Höme x NØRDEN – Accessibility Guide
- Authors: NØRDEN – the Nordic arts Festival, Höme – Für Festivals
- Published in: 2021
- Keywords: accessibility for beginners, accessibility for low-budget festivals
The ‘Accessibility and Festivals’ Guide is a comprehensive collection of good-practice tips and tricks which you can use to make your festival more accessible in a multitude of different ways. Whether it’s audience travel, on-site access, sanitation or communication, the guide helps you find a topic for your festival to begin implementing accessibility measures, taking into consideration different budgets and types of organizations.
NØRDEN, which takes place in Schleswig-Holstein in the far north of Germany, has been applying a very thorough accessibility concept for many years. It includes sign language interpreters and assistants for people with disabilities, as well as working with a local initiative for the disabled community to broaden the organizers’ perspectives on the topic.
Höme – Für Festivals is a platform and network for the festival scene and has been working as a multiplier and medium for topics of social change and sustainability in all its dimensions within the industry. Together, they recognized the need for a source of information on accessibility, especially for smaller and non-profit organizers, who often don’t have any budget to spare for additional measures at their events.
Philine Burmeister, head of accessibility and PR at NØRDEN, explains: “It’s simply about tackling this issue and taking the first steps. Because only when we all deal with it can we create a naturalness for it and successfully implement inclusion.”
The guide starts with a couple of quick tips you can start implementing immediately. It features chapters on different festival trades (e.g., food, programming, infrastructure) and how to go about making them more accessible step by step. It also recommends more sources on the topic, though for now, all of them are only available in German.
The authors (contacts found in the guide) are always open for feedback, additions to the guide and are welcoming anyone who wants to help translate it into different languages.