack is available to download below, alongside the pack we created in 2023 for Constable's The Cornfield.