Web Communication Update 30 th October 2007

Information update regarding the changes at Attitude is Everything: funded by The Arts Council England

The Attitude team is pleased to announce that Attitude is Everything Limited is now registered as a company. We have received our Certificate of Incorporation and the next stage, that of obtaining registered charitable status, is being processed by the Charity Commission. It is estimated that registered charitable status can take up to three months to complete; so we are anticipating this next stage of the change programme to be completed by February 2008, which will mean we are on target with our planned completion date.

A considerable amount of the Attitude's team is being allocated to developing a long-term strategy for our organisation to take us forward, enable us to meet our goals, realise our full potential and to ensure long-term sustainability. Part of the initial process has involved agreeing a mission statement for our new organisation. Through collaboration the team have agreed the most appropriate mission, in terms of reflecting our values and objectives to be the following:

‘Attitude is Everything (Limited) improves Deaf and disabled people's access to live music by working in partnership with audiences, artists and the music industry by implementing a Charter of Best Practice across the U.K.'

As with all organisational change the bureaucracy accompanying the transition to independence we are making is increasing the workload of all members of the Attitude and the Artsline team; even with the inclusion of a Change Manager the impact is being felt throughout the organisation. The Attitude team would like to formally thank the Artsline team for their patience and support during this turbulent time.

Even with the complexity of change interfering with the usual day-to-day operations of the project, this has not affected the motivation of the team, who are all playing key roles in driving the change programme forward. It is an exciting but busy time for everyone and we hope to keep you as up to date as possible through these web communication updates. If you would like any further information regarding the change programme please contact the Change Manager, Jan Gough, at changemanager@artsline.org.uk

Attitude is Everything is pleased to announce that we have received funding from Festival Republic to provide Disability Equality Training bursaries to small venues that wish to have their staff trained but would struggle to meet the full costs of the specialised training. For a DET brochure please email Alice (regional@artsline.org.uk) or Suzanne
(attitude@artsline.org.uk).

The bursary form is available in Word and PDF format. Right click and Save As to download.

Health and Safety at UK Festivals for Deaf and disabled people

Thanks to everyone who took time out to fill in the questionnaires that we co-designed with BCUC - Buckinghamshire Chilterns University. The results have now been sent to Professor Chris Kemp and he will now compare them to the other results that he has collected in over the summer. For the time being, here are our results:

Health and Safety at Festivals' Questionnaire Results Analysis

There were no real surprises for the Attitude is Everything team in the responses that we got back. The Viewing Platform definitely is where disabled people feel safest, but their feelings of safety were affected if they did not have confidence in the people managing the platforms, or of the structure of the facility was inadequate. We got a small surprise when we first read the responses to question 4) Would you like the opportunity to be at the front? We meant this question to be if people wanted to go into the main crowd instead of staying in a designated viewing area. We asked this question as we know that some disabled people believe that they should not have to be placed in a designated viewing area. When you first read the result, it looks like 74% of people asked preferred to be in the crowd, a higher percentage of people who wanted a designated viewing area. However, on further investigation, we discovered that respondants had interpreted the question to be that the viewing area should be at the front!

You will also see that there were a great number of people who had been refused access to the viewing platform for “not looking disabled” (81%) and this, in turn, did affect how safe disabled people felt at the festival (83%). The majority of people did not know were the location of emergency exits were.