Making Polka Accessible – Executive Director and Joint CEO Lynette Shanbury writes about accessibility and inclusion at Polka
31st January 2025
Welcome to Polka
“This is a truly terrific venue. I am both a teacher of SEND children and a professional actor, having worked in children’s theatre. The quality of the productions is fantastic… the support my children received from the staff was fantastic.” – Teacher feedback
Everyone is welcome at Polka Theatre. Inclusion is one of our five organisational values and in 2024 we were thrilled to win the UK Theatre Award for Most Welcoming Theatre.
We make it a core mission to ensure that every child who walks through our doors gets an equally brilliant experience, and also offer bespoke, adapted experiences for children who need them. So, we’re doing everything we can to walk the walk.
Polka is more than a theatre, it is a community hub – our warm play space and outside garden and play area are open-access and free to use 6 days per week, 50 weeks per year. You don’t need a ticket to enjoy Polka. Last year over 11,000 visitors used these spaces for free. For those who do buy a ticket, our prices are kept as low as possible and every performance in our Main Theatre has tickets starting at just £10.
In 2024 over 125,000 children and adults experienced Polka’s work, and we were delighted to receive the Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Award at the recent Merton Best Business awards. Our Community and Teacher Working Groups – made up of local parents, teachers and community groups who meet regularly with us, and our Young Voices ambassadors – all help to advise us on the needs in our community and what they would like to see us doing.
Accessibility from the start
When Polka officially opened its doors on 20th November 1979, it became the UK’s first theatre venue dedicated exclusively to children. A unique feature for the time, the theatre was designed to ensure that the building was fully accessible to any disabled visitor. Founder Richard Gill took inspiration from his aunt, Lady Allen of Hurtwood, a promoter of child welfare. There were special lifts, ramps instead of stairs and the theatre seats were specifically designed to be removable to allow space for patrons who were wheelchair users. The playground was also specially designed to be as inclusive as possible. This was at a time when accessibility in a venue, even just having a lift, was not necessarily standard.
When Polka went through a major redevelopment from 2019-2021, further improvements and upgrades to accessibility were at the core of the design. This included new larger lifts to more levels (including the Main Theatre stage for the first time), levelled access across the whole of the ground floor, new interactive sensory equipment in our Clore Learning Studio (perfect for SEND workshops), a sensory garden, and adapted dressing room facilities for disabled performers. The interior layout and decoration was intensely thought through with architects Foster Wilson Size and theatre designer Laura McEwen, to provide a space which was inspirational and vibrant but also sensitive to different sensory needs (for example design features that aid acoustic dampening to control noise levels, carpets that are comfortable to children’s touch but don’t impede wheelchair users’ movement, and contrasting colours that help visually impaired people navigate the space).
When we re-opened in 2021, we launched our now flourishing volunteer programme. Over 100 volunteers give their time each year on our Visitor Services team to make sure that everyone receives a warm welcome. Our volunteers very much represent our community, including a wide diversity of ethnicities and over 20% identifying as disabled or neurodivergent. This programme has become a particularly important way that we help children to normalise seeing and understanding disability – if they can chat to a disabled person in a relaxed environment on a visit to Polka, everyone benefits. Plus seeing disability represented on-stage is also vital – if children can’t recognise themselves represented in the shows they watch, why would they believe they can aspire to perform themselves? More about that later.
Adapted Performances
As a theatre creating professional work for children, our atmosphere is naturally a relaxed one. But Polka was one of the first theatres in the UK to provide what are now recognised as specific Relaxed Performances, starting back in 2006, and which are now commonly replicated in theatres nationwide. These shows were originally aimed to appeal to families with children who are on the autism spectrum or have additional sensory needs, but they have since evolved to be for anyone who would find a more relaxed atmosphere helpful or who would benefit from a less restrictive theatre environment.
At our current Relaxed Performances, we limit audience capacity to around 50% to give everyone a bit more room to move around the space should they need throughout the performance. We also have general lighting levels slightly higher so the room never goes to complete blackout, and (depending on the show) tone down some of the louder noises, or offer samples of big moments from the show in advance. We also produce a Visual Story (both show specific and general venue) which gives information and photos in advance about coming to the venue and what to expect from the show. The cast on stage will often introduce themselves to the audience to separate actor from character, setting up the on-stage story as fiction and fantasy rather than reality. Depending on the show, there might be other changes made to make sure the experience is a relaxed one. And, as with all performances, if people need to go out to take a breather, they can do that at any time and sit in our dedicated chill-out space.
“@polkatheatre are amazing when it comes to accessibility. Social story, hearing loop, sensory room, wheelchair access all provided for us <3” – Teacher
Our adapted performances also include BSL Interpreted, Audio Described (including pre-show Touch Tours) and Captioned performances – last year we delivered 34 adapted performances, which is far more than most theatres. We’ve really noticed demand for these performances increase in the last few years, including from schools, and we get amazing feedback from audiences. Increasingly we are also working with artists to create productions which have integrated inclusion at their heart. Our annual co-production with Derby Theatre places Deaf artists in the lead – productions are created using BSL and then interpreted into spoken English, with integrated BSL, captioning and audio description throughout. Not only do these performances offer a route into performance for SEN groups, but they also normalise this level of integrated accessibility for anyone who is attending the shows.
“This show was the hallmark in the seamless integration of accessibility, diversity, representation and storytelling. I hope the whole of the arts world takes note and that this marks a real change. This is absolutely how it should be done.” – Audience feedback
Creative Learning
Our extensive Creative Learning programmes are designed to ensure underserved audiences get to see our work.
Our programme is varied and ranges from onsite workshops such as our weekly drop-in sessions; Rhyme and Sign – multi-sensory storytelling workshops delivered using simple sign language and rhymes with actions – to our fully funded Arts Access programme where we deliver workshops either at Polka or in the school setting. These funded workshops linked to productions are to help children in SEND settings prepare for, then process and build on the experience of attending a performance.
Our Schools Manager works closely with schools, education and access professionals to develop opportunities specially designed for Deaf, disabled and neurodivergent children. We know that every child and every school is different, therefore we work collaboratively with the schools to ensure each workshop is tailor-made to suit the group’s learning style and requirements.
“A fantastic workshop pitched at exactly the right level for complex needs students involved.” – Teacher feedback
Our Clore Learning Studio is dedicated to our Creative Learning activities. It also transforms into our ‘Sensory Space’, an area specifically designed to support Deaf, disabled and neurodivergent children and young people to engage, explore and learn. The Sensory Space includes an interactive floor that responds to gesture and movement, creating dynamic images. We have a system of coloured light beams that create interactive wall projections with pop-up images, sound effects and music. We tailor-make the workshops to the specific shows, topic or theme requested by the school or group.
“The workshops and the show were such wonderful, positive experiences for our special needs children. They especially benefitted from the small group learning activities offered in the workshop. These were pitched at just the right level! Thank you! We will definitely be bringing back our children for future shows and workshops.” – Audience feedback
We are finding that more and more of our classes and workshops are attended by children who benefit from additional support to help them focus and gain as much from the sessions as possible. This may be through 1-2-1 support for an individual child, or an additional assistant for the whole group. We recently introduced a new role of Access Assistant, who works with children, alongside Lead Practitioners and Workshop Assistants, to ensure that all participants feel supported and able to explore and progress as individuals through engagement with all our Creative Learning activity. They troubleshoot barriers to engagement and role model active participation, and this is particularly effective over multiple weeks. We provide these Access Assistants, and any training they need, through charitable funding as we know that the extra cost would be a barrier to participating groups.
School engagement is also vital to making sure we reach children who otherwise might not ever go to the theatre. In 1994, Polka received a £40,000 Vivien Duffield Theatre Award to establish the pioneering audience development initiative Curtain Up!, a free ticketing and subsidised transport scheme for schools. It enables children who otherwise wouldn’t be able to attend the theatre, due to financial or other barriers, to do so for the first time, including children from Special Schools. The programme, which is still running 30 years on, has introduced over 45,000 school children to the magic of theatre since it began. This year we’ll be giving 9,000 free tickets away through Curtain Up!.
Its all about attitude
Our 2024 award as UK Theatre’s Most Welcoming Theatre attests not only to the building’s physically inclusive and accessible features, but also the absolute commitment by the team to a culture of inclusion. Everyone knows that there’s always more we can do to make things better.
Practical things that are easy include having ear defenders available from Box Office and adding an accessibility tool to our website that allows customisation. Our Marketing team are fierce gate-keepers of all things accessibility in our comms, and have created an accessibility and colour contrast guide which they shared at a recent all-staff team day. But most important is that the staff and volunteer team are on the same page when it comes to finding solutions for any situation that arises, and that we plan accessibility into the beginning of all projects. Bi-annual in-house Access & Inclusion training helps to get the basics right, particularly that everyone understands our commitment to the Social Model of Disability and what that means in everyday practice.
“My 15yo son and I attended the 11am show and we were greeted by such a kind deputy manager… She must have noticed the sunflower lanyard my son was wearing and had excellent signing skills which were so welcome to us. … we appreciated your theatre being so accommodating for the non-verbal, SEND bunch.” Audience feedback
“I just wanted to say a massive thank you to the team working today. My son … is temporarily in a wheelchair, from the first lady at the box office I spoke to when booking, to the team today, every one of your team is an asset to your company. The courtesy call this morning to check access needs took me by surprise, it was a lovely touch.” Audience feedback
And there’s always more we can do. At our weekly staff operations meeting there is a BSL ‘sign of the day’ that we can all learn. Plus we have an Access, Diversity and Inclusion staff group that meets biannually to review any arising issues, come up with new ideas and lead on championing access across the organisation. Importantly this group includes at least one person from every department, because access is everyone’s responsibility, and includes the CEOs so that ideas can get quickly green-lit. At our most recent meeting we decided to put together a Sensory Toolkit for our chill-out space (including sensory toys and headphones, building on suggestions by a relaxed performance consultant we’d brought into a recent rehearsal), and also to set up an internal language bank to help everyone keep up to date with appropriate language. We also discussed an ongoing area of work by our Ticketing team, exploring how to make the booking process for access patrons more streamlined and autonomous.
Children deserve the most extraordinary, ambitious and sophisticated theatre, just like any adult. We have a huge responsibility to make this a reality, because often we are a child’s very first experience of going to the theatre or taking part in a creative workshop. It has to be a positive experience, or we run the risk that they might turn away from theatre forever. At Polka we want to make sure that every child is included in that ambition.
Written by Lynette Shanbury.