Disability does not have to deny access to the arts - Jess Freeman

My main goal at the Edinburgh International Festival is to make every access customer’s experience as easy and enjoyable as it is for our non-disabled customers.

Jess Freeman, Access and Customer Experience Officer at the Edinburgh International Festival

We aim to provide a reliable and consistent journey for access customers, from seeing an advert for a show, to booking tickets and ultimately attending a performance.

When we refer to access customers, we mean any audience member with a disability or who has specific needs that must be met for them to attend and enjoy a performance. Access provision is the key to making all of Edinburgh’s festivals truly open to everyone.

Approximately 20 per cent of the Scottish population define themselves as disabled and many more may not want to disclose their requirements. When we consider access provision across the board, we unlock the festivals to so many more people who could enjoy the experience – allowing families and friends to attend together or giving access customers the independence to attend alone.

At the Edinburgh International Festival, we offer British Sign Language interpreted performances, audio description (delivered via a headset), touch tours (where audience members interact with props and costumes before a show), captioned and relaxed performances (where audience members are free to move around and lighting levels are adjusted). We also provide a detailed Access Guide, large print, audio and Braille versions of our programme brochure and have recently introduced an Access Pass to provide a smooth, online ticket booking experience.

This year sees the festivals back to full strength in Edinburgh after a two-year hiatus. Those years saw the industry adapt and change in many amazing ways. Alongside this, a commitment was made to come back stronger. Despite the progress that we at the International Festival and many of our partners have made, we know there is still a lot of work to do. Now we have a golden opportunity to use the same inventiveness seen in the pandemic to put access at the front and centre of everything we do.

If we treat access provision as an art form in its own right, fully integrated into every performance, we can put our access customers at the very heart of the excitement, drama and passion that takes place on stage.

For example, British Sign Language performers can be integrated into a show as part of the cast, rather than at the side of the stage. Captioning can be creatively incorporated into a show, with words appearing on screen as a cohesive artistic decision. Likewise, audio describers could be more immersed in the whole process of a production, understanding each beat of a performance so they can give a genuinely engaging reading to customers.

At Edinburgh International Festival, I’m particularly proud of the way we have highlighted access provision in our outward facing communications, ensuring that the access information is available and clear for our wider audience. Finding that information is one of the main barriers to audiences with access requirements attending performances. I am also so excited that two of our 2022 productions – National Theatre of Scotland’s Medea and Julia Hales’ You Know We Belong Together – will feature British Sign Language interpreters fully integrated into the cast, thus offering a highly inclusive and engaging experience for our D/deaf audience members.

There are many creative and inventive interpreters working in this field, and a wealth of as- yet never-performed ideas to fully integrate access into a performance. It will undoubtedly be a challenge to bring access provision into the modern age. However, with the right investment, support and imagination at each stage of the process, we believe we can create truly inclusive and engaging experiences for every single audience member regardless of their access requirements.

Jess Freeman, Access and Customer Experience Officer at the Edinburgh International Festival