The inaugural edition of Ability Fest has been dubbed a huge success, with event not only raising $200,000 for Aussies with disabilities, but also being so well-received that organisers have already announced the festival’s return for 2019.
Last month, we received the news that the inaugural Ability Fest was set to take place in Melbourne this month. On Saturday afternoon, the festival kicked off with acts such as Japanese Wallpaper, Kingswood, Flight Facilities & Client Liaison, Tkay Maidza, and Boo Seeka all coming together to help promote inclusiveness and awareness, while also raising money for kids with disabilities.
Speaking to triple j this morning, festival organiser and gold medal-winning Paralympian Dylan Alcott explained how happy he was with the end result of the festival. “I keep bloody tearing up thinking about it because it was one of the most special days I was involved in,” Alcott explained.
“One of the best days of my life. Nobody cared about their race, gender, sexual orientation, and most importantly, their disability,” he continued. “I had so many people with disabilities come up [to me] and it was the first time they’d ever been to a festival with their family and friends, in tears, saying thank you.”
With 5,000 people descending upon the Coburg Velodrome on Saturday, the festival was so successful that it managed to raise between $150-200,000 in donations towards the Dylan Alcott Foundation. “If you didn’t make it you can still donate,” Dylan explained. “We gave our first donation to a little kid called Jin who’s eight years old, gave him a $10,000 wheelchair so hopefully he can be a Paralympian as well.”
To make the news of the festival’s success even better, both Dylan Alcott and festival organisers Untitled have revealed that Ability Fest is set to become a staple of the Aussie festival scene.
“I’m very grateful to Dylan for giving us the opportunity to work with him to fulfil the dream of his to create an inclusive music festival and to work with him to help normalize disability and Ability Fest will be back in 2019 even bigger than this year’s first event,” explained Untitled Group’s co-director, Nick Greco.
“Saturday was such an important step forward in pushing for an all-inclusive society, from the moment the gates opened you could sense the positivity in all directions, from the patrons to the artists, to the suppliers, it was great to be a part of.”
So if you missed out on heading along to the first edition of Ability Fest, you’re set to have future chances to take place in this stunning event, which will hopefully lead to a number of positive changes in the way that live music is delivered.
“Everyone talks about how inclusion and accessibility is hard and costs money. But it wasn’t hard, and you change the lives of a lot of people,” explained Dylan Alcott. “Hopefully people follow our lead and spend more time and effort to be more inclusive.”
“I think able-bodied people sometimes take for granted just the simple things in life and I’m lucky that I’ve always got to do things like this but I know for millions of people out there they might not have ever had that opportunity and that’s why we did it, for moments like that because everybody deserves to have fun and everybody deserves to enjoy music.”
Check out Dylan Alcott thanking the crowd at Ability Fest:
