How the exhibition became co-produced: Attunement and participatory ontologies for museums

This chapter explores the experience of co-producing an exhibition with people with learning disabilities in the wake of the closure of large Day Centres. The consequence of the massive change in people’s lives was that – as the exhibition project began – all involved were still very actively in a process of making sense of what had happen. This context for the exhibition’s development required therefore a slow, iterative and emergent way of working where the exhibition came into being through the same process as did its meanings. Drawing on non-representational approaches developed by Nigel Thrift and Kathleen Stewart, the chapter argues that methods of attunement allow for the world to be understood as a participatory ontology, that is produced through relationships and interactions. However when thought of in terms of collaborative research and exhibition development, attunement allows for the active cultivation of a more participative ontology where no single view point acts as an explanatory key to complexity of lived experience. Ultimately it is suggested that such a participatory ontology invites museum audiences into the collaboration, creating the conditions where those prepared to hear the ambivalences and uncertainties of life in the aftermath of change might lean in further.