Open Season: For a More Accessible Culture for All

09. October 2024

One of the objectives of the European Capital of Culture is to foster more accessible culture. We launched our journey towards this goal last week with the Open Season project. This initiative focuses on eliminating barriers in culture and the arts.

The issue of accessibility is becoming increasingly important and should concern us all. In the EU, there are currently 100 million people living with some form of disability—be it physical, mental, intellectual, or sensory. As the population ages, this number continues to rise.

These individuals face barriers everywhere: in cultural buildings, during cultural programs, when presenting artworks, at festivals, and in promotional materials. Here are a few examples for better understanding:

  • A person in a wheelchair struggles to enter a hall that can only be accessed by stairs.

  • A deaf person cannot enjoy a film without subtitles or sign language interpretation.

  • Blind individuals cannot appreciate an exhibition that lacks audio descriptions, electronic formats, or Braille.

  • People with limited text comprehension may not understand the technical descriptions created by curators.

  • Even the general public sometimes struggles to grasp the curator's text.
  • For parents with small children, someone on crutches, or individuals with sore knees, stairs can be a barrier.
  • Those who are not proficient in Czech would also appreciate subtitled films.
  • Even for those who can see, purchasing a ticket on a poorly designed website can be challenging.
Accessibility is important and beneficial for everyone, not just for people with disabilities.

What are our plans within the Open Season initiative?

The foundation of our Open Season initiative is to focus on the accessibility of the entire visitor experience from start to finish: how individuals learn about the event, purchase tickets, access the venue, navigate within it, enjoy and understand the experience, return home safely, and provide feedback. We will also create more opportunities for people with disabilities to engage directly in the creative process.

To achieve this, we are working directly with individuals with disabilities. We are also gaining insights from our colleagues at Polish organizations Impact Audience and Polska bez barier.

Together with them, we organized the first edition of Open Season. Over four days, we covered a total of five topics.

We kicked off the week with a meeting on the accessibility plan for the European Capital of Culture.

We presented examples of what accessibility at cultural events can look like and discussed together which solutions are the most effective. From the beginning, we have involved people with disabilities, representatives from cultural organizations, the city, the social sector, and non-profit organizations. All of them gathered at one table.
Valuable insights were provided by representatives from the National Council for Persons with Disabilities.
We agreed on the need to strengthen collaboration with cultural organizations—this request was echoed, for example, by the South Bohemian Theatre.

What are the next steps?

We will establish an Accessibility Alliance that will bring together individuals with disabilities, organizations that work with them, and others who are directly affected by this issue or have relevant expertise.

The Alliance will offer consultations, feedback, and assistance with the implementation of projects created within the framework of the European Capital of Culture, as well as for those interested in the local cultural scene. We will continue to educate ourselves and provide training. We will also launch a rental service for accessibility equipment for organizing cultural events.

We conducted training directly within cultural organizations with their leadership and staff.

We created an accessibility checklist and mapped our organizations. This will lead to the development of web descriptions that will help audiences plan their visit more easily—determining whether they can manage on their own or if they need assistance.

We learned how to make events more accessible and what tools we can use in this process. We will put this knowledge into practice next spring during a new festival that we are preparing in collaboration with cultural organizations in České Budějovice.

Agata Etmanowicz from the organization Impact Audience, which collaborates with us on the topic of accessibility, shared her international experiences.

We focused on public spaces

Where culture takes place and through which we access it. During an interactive walk with wheelchair users, visually impaired individuals, city representatives, and architects, we were able to identify specific obstacles we encounter. We also discussed how to plan public spaces with accessibility in mind, as preventing problems is often more cost-effective than addressing them retroactively.
We presented the experiences of our colleagues from Polska bez barier, who contributed to the accessibility standards of several cities.
Representatives from the city, including councilor Zbyněk Sýkora, also attended the event. Thanks to the Socially Friendly City project, barriers are being promptly removed or prevented.
We took a joint walk through the cultural organizations. Along the way, we highlighted good solutions as well as obstacles, and we prepared a report on this for the city.

We learned to create audio descriptions

Audio descriptions are an effective way to make culture accessible for blind and visually impaired individuals, as they summarize essential visual content in words. We can use them in visual arts, theater performances, films, and architecture. We practiced this method on sculptures in the city center, resulting in the first audio descriptions for a new online library. This library will serve the residents and visitors of the city until 2028.
The audio description workshop on Thursday was led by Rafal Lis. Everything we created was consulted on-site with Šarlota Polášková, who heads the organization for the blind, Spolu s vámi.
We learned the method and are already planning more workshops to pass it on and describe additional objects.
As a result, blind individuals—whether they live in the city or are visiting—will have the opportunity to engage with historical sites and contemporary art.

We met with the deaf community

We screened two short films—Tiché dítě and Jsem Coda—and followed up with a discussion about the lives, culture, and language of the deaf.

The discussion sparked engagement throughout the group—not only with guests Jan Borovanský from the South Bohemian Association of the Deaf and Lucie Novotná from Tichý svět.
Written Czech is not usually the primary mode of communication for the deaf community. As a result, a text brochure may be less effective for many deaf individuals compared to using sign language. In some historical sites, videos are being created featuring deaf individuals signing in both Czech and international sign language. We plan to expand this initiative further.

Music can also be interpreted using sign language, and we plan to incorporate it into theater performances as well. Additionally, we will present shows that are created from the very beginning specifically in sign language!

We don't want to just "make cultural content accessible," "mediate," or "translate" it. It is important that people can experience art with which they can identify. Therefore, we will provide opportunities for individuals with disabilities to create and present their work. There are top-notch artists with disabilities both in the Czech Republic and abroad, and we will regularly invite them to České Budějovice until 2028.

We thank everyone who is involved in the activities of the Open Season initiative. It is through this wide collaboration that we believe we can make culture more accessible for everyone by 2028.

This way, everyone can participate—whether on stage, in the audience, or behind the scenes.

Zajímá vás téma přístupnosti v kultuře a chtěli byste se zapojit? 

Ozvěte se na lucie.bilkova@budejovice2028.cz.