Welcoming Audiences

Think about what you could do to encourage people to attend and ways you can reach out to understand audience needs so that people feel welcome. How can you accommodate people’s accessibility needs? You can better understand barriers to attendance by consulting widely with different community members.

Arts in the Parks evaluation shows us that 87% of attendees feel welcome at events. Consider these ideas:  

• Arrange to bus groups to the park to reduce transportation barriers
• Ensure accessible entrances, exits, seating, shade areas
• Provide ASL translation, audio description, transcription, visual interpretation
• Provide language translation (in 2018, Arts in the Parks translated surveys into Tamil, Farsi and Simplified Chinese)

“Very enjoyable to see the diversity of my community, people enjoying music and the summer night despite a difficult year. Great to come together and celebrate our neighbourhood. Open, accessible; all ages and types of people.”

– Attendee in St. James Park, 2018