We believe that everyone should have the opportunity to express themselves through creativity and experience the thrill of live performance.
We’re working hard to ensure that everybody who wants to take part can, by removing barriers to attendance and participation. Here are some of the steps we’ve taken to make the festival more welcoming to all.
For a summary of our access work, check out our access narrative.
Further information
Working alongside Attitude is Everything we have committed to being an Attitude Champion. As part of this commitment we’ve produced an Attitude Charter of eight ambitions:
- All events organised by the Society will be accessible to everyone.
- We’ll support and encourage Fringe participants and venues to increase the number of performances and events that are relaxed, BSL interpreted, captioned and audio described.
- We’ll expand the access information we provide on edfringe.com and support venues to expand their access information.
- We’ll provide box office services which are accessible to all, including the ability to book access tickets online.
- We’ll consult and communicate regularly with D/deaf and disabled people.
- We’ll increase the attendance of D/deaf and disabled people at the Fringe and Fringe Society events.
- We’ll create an environment that encourages D/deaf and disabled people to work and/or perform at the Fringe.
- The Fringe will be internationally recognised as a physically accessible festival.
We’re aware that the environment of the Fringe – the noise, crowds, the unpredictability of the festival – can be very stressful for autistic people, so in 2018 we piloted a scheme to provide sensory backpacks to autistic children and adults.
The backpacks were available throughout August and were well-received by audiences; more than half the people who borrowed backpacks said they weren’t sure they would have attended otherwise.
Find out more about sensory backpacks at the Fringe.
In an effort to make the Fringe street events more welcoming for D/deaf Fringe-goers, we introduced British Sign Language interpretation in 2018. We also produced over 40 BSL video clips for the Fringe website, providing information for shows featuring BSL interpretation.
We introduced the Venue Access Award in partnership with Attitude is Everything to promote best practice at the Fringe while recognising the unique challenges Fringe venues face. Using the toolkit will help venues ensure they’re doing as much as they can to be accessible to all audiences and performers.
Since we introduced the award, we’ve seen a notable uptake by venues – from six recipients at the awards’ introduction in 2017, to 39 venues in 2019.
We’ve developed the Access Fringe training tool as part of our commitment to improving the Fringe’s accessibility.
The training is designed to ensure that everyone working within the Fringe has the tools to deliver world-class customer service for audiences and participants, and to ensure that no one is discriminated against. 824 staff at the Fringe Society and Fringe venues have signed up to the training since 2017.