Last Friday afternoon, November 10th, Kendal Mountain Festival sent round an email newsletter that included the following announcement:
*For those who’ve accessed the Kendal Mountain Player before, you’ll notice we’re doing things a little differently this year. We’ve chosen to adapt our approach by not recording live Festival events, a move that enriches our focus on delivering an exceptional film programme directly to you.
This statement makes removal of an access provision – the decision at the last minute not to film live events at the festival and make them available to watch later – sound like a positive thing – something that will ‘enrich’ the film programme.
The statement clearly says that Kendal Mountain Festival thinks not offering access to live events is a) enriching and b) adapting. To not film live events means anyone who cannot attend an event in-person is excluded from accessing it, including all the people who had been planning to access events that way this very week. The thoughtless, callous wording effectively says to readers of the newsletter that exclusion is enriching.
Its presentation under an asterisk, as an overthought, means it reads “oh by the way, we’re removing access, and we think it’s a great thing!”. Access is an afterthought, it says, and so is removing it. Maybe readers won’t care or notice? Reader, I noticed. Reader, I care.
The announcement was both a shock and a terrible blow to me, especially as it came less than week before the festival would start. To find out through a newsletter that the festival would no longer be accessible to me or to people like me who cannot attend all or any events in-person, only a few days beforehand, is not acceptable.
Inclusion and access are always a work in progress – nothing can ever be 100% accessible because access needs vary so much – but it is important to be honest and open about what can be offered and why.
On Monday, after waiting all weekend for an official response to a complaint about the wording in the newsletter, I received a long email from the festival director listing all the reasons they are choosing not to film live events, and everything they think they are doing to be inclusive as a festival. It was a familiar format to anyone who has pointed out a problem to anyone ever – a justification not an apology. It focused on things I already know as someone who has been connected with the festival for some years (small team; financial pressures) and presented them as excuses.
It claimed willingness to learn whilst not acknowledging the damage done by the email nor any plan to counteract that damage. There is no accountability.
I’m due to speak at the Festival on Saturday 18th, both interviewing Marchelle Farrell in the morning, and being interviewed about my own book about disability, nature and belonging in the afternoon. It will be a long day for me, which will have a toll on my health, a cost I was willing to pay in return for a tiny bit of hoped for joy, for myself and others. I was looking forward to watching the Friday and Sunday events at home, to prepare and recover. I am also committed to making sure other people who cannot attend events in-person can still access the events I take part in, so this announcement not only affected me as an audience member, but as presenter.
I asked on Monday that a public statement be put out to counteract the damage of the wording in the email. Nothing has yet happened and I have had no further response from the festival director. So this is my statement. This is an edited version of my reply to the festival director on Monday.
What the newsletter said to me is that people who cannot attend in-person – whether because of access needs, covid safety, travel costs and disruption, caring responsibilities, geography or environmental concerns – are not welcome at the festival. Removing access is bad enough, but the particular wording said that their presence is the opposite of enriching, suggesting the festival see us as a burden distracting from its core focus and core audience.
It says to me that I am not welcome at the festival, and that my way of participating does not count to the festival. The impact that this has – physically and mentally – is huge. I cannot continue to support a festival which treats me – and others like me – in this way.
I consider the removal of access to live events to be the opposite of enriching and the reversal of adaptation, and that it is particularly ironic considering the festival theme this year of ‘joy’. If your joy is only possible because some people are excluded from the opportunity to experience joy, what does that say about you, and about joy? About who is given access to joy? About whose joy is prioritised? Joy for one group cannot be built on the despair of others.
In the programme for the book festival there is an introduction from festival patron Robert Macfarlane, in which he writes:
Joy is also born of companionship and community – and here at Kendal, where stories are told by many voices and to many ears, community is at the festival’s heart. Joy can also be the fuel of change.
Robert Macfarlane, ‘A Word From Our Patron’, Kendal Mountain Book Festival 2023 Programme
The newsletter put out by the parent festival on Friday makes a bad joke out of this heartfelt, hopeful declaration.
Macfarlane quotes from the award-winning film We Are Nature, in which Cherelle Harding says ‘joy is my resistance’. This phrasing echoes that used by disabled activists. As Keah Brown writes:
We live in a society that assumes joy is impossible for disabled people, associating disability only with sadness and shame. So my joy […] is revolutionary in a body like mine.
Keah Brown ‘Nurturing Black Disabled Joy’, Disability Visibility: first person stories from the twenty-first century, ed. by Alice Wong
In 2018 disability advocate Andrew Farkash coined the hashtag #DisabledJoy to reclaim joy for disabled people. Disabled joy is resistance against a world that will not adapt to our needs and excludes us at every turn, making the newsletter announcement from the festival all the more painful and ironic.
On a personal level, Friday’s newsletter has taken away not just my joy around this year’s festival, but my joy around everything we have done to improve access over the last four years.
Some people reading this will know a bit about my connection with Kendal Mountain Book Festival (KMBF), a sub-festival within the larger outdoor festival. I first spoke on stage at KMBF in 2017, as a participant in an event for the Vertebrate anthology Waymaking and as a host for an event for This Place I Know. After the 2018 festival, Cumbrian writer Kate Davis approached the book festival with a call to make it more inclusive and accessible, and particularly to include disabled voices and perspectives, and so Open Mountain was created. Paul Scully of KMBF has been a ceaseless accomplice in improving access – always willing to listen and learn, always asking for improvements and adaptations from the festival as a whole. Open Mountain was always a work in progress and ran on a shoestring – the last two years we’ve not been able to run at all because of a lack of funding. The diverse array of speakers at the book festival in 2022 made this feel not too great a loss, in the scheme of things. But the language of the newsletter on Friday left me feeling that the parent festival has learnt nothing from Open Mountain, has not paid attention, has not engaged at all. It actively dismantles the work of Open Mountain, and tramples everything it stood for. It denigrates all the work put into improving access at the festival, which we did because we know it matters, and makes a difference to people. Nature and the outdoors should be for everyone, not just a select few. Now more than ever that should be clear.
I understand the financial constraints around filming of events but the festival has had a whole year to prepare for this festival in which to find alternatives. There are many simple improvements that could have been made to the previous offering that would have improved audience experiences and feedback. There are dozens of different ways to offer remote access to live events without a large-scale glossy filming programme as the festival has had the past few years.
1 in 5 people in the UK are disabled. Pre-pandemic statistics held that 33% of the population live with at least one long term health condition. This number is ever-growing. 1 in 6 of the UK adult population are deaf or hard of hearing. Many of us love the outdoors too! If the festival consulted with groups that focus on access to events and the arts the festival could find much better sustainable solutions to continuing to improve access for all groups. But the festival needs to prioritise access, communicate access, and think it is important to put the work in.
The newsletter signalled to participants who attended past festivals remotely and online audiences excited for this year’s festival that their presence is not important to the festival, that they do not belong there, that it is not for them. It told me that it is not for me.
It’s clear that the newsletter was attempting to put a positive spin on a financial constraint, but the lack of honesty and transparency has had a terrible effect.
I have mulled this over since Friday, but I will be attending the festival as planned on Saturday, for two reasons:
* I believe in keeping my commitments unless it is physically impossible to do so
* On balance I think my visible presence at the festival talking about access, exclusion, and disabled joy will do more than my absence would.
I have had it confirmed that events at the book festival will be audio recorded and shared, along with transcripts, after the festival, at no cost.
I have asked for a retraction of the newsletter, and a public apology for both the announcement in the newsletter and its particular wording, to make it clear that the festival does not believe it to be enriching to exclude people from the festival, and that it is working to improve access in the future. This needs to be supported with actions – arranging training on disability inclusion and anti-ableism for the whole festival team and engaging an access consultant for future festivals, as well as prioritising access in funding applications.
Yet again, this has drained me of all joy over the festival, and also drained me of precious energy I should have been spending on my own work.
I will not waste any more of my very limited energy hitting my head against the brick wall of the festival expecting it to transform into an open door. Unless the festival shows a commitment to real change, the kind of change that admits joy for everyone, and not just the few, I cannot work with them again. This brings me great sadness, and this is what I will be talking about on Saturday: the exclusion of joy, the exclusion of community, the denial of companionship, the erasure of many voices.
Update: As of November 24th, two weeks after the newsletter, I’ve still had no response from festival CEO Jacqui Scott after my email of Monday 13th.
Further Update: the year ends and still no response from festival CEO Jacqui Scott other than to post lots on social media about how inclusive and joyful the festival was. This is not the way.
Shadow Dispatches 