Industry Roundtable: Access as Festival Practice

Access shouldn’t be something added to a festival, it should be the foundation point we create from and build upon.

Too often, accessibility enters the conversation after artistic or programming decisions have been made, reduced to a checklist, a service or a problem to solve. What happens when we treat it instead as an artistic language, a curatorial methodology and a force for reinvention?

Bringing together Amy Claire Mills (Program Manager, Accessible Arts), Brazilian performance-maker Jéssica Teixeira (MONGA) and Bashir Moukarzel and Lisa Kelly (Co-Artistic Director of Dead Centre and Actor from Deaf Republic), this roundtable considers how access might transform not only who gets to experience art, but the art itself.

Hosted by Sydney Festival’s Access and Inclusion Advisory panelist Morwenna Collett, this is no passive encounter. Artists, producers and cultural workers are invited to bring their own experiences to the table. Together, we'll interrogate established practices, exchange ideas, debate tensions and imagine new possibilities. Less a conversation about what we're already doing, more a collective commitment to what comes next.

For enquiries email programming@sydneyfestival.org.au