Active Impact and Wychwood Festival are working in partnership for the third year running!
Our CEO, Nicole, joined the Wychwood team on a site visit earlier in the year and had a great time exploring the site. It was a cold and windy walk around the icy, muddy fields in February, a long way from the (usually) hot and sunny weather of the festival weekend.
Even though Wychwood Festival is still a few months away, we’ve already been working closely with the festival planning team. Our focus has been on improving accessibility, particularly in terms of event layout and facilities for disabled guests.
The placement of the accessible campsite, blue badge parking, and the two Mobiloo mobile Changing Places toilet facilities have all been reviewed to better meet the needs of disabled guests.
“The Mobiloo(s) are a great feature! The Active Impact / chill out & sensory area also fantastic.”
A lot of the changes planned for Wychwood 2025 have come from feedback from disabled festival-goers at last year’s festival. Wychwood are using their OCWC grant to ensure there are hoist accessible toilets and all-age changing facilities in the arena AND the campsite.
On the ground over the festival weekend will be 100s of volunteer stewards plus a huge crew of security, production, and site management team members. We’ll be contributing to key briefings for those teams ahead of the event opening. This will mean all event staff and volunteers have guidance and training on being inclusive and having a positive ‘barrier removal’ focused approach to dealing with any queries that come for disabled festival-goers over the course of the weekend.
“Being able to take my son to the sensory tent saved us on the Saturday evening when he was overwhelmed.”
Active Impact is also facilitating a sensory chill-out space within the ‘Village Green,’ so anyone feeling overwhelmed can retreat into a calm space to recharge their festival spirit. Following feedback from families in previous years, this facility will remain open later into the evenings this year.
“My son came to the sensory chill out space a few times over the weekend to take chill out quiet time which was invaluable to us.”
We look forward to seeing lots of our OCWC families, and other disabled festival guests at Wychwood Festival 2025.
“Without the access advantages (toilets rated highly for my son’s needs), we as a family would never have thought a music festival would be possible. That being said, we all had an amazing time and made some lovely family memories and stayed the whole weekend! We cannot thank you enough for this wonderful experience.”
For more details, please visit Wychwood’s updated Accessibility Statement here.
