This year we’ve broadened our interests by getting to know more about inclusion and learning how to implement it into our work. We’ve been visiting different organisations during the year, to get more familiar with what inclusion is, so we could transform our festival into an event that is accessible for anyone. 

At the beginning we thought that being inclusive means to implement absolutely everyone, from each background, medical condition, all foreigners who live in Žilina, and so on. Later we understood, that doing that is very complicated (impossible almost) and it is not at all what inclusion stands for.

 It is important to start slowly, to be curious about things that we do not understand. Trying to force anyone to be a part of something just because we want to be inclusive really isn’t the way. It is about getting to know different kinds of people. Being curious about who they are, what do they like to do. Letting them know what we do, making it clear and easy for them to become a part of it, if they are interested. By making the first step of getting out our comfort zone and activley putting the message out that we want people to be a part of this festival we are on the way to achiving our aims of an inclusive festival. At least this is my understanding of what can I do to be inclusive.

In general, we just try to think about everyone, about everybody’s needs, and we try to not exclude anyone out by doing something very particular. We are still learning and we will continue to do so, because it is important for us to explore new spheres and to improve in every possible way.