Dialogue in the Dark

Dialogue in the Dark is an awareness raising exhibition and franchise, as well as a social business. In Dialogue in the Dark, blind guides lead visitors in small groups through different settings in absolute darkness. Through this visitors learn how to interact without sight by using their other senses, as well as experience what it is like to be blind. The exhibition is organized as a social franchising company, which offers the exhibition as well as business workshops, and has created jobs for the blind, disabled, and disadvantaged worldwide. The exhibition aims to change mindsets on disability and diversity, and increase tolerance for “otherness”. Since its first opening in 1988 over six million visitors from more than 25 countries have experienced Dialogue in the Dark, which has provided over 6,000 blind people jobs. The voice over for the opening sequence is voice over actress, September Day Carter.HistoryThe founder, Andreas Heinecke (*1955), has both Jewish and German ancestry. At the age of 13 he realized that members of his mother’s family had been victims of the Holocaust and members of his father’s family had been supporters of the Nazi regime. This realization started a lifelong search for answers such as: What is the process of marginalization and exclusion? On what ground do we judge people and feel inferior or superior? The impact of his search for answers was the start of his quest for tolerance, open dialogue and exchange, and created the ground work for the creation of the Dialogue in the Dark exhibition.