Count me in! Oerol
Midsland, Netherlands
Performing Arts
“Count me in!” is all about sharing stories that highlight diversity, equality, inclusion, accessibility, and belonging in the seat of art festivals. In this series you will hear their stories, and see how we can all make a difference by standing up for each other.

During the second weekend of our 10 day festival we have two focus programmes for the deaf community and the blind community. Our 'Visual Language Weekend' focusses on visitors from the deaf community, who often communicate via visual language mediums. We provide interpretation for our theatre, music and storytelling programming in Dutch Sign Language and with surtitling, as well as additional programming performed by artists from the deaf community. Our 'Tangible Language Weekend' is accessible for visitors who are blind or visually impaired, with Meet and Feels and audiodescription to make our programming come to life. We also work with ambassadors from these communities to facilitate groups who come to the festival specifically for these weekends. Suppose you need an interpreter during the weekend for a performance where no interpretation is planned. In that case, you can use our ‘Jut de Tolk’ initiative. Just like the people of the Wadden Islands beachcombing for what they need along the coast (in Dutch known as jutten), as a visitor, you can ‘jut’ an interpreter. As a result of this work, we have been described as a 'Koploper' (front-runner) as part of Handicap NL's #onbeperktfeest programme. This is just one of the many initiatives we carry out in terms of DEIAB practices. We have programmes working specifically with newcomers to The Netherlands, with young culture from diverse cultural backgrounds, and work within our own organisation to ensure representation and a plurality of perspectives.
More info: oerol.nl
(General editor: Simon Mundy)