Start With Access: Why Brighton’s Riders Shouldn’t Be a Last-Minute Scramble

Access riders have a habit of turning up late. Not the document itself — that usually arrives attached to a contract somewhere between the technical spec and the risk assessment — but the thinking behind it. By the time anyone reads the bit about BSL interpretation or a quiet room, the flyer has gone to print, the box office has opened, and someone is already asking whether the companion ticket can be sorted “as a one-off”.

That’s not a scheduling problem. It’s a cultural one. In Brighton & Hove we talk a good game about inclusive arts, and plenty of programmers genuinely mean it. But access is still treated as a late-stage negotiation rather than a starting condition. The rider becomes the warm-up act: a document that arrives just before the show, when everyone is already thinking about lighting states and door times.

The rider is not the paperwork. It’s the plan.

A good access rider isn’t a list of demands bolted onto a budget. It’s a description of how the event actually works for the people in the room. That means BSL interpretation booked with enough lead time to find the right interpreter, not a frantic email two weeks out. It means relaxed performance notes that tell audiences what to expect — lights, sound, moving around, leaving and coming back — rather than a single line on the website saying “relaxed performance”.

It means companion tickets that are genuinely free and easy to book, not a discretionary favour that depends on who picks up the phone. It means backstage access that has been thought through: step-free routes, accessible toilets, a quiet space that isn’t a cupboard. It means transport information that acknowledges not everyone arrives by bus, bike or foot. And it means staff training — front of house, box office, technicians — so that access isn’t one person’s job on the night.

None of that is exotic. Most of it is cheap. Some of it is free. All of it works better when it’s written into the first draft of the project, not squeezed in at the end.

Brighton’s venue landscape makes this urgent

We have an eclectic venue ecology in this city: grand Victorian rooms, converted churches, pub back rooms, seafront arches, pop-up spaces with temporary ramps and borrowed chairs. That variety is one of the reasons Brighton & Hove’s cultural life feels alive. It’s also the reason access can’t be left to improvisation. Every space has different constraints, and every constraint needs a conversation early enough to solve it.

When access is an afterthought, the smallest organisations get hit hardest. A pub venue with a tiny team can’t absorb a last-minute interpreter booking or a companion ticket policy that wasn’t budgeted. A freelance producer running a one-off event doesn’t have a access officer to call. The result is a two-tier city: well-resourced venues that can retrofit inclusion, and everyone else hoping nobody asks the awkward question.

That’s not good enough for a city that trades on openness and creativity. And it’s not good enough for the artists and audiences who make the scene worth funding in the first place.

Make it a line, not a favour

The fix is structural, not heroic. Every commission and venue agreement in Brighton & Hove should include a standard access line. Not a vague commitment to “consider accessibility” — an actual line item with a named budget, a responsible person and a deadline. BSL interpretation, relaxed performance planning, companion tickets, backstage access, transport information and staff training should be costed at application stage, not discovered at delivery stage.

That doesn’t mean every event needs every provision. It means every event needs to ask the questions early enough to answer them honestly. A small spoken-word night in a pub might need a quiet corner and a clear access statement. A large outdoor seafront event might need a viewing area, a changing places toilet and a transport plan. The principle is the same: access is part of the creative brief, not a postscript.

Funders can help by making access planning a scored criterion rather than a nice-to-have. Venues can help by publishing a standard access rider template and asking visiting companies to complete it before contracts are signed. Artists can help by refusing to treat access as someone else’s job. And audiences can help by asking for what they need — loudly and early.

Start before the show

The warm-up isn’t the rider. The warm-up is the conversation that happens months before anyone steps on stage. If Brighton & Hove wants a cultural sector that genuinely welcomes disabled artists and audiences, that conversation needs to start at the first planning meeting, not the final production week.

So let’s stop treating access riders as a last-minute scramble. Write them into the first draft. Put them in the budget. Sign them off before the flyer goes to print. The show will be better for it — and so will the city.