If you’re involved in building audiences for culture and the arts in the UK today, the chances are that maximising ‘Equalities and Access’ is high up on your agenda. Throughout our sector, venues and organisations share a common goal of increasing the number and range of people engaging and participating in the cultural experiences on offer, ramping up engagement levels beyond “traditional” audiences to reach those groups and communities currently least engaged.

In Scotland, several respected groups are making headway in developing organisational change programmes that place equalities at the heart of their day-to-day operations. They include Artlink Edinburgh, Dundee Rep Theatre/Scottish Dance Theatre, Enterprise Music Scotland, Glasgow Film Theatre, Macrobert Arts Centre and the Scottish Poetry Library, and they’re working together under Creative Scotland’s Promoting Equalities Programme to fly the flag as equalities leaders, advocates and developers for the cultural sector.

We’ve taken a closer look at some of the practical tools and creative solutions that other organisations within and beyond Scotland’s cultural sector are using to understand and connect with the new or hard-to-reach groups that have historically been absent or under-represented in their audience profiles.

Sport is renowned for its power to inspire and uplift, and to positively showcase diversity and inclusion at its finest. Nowhere was this more evident than at the opening event of the London 2012 Olympics – transmitted around the world, and viewed by millions of captivated spectators. The ceremony included a stunning performance from the cast of Breathe – a talented company of 64 circus, dance and cabaret performers, the majority of whom have learning disabilities and physical impairments. Breathe was an Unlimited commission – one of 29 works contracted to profile the work of deaf and disabled artists as part of the Cultural Olympiad.

The dance world has an impressive track record when it comes to delivering work that tackles the barriers people with disabilities face in accessing quality arts activity. Staged by Scottish inclusive dance development company Indepen­-dance at Glasgow’s Tramway between 27-30 August 2014, Gathered Together was another example of bringing together international performers to showcase work and share best practice. Gathered Together formed part of Scotland’s first International Inclusive Dance Festival: itself part of Get Scotland Dancing and the Glasgow 2014 Cultural Programme.

Back in England, meanwhile, charitable organization VocalEyes’ London Beyond Sight project concentrates on ‘translating’ landmarks and features into rich, verbal pictures for blind and partially sighted listeners. Well-known Londoners describe their favourite city sights, including VocalEyes patron Sir Derek Jacobi who can be heard describing the Old Vic; human rights campaigner Shami Chakrabarti of Liberty; Radio 1 DJ Rob da Bank, and ITV News presenter Sir Alastair Stewart.

Strategic thinking and clearly-focused audience targeting and engagement loom large in this project. VocalEyes drew in locally born celebrities, initiated funding partnerships and established firm production goals, recording only those 40 celebrities for whom they had available funding. It’s a great example of using shared language to extend cultural access to specific audience groups – but what about organisations whose mandate requires them to serve the widest possible audience, where no common language exists? Where your audience literally cannot understand or communicate with you?

This is the thorny situation faced daily by staff at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Centre in Ohio. With a deep-rooted commitment to its access and equalities agenda, the hospital is already recognised as the “Best Healthcare Facility for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Patients and Families”, and work is in progress to develop a clinic to serve the particular needs of transgender adolescents. In 2012, staff at the hospital cared for young patients from more than 90 countries. This massively culturally diverse group included many patients and their families with limited proficiency in English. To dispense with language and cultural barriers and bring every patient and family member into the fold, the hospital switched to universal signage and introduced training to ensure its effective use by medical interpreters. As a result, more communities can access healthcare services, including assistance from patient services units trained in improving culturally-sensitive, competent healthcare skills. Young patients and their families benefit from clear communications, enhancing their treatment experience and interaction with clinicians and staff.

Closer to home, Glasgow Museums has also been swift to grasp the power of sign language to overcome barriers to inclusion, in their case for deaf visitors. Through a series of short videos, produced in British Sign Language (BSL) and International Sign, the Museum’s teams deliver helpful visitor information profiling their most popular attractions. Videos are displayed online and at the entrances to Riverside Museum and the Peoples’ Palace and Winter Gardens. An informal monthly BSL Language Café is held at St Mungo’s Museum of Religious Life and Art for novices and veterans alike.

Access and inclusion programmes frequently both young people and the elderly, though not necessarily in tandem. One particularly heart-warming project that links these groups as well as transcending geographical barriers to inclusion comes from the education sector in Brazil, where CNA Language Schools worked with creative agency FCB Brazil to launch “The Speaking Exchange”. CNA has half a million students learning English, many of these being young people keen to practice their language skills with a native speaker. FCB Brazil spotted an opportunity to connect these young people with the largely house-bound residents of the Windsor Park retirement Community in Chicago, harnessing web-cam based technology to provide the elderly community with the stimulating conversation and social interaction they craved, whilst giving students a real-life opportunity to practice their language skills. Teachers were present throughout to subtly monitor and record proceedings.

The Speaking Exchange has proven a massive hit, and not only with its conversational participants: widespread international news coverage followed the launch, with one YouTube video alone having attracted close to 1.5 million views.

Back in the world of arts and culture, for many organisations financial means presents the greatest barrier to participation for local community groups. So, how about doing away with ticket prices altogether? A bold proposition, but Mixed Blood Theatre in Minneapolis, USA has pioneered exactly that.

At the instigation of their Board, the company launched its Radical Hospitality programme in September 2010 in response to audience research that consistently revealed ticket prices as the biggest barrier to access. Mixed Blood aims to produce challenging, thought-provoking work, while diversifying their audience so that when people see the work onstage, they experience it as part of a widely-differing group and this enhances the experience. Their Free Speech programme further allows audiences to engage with work via social media, in writing and in person. Post show Free Forums allow the audience to lead conversations around issues they consider important, while a Sunday Salon series extends audience members further access to material by engaging community experts to discuss issues raised within the play.

In Wales, the five-year Sherman 5 project – which works with disadvantaged communities in Cardiff and beyond – offers more welcome success stories of opening access for local groups, with a single pilot scheme resulting in 594 new audience visits to Sherman Cymru productions at the company’s Cardiff theatre base. New audiences joining Sherman 5 receive a membership card, information booklet and free ticket to their first Sherman 5 night, plus ticket deals for further visits. Eight “Sherman Families” are to be recruited to receive free entrance to productions for one year, with the only condition being that they commit to reportihng their theatre experiences through news site WalesOnline.

Another Sherman 5 success involving a Romeo & Juliet Mash Up saw Shakespeare reworked though music, art and dance, involving an international cast. Audience members were photographed, and 130 portraits of new Sherman 5 members exhibited in the foyer.

So, a whistlestop, transatlantic tour of engagement and participation projects firmly focused around the Access and Equalities agenda. Different organisations, different situations, different audiences – but one common thread: these real-life examples all prove that lateral thinking, innovation and creativity can help to encourage diversity and increase participation among traditionally ‘hard to reach’ groups, through activities that identify and address the needs of diverse audiences to generate increased engagement and sustained buy-in.