In North East England, 31% of the population identify as disabled, a higher proportion than any other part of the country. For our region’s cultural organisations, ensuring accessibility is absolutely a moral and legal obligation but it’s also key to our resilience because of the sheer size of this audience.
Whilst our sector was already running events with sections of this audience in mind, we were too often finding that, despite best efforts and considerable expenditure of resources, these events were not well attended. So when an opportunity arose for the North East Family Arts Network to apply for Networks Funding from Heritage Compass, scrutinising this issue was an obvious theme for our application.
In October 2024, we ran How To Build Audiences For Accessible Events – an afternoon of insights from experts, Martin Wilson, Executive Director of TIN Arts, and Kerry Robinson, a Project Manager at the Percy Hedley Foundation.
Here are some gems of knowledge and general principles we learnt at the event, a useful checklist for cultural people countrywide:
Build access into everything you do
We should strive for all our events to be accessible, not just those that have been especially designed for people with a particular disability. As well as being ethically and legally important, this builds a better relationship, creating a climate of trust which means long term engagement is more likely.
Really understand barriers
Barriers faced need to be fully understood and taken into account at every stage of the planning, delivery and evaluation of events.
Involve from the very beginning
Involving diverse audiences from the very beginning of the event planning process has multiple benefits. It ensures the offer is right and helps get the word out in communities that we can be relied upon to deliver an accessible event and are serious about getting it right.
Have an Easy Read policy
Offering documents in an Easy Read format is a fundamental way to ensure our events are accessible. Having an Easy Read policy is recommended and consideration should be given to whether Easy Read can be used for more of our literature.
Get clued up on digital access
Finding out more about how to make our digital marketing accessible is critical to engaging audiences. There are many technical tweaks we can do to make our information available to more people with a little knowledge behind us. Using a variety of platforms to publicise means a wider range of people can see the messaging, especially when different digital media has different accessibility strengths.
Websites are key
Ensuring the access information is easy to find and up to date on your websites is vital.
Disabled access listings site Euan’s Guide quotes from its 2023 survey: “76% said they’ve found the information [about disabled access] on a venue’s website to be misleading, confusing or inaccurate.”Difference North East also said that “98% of the most visited websites in the world don’t meet accessibility standards.”
The UK’s culture sector is often a trail blazer in ensuring public access. Let’s make sure our websites don’t let us down.
Nail representation
Martin and Kerry were clear that if people with access needs see themselves represented in communications imagery and in venues and at events they are more likely to want to engage and believe an event is for them.
Listen to the lived experience
Grasp every opportunity you can to hear directly from diverse audiences to fully understand what it really feels like to interact with your venue and events.
This is just a whistlestop tour of what we learnt at our most recent event, but we’ve also put together a resource pack which delves more deeply into this topic and signposts to a wealth of information for those with an appetite to find out more.
View and download the resources free here on Dropbox including:
- An insightful video discussion between Martin Wilson and Kerry Robinson unpicking how to build audiences for accessible events
- How to create Easy Read documents
- Tips on making accessible content for social media
- Best practice for accessible websites.
Feedback from the people who came along to our event revealed an enthusiasm to explore this topic more extensively so we’re actively exploring what comes next and keen to absorb more knowledge as it comes. We’ll share our journey when we can.
The North East Family Arts Network received Networks Funding from Heritage Compass for How To Build Audiences For Accessible Events.
