Thinking Access: Building Inclusive Festivals

About the event

Access is increasingly being thrown around as a buzzword, but there are few opportunities to understand practical and practicable solutions to improving it. This session revolved around practical solutions that can be implemented and how simple actions can change the experience of differently-abled people attending, performing and working within the events and festival industry. Gideon Feldman, Head of Programmes with Attitude is Everything, a UK-based charity supporting the music and events industries to be inclusive and accessible for the deaf and disabled, facilitated the webinar and workshop across two days.

With a comprehensive list of 10 key concepts to help event practitioners from across the events industries think, develop and implement an accessible opportunity for those with a physical disability, the seminar paved the way for questions and set the pace for the workshop. The workshop, divided into two segments, allowed the attendees to discuss a case study of a festival of their choice and deliberate on the challenges and way forward. Siddhant Shah from Access for All provided feedback and solutions based on his expertise and experience in the Indian context. With participants from both India and the UK, interesting conversations cropped up about acknowledging the lack of access facilities, the difference between access and inclusion, the importance of making necessary information readily available and marketing the availability to gain audience traction.

The sessions were held as part of the British Council’s Festival Connections in partnership with Arts and Culture Resources India (an Art X Company initiative), an annual programme of expertise, knowledge, and networking between India and the UK, on 11 and 13 March 2021.