Medway River Lit

Medway River Lit Accessibility and Inclusion Aims

 

Medway is home to an incredibly diverse population, including a rich community of deaf, disabled and neurodivergent people. We want Medway River Lit’s programme to be accessible to these communities, and this accessibility will drive the quality and innovation of our programme in turn, not only for disabled people, but for everybody.

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We want to be ambitious, and raise the bar for disabled artists, participants and audiences; tackling systemic ableism and access barriers head on.

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This document aims to move the collective thinking beyond pointing out that access to arts in public spaces is a legal right and instead aims to elevate and champion the ambition and creative quality which will be unleashed in Medway when everybody is invited to take part.

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The legacy of delivering these Aims will be that Medway River Lit will become a more radically inclusive festival.

In 2026 and beyond, we envision a festival that is beginning to be transformed, empowered, upskilled and passionate in delivering accessibility at every scale.

 

HOW OUR AIMS WILL WORK:

We are just starting out on our Access and Inclusion Best Practice journey – we don’t expect to get everything right at once, so we welcome feedback on where we can improve, and where something has worked. We aim to be ambitious and realistic in equal measure.

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We ask that all event organisers involved with Medway River Lit engage with accessibility from wherever their starting point and scale are.

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We believe that by using a strong framework developed by Access Arts Croydon and adapted for Medway, every contributor to Medway River Lit can take impactful steps in improving and driving access for their own events, buildings and projects.

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We are asking organisers to read the manifesto and to be realistic about where their starting point is. Then, we are asking them to make their own ambitious commitments to improve their event.

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(Info about Access Arts Croydon’s Bronze, Silver and Gold tiers on this link: https://accessartscroydon.co.uk/the-case-for-an-accessible-programme/#what-access-provisions-you-should-be-providing)

 

MEDWAY RIVER LIT COMMITMENTS:

Our future aim is to produce a shareable Medway Access Toolkit that includes:

• A digital hub of shared resources from disabled–led organisations and practitioners, filled with best practice, guidelines, templates, checklists and other resources, that is freely available to all event organisers for Medway River Lit to upskill and inform their team/events.
   

We will also aim to identify a database of local experienced trainers who can deliver paid/subsidised access training, including:

• Disability Awareness Training

• Neurodiversity Awareness Training

• Dementia Friendly Venue Training

• Trauma-informed practice

• Deaf Awareness Training

• Beginner BSL courses

• Audio Description, VI Guiding and Touch Tour workshops

• Makaton training/ creating and using Visual Aids (Easy Read documents)
   

A centralised database of local Medway (and London-based) access workers including:

• BSL interpreters

• Audio describers

• BSL trained Front of House staff/ volunteers

• Access workers to support disabled/ neurodivergent artists/ participants

• Scribes/ Captioners

• Access and Disability Consultants

 

Using the Access Arts Croydon tier system, Medway River Lit falls between Bronze and Silver – we want to aspire to be as accessible as we can within our organisational size, so we aspire to the Silver Level.

 
We will aim to provide:

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Event Space

• A wheelchair accessible venue.

• A wheelchair accessible toilet, and offer clear signage/ FOH guidance to its location.

• We will endeavour to ensure wheelchair users can experience the event with equity and parity alongside non-disabled audiences/ participants. EG – Wheelchair allocated seats will not be right at the back/ have a restricted view. Wheelchair users should be able to sit with their carer/ companion.

• Our space will have a breakout area/ quieter chillout space available during the event.

• We will ensure there is (or create) clear signage to the event and other spaces (toilets/ fire exits etc).
   

Tickets

• Offer free carer tickets to disabled people.

• Offer concession rates for people with disabilities (trust basis, no paperwork needed).

• Flexible Pay What You Can tickets to reduce financial barriers.

• We ask for any Access Requirements in our ticket ordering system.
   

Marketing

• All basic accessibility information about the event must be clearly displayed on all flyers and online listings.

• Ensure all additional accessibility information is available in an easy to find place on the website.
   

Deaf access

• We will ensure some of our events are accessible to deaf audiences, either through captioning or BSL interpretation.

• We will ensure all digital marketing content is captioned on social media/online.

• We may consider offering a Deaf Awareness Training session to our team before the delivery of event.

 

Neurodivergent/ learning disabled access

• We will create a breakout area for use during our event. Where possible, this will not be a mixed-use area.

• The designated breakout space will be signposted clearly in the venue.

• If applicable, at least one iteration of our event will be a ‘Relaxed’ event, welcoming neurodivergent/ disabled people to feel safe and at ease responding to the event with their natural behaviours.

• We may consider whether it is possible for all events to take place in a Relaxed setting.

• We may consider training our team/ FOH team in Disability Awareness prior to our event for lasting impact.
   

Vision Impaired Access

• Where possible, we will ask presenters to visually describe themselves and describe any slides or set. This may not always be possible due to numbers of presenters in live events. We will use visual description in online scenarios and podcasts.

• We will ensure all social media image-based content includes Alt-text, using Twitter (X)/ Instagram/ Facebook inbuilt and free alt-text functions, to ensure readability for screen-readers.

• We will consider having at least one front facing person trained in Visual Awareness/audio description.

•  If delivering a theatrical/musical/performing arts event we will consider providing 1 audio described performance including a touch tour and pre-show audio notes.

• We will offer to meet any Blind/VI person at a local train/bus stop and assist to our venue and support when there.
   

Digital Access

• We will consider offering a digitised/live-streamed version of our event as part of our planning.

 

Our Access Aims are a work in progress and we will update them, as our learning develops.

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(Document written: SFH, 04/26