Recruitment: Digital Producer – Barnsley

Curating Visibility, delivered by Screen South’s Accentuate Programme, is inviting animators to submit proposals for a new temporary digital installation at Barnsley Museums.

This commission forms part of Curating Visibility, a national fellowship programme addressing the under-representation of deaf, disabled and neurodivergent people across museums, collections, interpretation and audiences.

The selected animator will work closely with Curating Visibility Fellow Saba Siddiqui, alongside a co-production group of local deaf, disabled and neurodivergent people, to realise an accessible, values-led digital installation exploring histories of activism, resistance and care connected to Barnsley Museums’ collections.

About the commission

The commission is to produce an animated digital installation telling the stories of up to five objects from Barnsley Museums’ collection. These stories connect to themes of disabled people’s resistance, political organising, mutual aid and everyday acts of care in Barnsley and across Yorkshire.

The final animation will be projected onto a fabric banner installed in Gallery 6 at Cooper Gallery, Barnsley. The banner will act as a visual “canvas”, created by the Fellow and co-producers, onto which the animation will be layered.

The work will combine animation with a supplied soundscape, including spoken stories and textural sound, as well as captions and BSL interpretation, integrated thoughtfully into the visual design.

Together, these elements will create an immersive, approximately 10-minute experience that invites visitors to reflect on whose histories are remembered, whose resistance is made visible, and how disability activism is embedded within wider social movements

Access, visibility and values

When we talk about access, we are not only talking about captions, BSL or technical adjustments. A lack of access is often rooted in invisibility, misunderstanding and prejudice in whose voices are heard, whose histories are preserved, and whose experiences are valued.

For disabled, deaf and neurodivergent people, barriers are frequently cultural and attitudinal as well as physical or digital, shaped by assumptions about who museums are for and what stories are worth telling.

This commission invites animators to think expansively and creatively about access. We are interested in work that embeds accessibility from the outset, and that considers physical, sensory, digital, interpretive and emotional access as interconnected.

Accessibility is not an add-on to this project, it is central to its purpose, process and outcome.

Who we are looking for

We welcome proposals from individual animators, studios or collectives with experience in:

• Animation for gallery or installation contexts
• Working with sound-led or story-driven animation
• Creating accessible digital work for deaf, disabled and neurodivergent audiences
• Collaborating with artists, communities and cultural organisations
• Translating complex social histories into engaging visual forms

Disabled-led practitioners and teams are strongly encouraged to apply, as are animators from global majority backgrounds. 

Budget

The commission fee is £10,500 (inclusive of VAT), covering all design, production, materials, equipment, expenses and contingencies