With festival season fast approaching, it can be quite a task finding the right event for you. You may be worried that the music festival you want to go to doesn’t have accessible camping, or maybe you’re a comedy fan and need to know whether or not there’s going to be a lengthy queue for your favourite comedian.
Thankfully festivals are getting better at publicising their accessibility information year on year, which makes finding the right festival for you much easier and more stress free. A quick Google search for ‘Accessible Scottish music festivals’ brings up Disability Information Scotland’s extremely helpful article (which has been updated for 2017) highlighting some of the biggest festivals. All you need to do is follow the links to each festival’s website for this year’s information.
Once you find a festival that appeals to you, finding accessibility information isn’t hard. Most festivals now have designated accessibility pages, and if they don’t, more often than not they will have an FAQ where this can be found. If you’re still unable to find the information you need, try giving the venue a call or sending an email. You’ll usually find that events can cater for more things than they advertise, and that most places don’t realise how accessible they already are.
Here in Scotland we’re lucky to be so close to the largest arts festival in the world, The Edinburgh Festival Fringe. The Fringe offers an incredible programme of events to suit everyone’s tastes. They have been working hard to make sure the accessibility information is clear for as many venues as possible across the city. The ‘Venues’ section of their ticket website tells you all you need to know about each venue. It even tells you how far from you the venue is (provided you enable location services on your device). What’s more is that, as part of their accessibility page, they have included downloadable PDF’s detailing all signed, relaxed, audio described, and captioned performances for this years festival.
The Edinburgh Festival Fringe have designated staff in place to deal specifically with access enquiries and ticket bookings. To contact them about any enquiries you have you can email accessbooking@edfringe.com or call 0131 226 0002.
Gig Buddies Scotland are extremely proud to be working alongside The Edinburgh Festival Fringe to continue making the festival more accessible each year.
Many festivals are becoming more accessible and making it much easier for people with additional support needs to attend events, however, there are some organisations that still have a bit to do to catch up. If you’re finding it difficult to get the answers you want, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with Gig Buddies Scotland by contacting our project coordinator Sam Maggs at samuel.maggs@thera.co.uk. We’re more than happy to talk to venues and organisations about how they can become more accessible and why it’s important that they do.
You can also check out Disability Information Scotland’s list of Music Festivals in Scotland – Disabled Access and Facilities.
