Cornwall Museum and Art Gallery: Our Life Stories

This exhibition was a pop up exhibition which ran until the 21st February 2026.

United Response is a charity that works to give support to people with a range of needs such as learning disabilities, mental health and autism.   This may include supported housing, assistance in living independently in your own home as well as help to access education, jobs and community events.  The help given will depend on what someone needs and wants.  They also offer advice to people and communities, such as to landlords, so they can better support people.

The Our Stories project aims to give people a voice so that their stories may be heard by those who would not normally hear them.  It's clear that many of these people have suffered from loneliness or feeling separate, invisible.  People are not always kind or inclusive.  Interviews were recorded from a number of people supported by United Response, with interviewers receiving specific training.  These interviews will be archived with the British Library.

The exhibition featured excerpts from these interviews, accessible from a number of headphone sets.  There were so many, it would have taken hours to listen to them all.  Luckily, many, if not all, of these interviews seem to be online here.  What I did appreciate was a brief caption to say what each headphone excerpt included, so I didn't feel I missed out, only listening to a handful.  I intend to come back and listen to more.

There were also photographs of people taken through the project, smaller snapshots from people's lives, letters written by participants and cyanotype art produced in United Response workshops.  It was good to learn a bit more about these people and their lives.  Many had faced difficulties that were not necessarily linked to their disabilities, such as being fostered.  People not only talked about their difficulties but the things that made them happy, such as relationships and hobbies.  Some of the interviewers were themselves people supported by United Response.

My view is that it is good to learn about other people and understand their viewpoints.  The more we learn, the better we live and relate to others.  My issue is that the people who really need to see this material probably are not going to museums, let alone this exhibition.  Being half term, there were many children in the museum, but this exhibition was not designed for them.  

It gave people who often don't have a voice, a means to speak and a platform from which to speak.  This is really important.  I guess it doesn't matter if people spend 5 minutes looking at the exhibition, or an hour, it is still a door that is opened, a dialogue that is begun, with the knowledge of where to find more, when they are ready.

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