GDIF 2024 | London’s free, annual outdoor performing arts festival 23 August-8 September 2024
The Way Ahead
26 - 28 August | Old Royal Naval College&Greenwich Park
What to Expect: Family friendly | Speech free
Free
This celebrated disability arts protest piece features a series of provocative road signs, which take aim at the discrimination and inequality experienced by D/deaf, disabled and neurodivergent people.
To celebrate GDIF becoming the first UK festival to be awarded Platinum standard for access, GDIF has commissioned 10 new signs, calling to courage, power and hope for disabled people in the UK.
More information on The Way Ahead
Site Access
All shows at Greenwich Fair are free to attend. Just show up.
Assistance Dogs Welcome
Level Access
There is level access to each performance location.
There is a mix of hard-standing and grass areas. Trackway will be used to create accessible routes.
There will be short ramps onto any raised areas.
Access Viewing areas
A priority area for disabled audiences will be marked with a sign or flag. Space for wheelchair users and various seating options will be available at each performance site.
Distances between sites
The festival site includes Greenwich Park, Old Royal Naval College and Cutty Sark Gardens.
Most performance sites are 5-15 minutes away from each other. Each site has multiple performances throughout the day.
The show ‘The Air Between Us’ is at the top of Greenwich Park next to the General Wolfe Statue and near The Royal Observatory. An accessible buggy with 1 wheelchair space and up to 4 companions will be available (on a first-come-first-served basis, provided by the Royal Parks team) between St Mary’s Gate and the Pavilion Café in Greenwich Park in both directions. More details will be available at the GDIF accessible social point near St Mary’s Gate.
Check the map and brochure to plan your route or ask a volunteer who can direct you to an information point.
Quiet Space and Access Areas
A covered Quiet Space and Access Area will be provided onsite at the Old Royal Naval College. The Access Area will have volunteers and staff available for access information throughout the day. This will be located on King Charles Lawns.
Greenwich Park will have an accessible relaxed social area near St Mary’s Gate.
Many nearby peaceful areas have bench seating across Royal Greenwich Park and the Old Royal Naval College.
Assisted Access Routes
GDIF volunteers will guide audiences on the following access routes:
1） BSL/Captioned/Speech Free performances
2）Audio Described performances
3）Performances with Easy Read available
Details of routes and meeting points coming soon.
Accessible Toilets
Revolootion (formerly Mobiloo) changing places facilities with a hoist and changing bench will be available at Greenwich Fair.
Please bring a sling to use the hoist.
Greenwich Park has accessible toilets behind the Royal Observatory.
Blue badge parking
Cutty Sark Gardens, Park Row (25 Park Row, London SE10 9NL), College Way Car Park
Greenwich Park, car parking via Blackheath Gate only ( Greenwich Park Car Park South, London SE10 8QY)
Drop-off points
College Way, SE10 9LS
Greenwich Park top- Observatory, Blackheath Ave, London SE10 8XJ
Greenwich Park bottom- St Mary’s Gate, London SE10 9JL
Contact
For Access questions, contact [email protected] // 07899 893 935
For other audience questions, contact our Box Office: [email protected]
Show Access
Speech Free Installation
Easy Read Visual Guide
Digital Audio Description of each sign can be downloaded below or via a QR code on-site.
Gallery
About Caroline Cardus
Northern born Caroline Cardus is an artist activist in the disability arts movement.
Cardus often works collaboratively to tell stories of lived experience from disability and feminist perspectives.
Her protest art piece, The Way Ahead, gave disabled people a voice in October 2004 when new anti-discrimination legislation was brought in. Since the launch in 2004 The Way Ahead has been shown regularly across the UK. It is currently part of The Shape Collection.
Cardus was a recipient of the Adam Reynolds Memorial Bursary in 2011 and resident at BALTIC in Gateshead, where she charted Disability Rights Activist Barbara Lisicki’s dark journey through the NHS by their exchanged text messages, in A Message from Barbara.
In 2018 and 2019 Cardus worked with Tate Modern, first on the LDN WMN project with Tate Collective, profiling lesser known disabled suffragette Adelaide Knight in a public art installation called Fight On, outside Canning Town Hall.
In 2019 she worked with Tate’s social and curatorial team and Better Bankside on From The Other Side, a poster campaign around the Bankside area. Her design, ’What Did You Think She Was Gonna Do?’ was displayed at The Bridge, a charity supporting women’s health and wellbeing
Cardus also works as a creative producer, advocate and mentor for other artists. During 2019 and 2020 she is working on radical activist film Section 136 with the artist Dolly Sen.
Supported by
The Way Ahead at GDIF 2023 is supported by Royal Parks, Greenwich Park, the Royal Borough of Greenwich, Royal Greenwich Festivals and Arts Council England.