Liam O’Dell: Glastonbury Festival from a deaf person’s perspective

The Worthy Farm festival may have been a while ago now, but the memories are as fresh as the sunburn on my skin – which somehow hasn’t fully gone away yet.

This year marked my fourth consecutive year going to the Somerset event – ignoring the fallow year in 2018 – and I remain convinced that it’s one of the most accessible festivals in the UK (with a Gold rating from the music charity Attitude is Everything).

After all, most of us should have seen interpreter Tara Asher’s incredible signing of Stormzy’s performance on the Friday, and her important response to the media attention. This year, the deaf/interpreting group she was with, Deaf Zone, celebrated its 10th time being at the festival.

As a mildly deaf festival-goer, I appreciate I may only experience a fraction of the accessibility issues that a profoundly deaf BSL user may have to deal with – especially around interpreters – but some problems still remain.

In particular, I cast my mind back to 2017’s Glastonbury. A headliner on the West Holts stage was performing. Myself, and the people who were with me, found ourselves quite far from the stage, relying on the second set of speakers planted right in the middle of the crowd.

Yet it wasn’t enough, the sound dipping in quality every so often. Chants of ‘fix the sound’ were being shouted at the stage – or words to that effect. I suppose what people may not instantly realise or appreciate is that the sound designers on stage – the ones often pointed at by artists – are not just there to make the performers sound good, but also to make the show accessible.

Outside of this, accessibility problems usually come down to the odd bit of dialogue I miss here and there. An artist taking a moment between a song to explain its meaning which I just can’t quite make out, or burger van staff shouting down the queue that they’ve run out of eggs (thanks to the lady who passed on the important information when it happened).

As I say, Glastonbury is certainly doing very well on the accessibility front, but as we continue to hear stories about venues failing to provide interpreters or wider disability access, we must continue to hold them to the high standard set by charities such as Attitude is Everything. You can find out more about their work on their website.

Photo: Ollie Cole.

Liam is a mildly deaf freelance journalist and blogger from Bedfordshire. He wears bilateral hearing aids and can be found talking about disability, theatre, politics and more on Twitter and on his website.