Shrewsbury Folk Festival does its very best to accommodate disabled visitors and judging by the number of disabled people attending the festival we must be succeeding on some levels. Purely based on observation we estimate that the festival attracts a higher proportion of disabled visitors than most other folk festivals. We have reserved seating for disabled members of our audience, we have specific camping areas for disabled visitors with appropriately designed loos, we charge scooter and wheelchair batteries overnight, free of charge, and our steward to visitor ratio is almost 10:1 with over 450 stewards on the festival site, including a good number of disabled stewards.

The actual cost of accommodating disabled visitors is marginally higher than that for able bodied attendees. Granted the concession is small, but as some other contributors to this thread have pointed out, we do have bills to pay. And that concessionary price remains constant during the whole period when tickets are on sale. When the early bird offer ends at the end of March the full price ticket increases by £15 making the concessionary ticket £20 cheaper than the full price.

One of the wonderful things about folk festivals is their diversity, large, small, traditional, contemporary, concert based or session based, some expensive, some not, but they are all pretty marvellous. They all reflect the enthusiasm and ambition of the people who run them. We aim to bring the best artists to Shrewsbury Folk Festival, some of them are famous, many are not, but we set our sites high, and we try to present them in the best possible way, and we try to bring them to as broad an audience as possible. Over 5000 people watched all of our main stage concerts free of charge last year. Our live internet broadcast was watched all over the world including large numbers in the UK.

We are not discriminating against disabled people and have to charge a realistic price for our tickets to cover our costs. We are a four day festival presenting the cream of the folk world for about £25 a day, this works out at about £2:00 an hour for those hours when performance is taking place. For that you get four sound stages, an immense dance marquee and over 190 separate events during the festival, a children's festival, youth events, workshops, lectures, sessions, free buses, pub sessions (three organised by the festival) showers and great toilets.

We are a small team who love folk music and care about providing good value for money and strive to provide an interesting programme on a site which is comfortable and safe for our visitors. We continually reassess all aspects of the festival and try to make improvements every year. No festival can be all things to all men or women but we do try.

All the Best

Alan