Accessibility: An advisory board for the festival

How did the advisory board come about and what is its composition?

Our colleague, dramaturge Silja Gruner, brought the idea of an advisory board for accessibility from the AUA Festival in Bern in order to make the SPIELART Festival Munich more accessible. The advisory board includes people with various disabilities from the Pfennigparade Kreativlabor, the Behindertenbeirat München, Randgruppenkrawall, the GESTUS theatre group and the Diakonie's Offene Behindertenarbeit.

What are the aims of the collaboration?

The aim is to work with those directly affected to develop a package of measures towards a barrier-free SPIELART Festival München. The members of the advisory board act in an advisory capacity to the SPIELART team. Together we went through the public relations work in order to make it more accessible to the target groups. The recommended measures include announcement texts in ‘Einfacher’ or ‘Leichter Sprache’, for example on the website or in the newsletter.

Our wish is to be able to offer two productions FOR ALL. In our case, FOR ALL means that we want to give people with a wide range of disabilities the opportunity to attend performances without barriers. The advisory board has provided us with information on what we need to consider. The measures envisaged range from relaxed performance, introductions in ‘Leichter Sprache’, audio description, translation into sign language and on-site support staff.

What were and are the challenges?

On the one hand, we have to keep all the needs of those involved in the collaboration in mind. For example, we need to ensure that the meeting venues are accessible. One major challenge is funding the measures recommended by the advisory board. Unfortunately, we did not receive any funding for this topic so far and now have to make do with the regular festival budget. This is unsatisfactory for both the team and the board.

What happens next?

The main focus now is on informing the communities about which events are easily accessible to them. Representatives of the advisory board will give an insight into their work at the press conference and in a video for social media. We will visit community events and present the productions up until the SPIELART Festival. At the same time, our colleague Gesine Allmann is working on implementing the recommended measures. This means, among other things, communicating with production managers and artists about what is possible and also involving external actors, such as DGS interpreters.

Who are you?

We are Laura Lechner, ticketing and support marketing at SPIELART, and Stefanie Pilz, cultural manager and cultural mediator, together we have been in charge of the advisory board for the SPIELART Festival in recent months.

Find out more about the people on the advisory board in our short interviews: We asked six of the members – Patricia Koller, Lisa Reitze, Elke Jan, Ralf Otto, Kim Jensen and Lina Mattei – our 3 questions.