Access & Inclusion

As a member of the BFI Film Audience Network, Film Hub Scotland embeds the BFI Diversity Standards across all of its projects. All recipients of our funding are expected to address as many of the Standards in their proposals as possible. 

We are the Cross-FAN lead for Equality, Diversity & Inclusion (EDI) across the UK-wide BFI Film Audience Network (FAN). Our EDI Champion, Charlie Little (Access Consultant, Matchbox Cine) delivers a quarterly Accessible Cinema Bulletin and regular webinars on exhibitor-relevant access and inclusion topics. They also compiled the BFI FAN: Access Directory, a resource full of guidance, toolkits, and practical actions for planning inclusive film events for Deaf and disabled audiences.

For FHS members looking for resources to make your organisation and events as accessible as possible, please visit our Accessibility Resources.

Our Access & Inclusion Goals: 25/26

Ensuring our events and opportunities are accessible is our top priority, and we have created a set of goals and action points to help us achieve this. These are ever-evolving, and we always welcome feedback on how we could improve.

Our goals were inspired by the learnings from Independent Cinema Office’s Disability Across the Board training, during which the Australian Centre for Moving Image shared their Disability & Inclusion Action Plan.

By producing a public-facing Disability Action Plan, you can devise reasonable, time-bound actions that will make your organisation more inclusive. View an example Disability Action Plan here.

→ Read our Access & Inclusion Goals

Access Riders

According to Shape Arts, Access Riders are:

“a tool that can be used to share information about your access needs in a clear and concise way, especially if you often work with different people, or have specific needs that need to be considered before starting a project.”

An Access Rider can help you to understand and support those you work with to the best of your ability. We welcome those we work with to share an Access Rider with us. 

Access Rider Examples

• https://disabilityarts.online/magazine/opinion/access-rider-open-template/ 
• https://www.shapearts.org.uk/news/access-docs-for-artists-resource
• https://weareunlimited.org.uk/resource/creating-your-own-access-rider/
• https://diversity-arts-culture.berlin/en/magazin/access-rider 
• https://www.accessdocsforartists.com/guide-to-making-an-access-doc 

How to create an Access Rider

Creating your own Access Rider can allow the organisations and people you work with to support you in the best way possible. There are many ways to create an Access document depending on how you would like to express and describe your needs. There is no one right way! 

Here are some questions you might want to ask yourself when writing an Access document, helpfully outlined by Access Docs for Artists:

• What access barriers have I encountered in the past and how could these have been navigated?
• What would stop me from being able to do the project at all? How can I be facilitated?
• What situations do I expect to be in during an upcoming project, and what barriers might I encounter there?
• What about being around during an install? Speaking at an event? How can my access needs in those instances be facilitated?
• Would it be helpful to add ‘This is negotiable’ or ‘This is non-negotiable’ next to any individual points?

We have created an Access Rider template you can use when working with us, or another organisation:

→ Download our Access Rider template

Further reading

• An explanation of the social model of disability – https://weareunlimited.org.uk/resource/social-model-disabilityanimation/   
• Accessibility in the Arts: A Practice and a Promise by Carolyn Lazard – https://promiseandpractice.art/
• Access Intimacy by Mia Mingus – https://leavingevidence.wordpress.com/2011/05/05/access-intimacy-the-missing-link/