Scarlett Heselwood is a mentee of CAE’s Senior Access Consultant, Teresa Rumble, under the Future Leaders Programme offered by Attitude Is Everything. Already acting as the Accessibility Coordinator for RADAR Festival in Manchester, and consulting for startup Different Breed, she focuses on using her extensive lived experience as a visually impaired music enthusiast towards levelling the playing field for fellow fans.
Outdoor festivals, by their nature, can be a challenging environment for anyone to navigate. There’s the occasionally frustrating setup of your camping area, the often-unpredictable weather, long distances to get around site, non-stop noise, and countless other random events that can take place along the way. Yet despite these drawbacks, these spaces are an escape from the stresses of work and life for many; a place to let loose, soundtracked by your favourite music.
But for others, particularly within disabled and neurodivergent communities, it can be quite a big event to plan for with layers of stress interwoven.
Scarlett Heselwood
Navigating logistical barriers
I have oculocutaneous albinism which means I have a visual impairment, and no melanin in my skin and hair. Outdoor festivals can therefore be brutally difficult to plan for and navigate on arrival. As soon as I spot my favourite bands on a festival lineup, my immediate thoughts jump to whether there will be shade available, what direction the stages face around the sun, whether there are slopes or uneven ground on site, whether there is public transport access and how far drop-off points may be from the arena, who could act as my companion, and more. Without these questions being answered first and foremost, I cannot reasonably attend a festival.
These additional hoops are just a sample of what thousands of other disabled and neurodivergent music fans have to jump through. However, by reflecting on the myriad questions that I would face, I find it has helped me create operational guidelines as Accessibility Coordinator and Consultant for RADAR Festival. Answering the question ‘how easy it is for a disabled or neurodivergent customer to interact with a given event?’ is at the core of my work.
Disability training is crucial
An accessible environment is not just an inanimate collection of things scattered around a space; it includes people, too. And so, it’s important that festival staff and stewards have appropriate training and understanding on disability and neurodivergence so they can provide disabled people with the information they need. For example, there should be someone they can escalate questions to when they aren’t sure of a policy, as this makes their primary roles easier to manage. In my work, I call disabled festival goers ‘access customers’ because it helps to remind event organisers that disabled people are paying members of the audience.
Another simple solution is to offer site walks to access customers before the event takes place. The customers themselves are the only ones who know their own conditions inside and out. Where possible, inviting them to the site and asking them what they notice, and what they find beneficial or challenging, avoids making assumptions about what an access customer wants or finds helpful. Where this isn’t possible, even a survey being sent out after the festival that asks for feedback, both positive and negative, goes a long way to making access customers feel seen and understood.
Why good signage matters
An often-overlooked aspect of festival accessibility is signage. Frequently, festivals do not provide any signage or directional markers on their sites. While this is usually due to ground restrictions, space on permitted walls and fencing is not often used for wayfinding. This leads to both visitors and staff, particularly volunteers, being unsure of where to go. Sometimes, it can mean traveling long distances in the wrong direction, which can be devastating for those with limited mobility when they discover they have to turn around.
However, the increasing frequency within organisations to make use of what3words to provide exact locations of where everything is positioned is a fantastic step forward. Being able to visualise precisely how a site will look in advance can not only lessen uncertainty for those with anxiety, autism, or ADHD, but also for any non-disabled companions who may join them. Visual aids such as site photos and videos in an accessibility guide bolster these offerings.
While my work focuses on access customers above all else, the truth is that an accessible festival benefits every single attendee. There’s plenty more to consider than just what is listed in this article, and the work is never complete in improving accessibility at live music events.
CAE offers training and consultancy to support more inclusive design of external environments and way-finding to enhance the accessibility of buildings and external environments. To learn more, please get in touch by email on info@cae.org.uk or call us on 020 7822 8232.