We Crip Film Festival celebrates Disabled creativity, joy and storytelling. Co‑created with Disabled communities and rooted in "nothing about us without us", the festival centres access from the start – creating welcoming spaces where Disabled-led stories are screened, shared and celebrated.
Overview
We Crip Film Festival is a celebration of Disabled cinema, talent and joy. Co-created by We Crip Film members, the festival is underpinned by the ethos of “Nothing about us without us”. Through collaboration with Programming, Events and Venue Operation teams, the Inclusion Team delivered an accessible festival that Disabled audiences can enjoy with the goal of creating safe spaces to celebrate Disabled stories at its core.
Challenge
Film festivals are inherently inaccessible, from the cost of attendance to how screenings and panel discussions are presented without access provisions. In 2023, the Accessibility Scorecard Impact Report highlighted that 73% of respondents experienced inaccessibility at the 75 reported-on festivals. With disability representation on screens low, and opportunities for Disabled filmmakers even lower, providing opportunities for Disabled stories to be seen by public audiences is more important now than ever.
Intervention
The weekend had many activities, including an opening night celebration with a screening of Deaf President Now and Q+A with deaf filmmaker Ted Evans and actor Sophie Leigh Stone offering insights into deaf culture. The next day, all events were sold out including two stellar shorts programmes and an In Conversation with the current We Crip Film Chair, Kyla Harris.
Access for all
Providing access provisions throughout the festival such as closed captions, live captions, BSL interpretation, audio description and quiet spaces was paramount to ensuring that we achieved our goals of creating a disability-led film festival. All screenings were in a relaxed setting, encouraging audiences to take breaks when needed and stim to their hearts’ content.
Collaborative curation
Partners included Oska Bright Film Festival, Triple C and We Crip Film members to create a diverse, well-rounded programme of events that catered to a wide variety of audiences with intersectionality in mind.
Knowledge sharing
We curated an industry-focused workshop that gathered accessibility practitioners from Canada, Spain and the UK to share their insights of best practices in their respective countries.
Representation of Disabled voices
From curation to press releases, Deaf, Disabled and neurodivergent programmers, filmmakers, producers and talent were consulted throughout the development and delivery of the programme.
Slow networking
Hosted by the Badge Café in the Reuben Library, we used a relaxed space to flip networking often seen at festivals to provide audiences a gentle and creative activity to engage with other audience members of the festival.
Thank you so much for organizing the We Crip Film Festival. It is such an effort to put on a well-organised event so we truly appreciate all your hard work. We walked away with more inspiration after the screening - everyone was so lovely, the films were amazing and the fresh pizzas were amazing too!”Chriz Naing, editor and associate producer on At See (part of the It’s Not You, It’s Ableism programme)
Practical steps we took
Venue accessibility
It was important that the venue was accessible. Careful consideration of screening rooms that were wheelchair accessible to and from different facilities were taken, ensuring that multiple access points were available in case lifts were not working on festival days.
Health and safety
Working with the Health and Safety, Facilities and Visitor’s Services teams to increase wheelchair spaces in screening rooms while maintaining compliance with our health and safety regulations.
Inclusive budgeting
From inception, budget for access provisions such as descriptive subtitles, audio description, BSL interpreters and live captioning was added to the event production budget. All filmmakers, speakers and workshop guests were offered remuneration for transport and speaking fees to alleviate the financial burden of attending an event in London.
Impact
What is the desired impact of this work and what would success look like?
- Sold out screenings: Audiences from all different backgrounds were engaged and enthusiastic about the films and events throughout the festival weekend.
- By demonstrating the BFI Southbank’s ability to host a programme led by Disabled people for Disabled audiences, this has increased the confidence of our programming, events and venue staff to embed inclusive practice at other events across the BFI.
Thank you so much for organising this fantastic screening, and for including Living With It among such amazing films. It was so wonderful to meet everyone, and I hope to see you all again in the future!”Holly Summerson, writer-director of Living With It (part of the It’s Not You, It’s Ableism programme)
Deep dive
An audience member who uses a wheelchair and is neurodivergent expressed how attending screenings and surrounding events throughout the festival made her feel emotional. Having the opportunity to bond with other Disabled creatives over their shared experiences and love for creating made them feel safe and seen. To document their experience during the festival, they created a reel to showcase the accessible provisions that they used to be fully present at We Crip Film: Jo’s day at WCFF.
Continued advocacy and next steps
This work is currently delivered by the Inclusion team in collaboration with the Public Programme and Audiences (PP&A teams) with a split in budget commitments, we are advocating for this strand of work to be delivered by the Programmes department as part of its annual programme.
We’re ensuring continued advocacy for continuous improved customer service and quality of access provisions for Disabled audiences.
We’re also making sure that future editions of We Crip Film Festival are rooted in crip joy and community!