Accessibility Action Plan

As an organisation, we aim to grow and evolve as we strive to deliver our best for the artists we work with and the audiences we serve. This recently led us to developing an Accessibility Action Plan and a process that has given us a deeper understanding of the needs of artists, audiences and the people we work with.

The plan aims to support artists to deliver their best work, to create the best possible experiences for our audiences and to support the people who make up our team. To achieve this we have focused our access work on how we can better support d/Deaf, blind/visually impaired, disabled and neurodivergent people as we realise this is an area we can strengthen and by doing so better serve artists, audiences and members of our team.

Last year, we worked through the ‘I’m In’ framework, which guided our conversations and assisted us to develop our access commitments. We were also joined by artist and inclusivity practitioner Daisy Hvnter who helped facilitate conversations and shared her lived experiences, along with talking to other artists and professionals about the barriers they have faced around accessing the arts. As a team we undertook a holistic review of our work to consider where we can improve and how we can create a more accessible organisation.

Together we have created a list of commitments that act as a set of next steps on our journey to becoming a more accessible organisation. These inaugural commitments reflect our conversations and outline our desire to better support those who we engage with; artist, audience or team member. They cover a range of subjects with the common goals of supporting people to deliver their best work, or enhancing the enjoyment they receive from the cultural experiences we offer. We recognise it is not an exhaustive list, that the commitments are intentionally broad, but collectively they strengthen our organisation, giving artists, audiences and team members greater opportunities to access and participate in our work.

We are implementing commitments with immediate effect. Our ‘Access and Support Riders’ are being used across our programmes to create conditions in which people can deliver their best. We are looking at the earliest opportunities within our programmes to directly support and commission more d/Deaf, disabled, blind/visually impaired and/or neurodivergent artists. As we move through the inaugural year of this plan we will hold ourselves accountable and periodically review progress, further consult with artists who face barriers and update our commitments with knowledge gained across this journey.

Our intention is for the outcomes of this work to be felt by the artists we work with, the audiences who visit our venues and our team, from volunteer to trustee. As an organisation we will continue our journey to become more accessible and welcome your views on how we can improve and continue this conversation.

All the following commitments relate to the organisation as a whole.