Access Management for Events and Venues | ZMINA:Resilience capacity building workshop #10

Making a venue wheelchair accessible is not the same as making a visit accessible. Real participation depends on decisions made long before a disabled artist or audience member arrives — and on people who know how to plan for them.

This training session introduces the practical foundations of accessibility work in culture: we’ll discuss medical and social models of disability, what that shift actually changes about how we identify and remove barriers to participation.

Led by disability consultant and access manager Luke Sinclair, the session covers sensory, cognitive and invisible accessibility, how access riders work, and what it means to plan a cultural event or project with access management built in from the start. Two hands-on exercises give participants the chance to apply these tools directly to their own context.

🗣️ Trainer: Luke Sinclair

Luke Sinclair is a disability consultant, access manager and professional disability advocate based in Dublin, Ireland. He works with cultural organisations, venues, festivals and artists to improve accessibility and support the meaningful participation of disabled people, including accessibility planning and auditing, developing individual access riders, and advising organisations on inclusive practice. Luke has worked across the disability, healthcare, community and voluntary sectors for over 15 years. Alongside his consultancy work, he works with the Irish Wheelchair Association and serves as Disability Inclusion & Strategic Partnerships Advisor with Refugee Together for Social Transformation (RTST, Uganda). His recent international work includes providing access management for disabled performance artists at cultural events across Europe. Luke brings both professional and lived experience of disability to his work, with a practical focus on genuine choice and influence for disabled people over the environments and programmes in which they participate.

📌 Key takeaways:

• Actionable knowledge: the difference between the medical and social models of disability, barriers to participation.
• The access rider: tool for supporting disabled artists and participants, and how it fits into your planning.
• Learning by doing: two practical exercises that put you in the position of finding barriers and managing access yourself. 

The training session will be held in English.

📅 Wednesday, 21 October | 13:00 – 15:00 CEST 
ℹ️ For more information check out zmina.eu

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ZMINA:Resilience is a cooperation between IZOLYATSIA (UA), Malý Berlín (SK) with support of Trans Europe Halles (SE).
Co-funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA). Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.