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making gigs accessible for all

GUNNERSBURY PARK: ‘i found the festival to be very inaccessible’ – 1 star

Rating: 1 out of 5.
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access1/5
view2/5
staff2/5
transport and parking1/5
BSLN/A
covid safety2/5
toiletsN/A
overall 1/5

Unfortunately, I found the festival I attended at Gunnersbury park to be very inaccessible. There was an accessible viewing platform but other than that, the venue seemed to have implemented almost nothing to make the event accessible. At pretty much every step, I was left feeling very disappointed.

a colour image of the stage from the platform. the bottom 2/3s of the image is of the crowd, all of whom have their backs to the camera facing the stage. due to the angle, much of the picture shows people sat in the disabled platform. there are around 100 people or so on the platform, sat in rows. the stage is far away and hard to see. the stage is dark. behind the stage is a blue sky with some clouds. the stage and sky take up the top 1/3 of the picture
view of the disability platform and stage
a colour image of the stage from the platform. the bottom 2/3s of the image is of the crowd, all of whom have their backs to the camera facing the stage. due to the angle, much of the picture shows people sat in the disabled platform. there are around 100 people or so on the platform, sat in rows. the stage is far away and hard to see. the stage is lit up by red and orange light. there are some figures perhaps playing musical instruments. there is smoke on the stage. on either side of the stage are screens lit up red. behind the stage is a blue sky with some clouds. the stage and sky take up the top 1/3 of the picture
view of the disability platform and stage
a colour image of the stage from the platform. the bottom 2/3s of the image is of the crowd, all of whom have their backs to the camera facing the stage. due to the angle, much of the picture shows people sat in the disabled platform. there are around 100 people or so on the platform, sat in rows. a few of the people have their arms up, swaying to the music. the stage is far away and hard to see. the stage is lit up by blue lights. there are some figures perhaps playing musical instruments. there is smoke on the stage. on either side of the stage are screens lit up blue. behind the stage is a blue and yellow sky, likely just after sunset. the stage and sky take up the top 1/3 of the picture
view of the disability platform and stage
a colour image of the stage from the platform. the bottom 2/3s of the image is of the crowd, all of whom have their backs to the camera facing the stage. due to the angle, much of the picture shows people sat in the disabled platform. there are around 100 people or so on the platform, sat in rows. the stage is far away and hard to see. the stage is lit up by red and orange light. there are some figures perhaps playing musical instruments. there is smoke on the stage. on either side of the stage are screens lit up red with an image of a young white woman singing to a microphone. behind the stage is a dark blue sky, it is dusk. the stage and sky take up the top 1/2 of the picture.
view of the disability platform and stage
a colour image of the stage from the platform. the bottom 1/3 of the image is of the crowd, all of whom have their backs to the camera facing the stage. the stage is far away and hard to see. the stage is lit up by a gradient of lights, going from yellow to blue to purple. there are some figures perhaps playing musical instruments. there is smoke on the stage. on either side of the stage are screens, showing black and white images of fans watching the show. one person is above the crowd, most likely on someone's shoulders, with their arms outstretched. behind the stage is a dark blue sky - it is dust. the stage and sky take up the top 2/3 of the picture
view of the disability platform and stage
a colour image of the stage from the platform. the bottom 1/4s of the image is of the crowd and the stage, while the rest of the image is of fireworks coming from the stage, with the night sky in the background. the fireworks are red, blue and yellow. the stage is in the bottom left corner. it is hard to see. it is lit up by yellow lights and smoke. on either side of the stage are screens lit up in blue, showing close ups of the stage. below the stage shows the crowd, all of whom have their backs to the camera facing the stage. the stage is far away and hard to see. there are some figures perhaps playing musical instruments.
view of the disability platform and stage
images from the gig

The first issue I encountered was navigating the site. Prior to the event, they had sent us a map of the site that included details of the accessible platform’s location and where the accessible ‘entrance’ into the festival was situated. Unfortunately, this map all took place within the grounds of Gunnersbury Park, with little information or context as to how to get there from the entrance to the park. Upon entering the park, there was a dire lack of signage which meant I found it very difficult to find the accessible entrance. The stewards didn’t seem to know where the entrance was either, so they weren’t much help. In order to reach the accessible entrance from the entrance to the park, all visitors had to do a 10+ minute walk through gravel and grass. This was incredibly difficult with my wheelchair and could have been impossible for people with disabilities more severe than mine, On a rainy day, wheelchair users would not have been able to make it to the festival at all. This issue could easily been avoided with a specific disabled route that involved ramps from the road to the accessible entrance. 

At the accessible entrance, the security were helpful and everything went smoothly. However, once again, instead of having a specific accessible path of ramping over the grass that went from the accessible gate to the accessible platform, we were told to go through the general security gates, where hundreds of other people were being checked. This meant that we had to squeeze my wheelchair through lines of vips (luckily my wheelchair is very narrow but this could have been impossible in a more regular sized one), and once again try and navigate through uneven ground of gravel and grass. 

The next issue I faced was at the security gates. In order for a music venue to be accessible, they must consider the specific requirements that disabled people may have in terms of what they bring to the event. This could be food, drinks, medication, pain relief, assistance dogs and so on. In the access guide that I was emailed prior to the event, I was reassured that this was taken into consideration and that the staff would be briefed on this issue. With my illness, I have a chronic sore throat, dehydration and fatigue, and so need to drink a lot of liquids throughout the day. I packed with this in mind, knowing that if I didn’t have enough electrolytes and drinks on me my symptoms could become worse and I would need to leave. I also have specific dietary requirements, so I brought my own food that I knew I would be able to eat. Due to the extra stuff I had to pack for my disability needs, I needed a bigger bag than was instructed (for general admission) but once again I was reassured in the access guide that this would be okay. 

When I got to the security gate, the member of staff who was checking my bag clearly had not been briefed about anything to do with access needs. Instead, she got very angry at me for bringing in items that I had already been told by the venue were okay for me to bring in. She was incredibly rude and accusatory towards me for what she wrongly believed was my breaking of the rules. She pulled out every vital item of mine that I had packed, shouting ‘what’s this’ at me. I was made to feel like I’d done something terrible. I calmly told her that I needed to bring in specific drinks, food and medication for my access needs, and therefore also needed to bring a bigger bag to fit this all in. I also told her that the venue had emailed all access customers prior to the event confirming that this would be allowed. This is very standard for music venues and festivals, as organisers recognise that disabled people have different needs in terms of what they bring to an event. Clearly, she did not believe this, and she began to interrogate me about my disability. She grilled me about my illness, my diagnosis and my symptoms, with an evident lack of knowledge about chronic illness or disability at all. Regardless, this is incredibly inappropriate, and in fact quite traumatic for a disabled person to experience. I had already gone through the (rigorous) process of obtaining an access pass and she had no right to know all of my personal medical details. If I’m being honest, she saw that (at the time due to the uneven ground) I wasn’t in my wheelchair and therefore she didn’t believe I could be disabled. Although I found her very rude, I still don’t blame her for this series of mishaps. It is the people above her at Gunnersbury park who were at fault. Clearly, the issue lies in a lack of training and briefing of their staff about the access needs of visitors. I hope this is something they work on as I found the whole interaction, as well as the removal of some vital items of mine, to be fairly distressing and affected my ability to enjoy the rest of the night. 

Once again, once we got through security we faced a walk on very uneven grass and gravel to reach the accessible platform. This is not accessible. A simple ramp from the gate to the platform could have solved this. I was forced to walk as it was too difficult to push my chair. Once we arrived at the platform things were a lot smoother, although I was disappointed to see how cramped it was. Unfortunately, I had to arrive late to conserve as much energy as possible, which meant I was sitting right at the back of the platform where I pretty much couldn’t see any of the stage. Luckily there were the big screens I could watch but it was still a rather disappointing view. A wider platform would have improved this. Furthermore, I know of two people there who needed to use the platform due to disability but here turned away as it had reached capacity before they had got their hands on a pass. If they want to make their venue accessible for all, they should make their platforms big enough. To deal with both capacity issues and improve the views for everyone, putting two platforms on either side of the stage could have been a successful solution. 

When the gig was over, I then found it incredibly difficult to leave. As there was no separate accessible route to enter / exit the venue, we were forced to leave the same way as thousands of other people at the gig. This meant the long walk through incredibly uneven gravel and grass had to be done again, but this time with tight crowds of people all around me. Moving a wheelchair through crowds of people is extremely difficult – luckily I was with a large group of people who were able to advocate for me and try and make some room. If it had just been me and my PA I think we would have had to give up and wait the hour or so until the crowds had died down. The route to leave also involved going through a fairly tight path, which the security controlled by only letting a 100 or so people out at a time. This meant that it ended up taking around 40 minutes to leave the venue. A lot of this time was spent stuck between hundreds of people in a tight space with no information as to what was going on. I found this quite stressful, and imagine that people with other disabilities or sensory issues could have found this incredibly distressing. Once again, this all could have been solved if the venue had allocated a specific accessible path going from the platform to outside of the park. While I was stuck in the hoards of people trying my best to get my wheelchair through, I couldn’t help but think of the vips who definitely had their own route so they could avoid all of the chaos. Why couldn’t the access pass holders, who actually needed it, be afforded the same. 

Transportation from the venue was also quite a mess. They had blocked off one of the roads which meant that people were being held up for a very long time. Once people had left the park, security were leading a similar approach of only letting a few hundred cross the road at a time, contributing more to the hold up. It took us about half an hour / an hour before we could get picked up, at which point still people were stuck in crowds trying to leave. I understand that the organisation of thousands of people leaving a venue is no easy task, but it still seemed to me to be unnecessarily complicated and time consuming. I’ve been at bigger events that have been MUCH easier to leave. The total extra hour or so that leaving the venue took was not just frustrating for me, but also posed a serious risk to my health. Going to a gig is already incredibly tiring for me. Add an extra hour of trying to leave on top of this, and suddenly it becomes something that is too demanding for me to do at all.

All in all, I was very disappointed at the inaccessibility of Gunnersbury Park. It really felt like no disabled people were actually consulted in the planning of the event. There were so many obvious failures to make it accessible and I couldn’t help but feel like I, as a disabled person, was not really welcome at the event. I still managed to have a good time but the obstacles I faced made the day so much harder, more stressful and tiring for me than it needed to be, all of which exacerbated my disability greatly. I can’t help but wonder what people with more severe disabilities than myself would have done. I really hope that Gunnersbury Park make efforts to improve their accessibility, as until then I don’t believe it is a space place to attend an event as a disabled person.

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