Artist helps visually impaired fans at Glastonbury

An artist spent the weekend helping blind and partially-sighted people to enjoy their experience at Glastonbury Festival.

Zoe Partington, a contemporary visual artist from Shropshire, was part of a new team of visual guides helping fans find their way around the site.

Glastonbury organisers created the support team in a bid to attract more visually-impaired visitors and “bring more areas of the festival to life” for them.

Ms Partington, of Cleobury Mortimer, who is partially-sighted herself, told BBC Radio Shropshire the experience had been “amazing”.

“It’s been brilliant. This has been the first year where we’ve had sighted guides available for blind and partially-blind people, to help them get to wherever they want to go and just have a fantastic time,” she said.

She praised the infrastructure that organisers had put in place, including the accessible campsite, showers, toilets and staff.

Ms Partington, who also gives advice on accessibility to museum and galleries, said many visually-impaired people had previously told her they would not go to the festival because of concerns over accessibility.

But since the creation of the new visual guides team, she has since been told by many of them that they would now consider it.

“It’s definitely been a success and we just want to build on it,” she added.

Speaking of her own experience, she said Paloma Faith was her favourite act of the weekend, describing her set as “absolutely brilliant”.

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