More UK festivals have signed up to the ‘Attitude Is Everything’ campaign that aims to improve access for deaf and disabled people attending live music events.
Working with artists, festival promoters venue operators and audiences, ‘Attitude Is Everything’ are putting a best practice charter in place across the UK. As a result of a partnership with the London Borough of Tower hamlets, every event that takes place at London’s Victoria Park will now adhere to this as an expected “event standard” of their gig or festival.
This means that this year’s Field Day, Lovebox, High Voltage and Under Age festival will now join Brixton Academy, Reading and Leeds festivals, Wembley and the Royal Albert Hall as part of the initiative.
The Local Authority is also providing funding to the organisers to train staff and for deaf and disabled volunteers to assess their events from a Disability Access perspective. Crucially, the UK Festival Awards will make it a pre-requisite that all nominated festivals must have disabled access for the awards held later this year.
Referring to this development, Attitude is Everything CEO Suzanne Bull said: “It raises the public’s awareness of the issues that deaf and disabled people face at music festivals across the UK”.
In addition, Festival Republic Managing Director Melvin Benn has provided a £1000 bursary for Access and Disability Equality Training to the UK Festival Awards ‘Best Grassroots Festival’ winners in 2011, providing the opportunity for smaller festivals to address the requirements of deaf and disabled members of the audience, performers and staff.
Melvin Benn said: “At Festival Republic events we want everyone to be able to participate, feel safe, and be part of the crowd and we work closely with Attitude Is Everything to achieve this. I am very pleased to be funding the first Access training bursary to the future winners of the Grassroots Festival Award so they will be able to benefit from this invaluable support.”
To find out more about ‘Attitude is Everything’ go here.
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