Access and Inclusion

DISABILITY ACCESS

Sydney Festival strives to ensure that everyone has the opportunity to work on, volunteer for, perform in or simply enjoy incredible live performance every summer. In 2022 the Festival program featured featured captioned and Auslan interpreted performances, tactile tours, relaxed showings and performances with audio descriptions, including an introduction to The Nightline recorded for audience members with visual impairment. Artists with disability performed in the dynamic acrobatic display of The Construct and would have featured in the awardwinning outdoor theatre work, small metal objects, had it not been cancelled due to COVID-19. The Festival Preview Guide was produced in a wide variety of formats including braille, audio CD and MP3. The Festival is in the process of developing an updated Disability Inclusion Action Plan. Advice from people with lived experience of disability, via the Access and Inclusion Advisory Panel, enables the Festival to reduce barriers to access and bring a wider variety of art to a wider variety of audiences. This year the Festival farewelled outgoing Chair on this panel Riana Head-Toussaint, welcoming Morwenna Collett in her stead.

GROWING DIGITAL FOOTPRINT

2022 saw marked growth in Sydney Festival’s contribution to the creative digital space, with a variety of online content available anywhere, anytime, at no cost. Made exclusively for the Festival’s AT HOME program, gripping cinematic opera The Human Voice traced the psychological disintegration of a woman alone. Live streams brought the Future Classic x Sydney Festival warm-up party at Speakers Corner and THAW, a marathon 8-hour physical theatre and art installation piece, to audiences in real time. Meanwhile, the digital/ live theatre hybrid works Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World and Rich Kids: A History of Shopping Malls in Tehran showed the possibilities of digital theatre formats. In partnership with Australian Theatre Live, Sydney Festival recorded performances of Erth’s Prehistoric Picnic, 宿(stay), The Pulse and Italian Baroque with Circa, with the collection due to tour over 33 regional cinemas and venues across Australia.

AND INCLUSION

The Construct, photo by Jacquie Manning

FREE EVENTS

Free events are an essential Sydney Festival tradition, ensuring anyone in Sydney during the month of January has the opportunity to engage with the Festival program, and enhancing the vibrancy of city spaces for all. Among this year’s 23 free events was the whimsical Airship Orchestra installation of 16 pulsing, singing inflatable beings, the acrobatic feats of The Construct, a performance atop a 2.7 tonne block of ice suspended above Sydney Harbour in THAW, art installations at Barangaroo and Carriageworks, the Sunday salute to free speech that was the Soapbox talk series at Speakers Corner, and the beloved al fresco music concert, Sydney Symphony Under the Stars.