This year, Bedford is proud to be sponsoring the first all-access City Lights tour designed and delivered by Access2Arts, as part of the City Lights program at Illuminate Adelaide.

This incredibly popular major event runs throughout July to light up some of Adelaide’s iconic landmarks and natural environs. The installations will be a sensory feast, and while it is especially spectacular from a visual perspective, a few additional supports will now provide an enhanced experience for people with disability.

“This is the first time Bedford and Illuminate Adelaide have come together for this fantastic event and we look forward to welcoming people of all ability to these amazing, inclusive displays,” Myron Mann, Bedford CEO says.

Rebecca Young, CEO of Access2Arts, says “art is important to all South Australians and we are thrilled to provide support for an all access program that enables people with a disability to fully experience the City Lights tour at Illuminate Adelaide.”

“We are thrilled to present three inclusive City Lights tours in Illuminate Adelaide 2022. This partnership welcomes all audiences to the event, and we thank Bedford for their encouragement and support and Access2Arts for their expertise and involvement.” Rachael Azzopardi and Lee Cumberlidge, Illuminate Adelaide Co-Founders and Creative Directors.

The tour will be hosted by Adelaide artist and disability advocate Andi Snelling and will cover six key sites along North Terrace featuring works from both local and international artists, and some of them will combine multi-sensory interactive elements.

The work by Squidsoup ‘Submergence’, for example, involves the viewer moving through thousands of individual points of suspended light that provide a tactile experience you can literally reach out and touch.

One of the key elements of the all-access tour will be the audio description delivered via headsets. This description will open up the experience to a whole new audience of art-lovers in the disability community. Audio describers provide a live commentary of the visual elements of the installations. This is designed for people who are blind and vision impaired, but is also proven to be helpful for people with Autism Spectrum disorders.

The descriptions of the works are creative, comprehensive, and provide an immediate context behind the stories of the artworks that help to enhance the experience. The audio describers don’t attempt to interpret the artwork - this is always left up to the person experiencing it first-hand, as it should be!

There will also be a Deaf-led Auslan tour, sharing key information about the background of each installation and providing an immersive experience for members of the Deaf community.

Inclusive and interactive installations featured within the tour include:

Submergence, by Squid Soup (located on the corner of Kintore Avenue and North Terrace)
Behind the Façade – by Dave Court (located at the Story Wall, State Library of South Australia Courtyard North Terrace)

The Pool, by Jen Lewin, (located on the South Australian Museum Lawns) - This installation will also be presented in a satellite event, Illuminate South Australia – In Depth in Mount Gambier (from 5 August)

Neon Winter, by Carla O’Brien (located on the South Australian Museum Lawns)

Going Out Bush, by Vincent Namatjira (projected on the front façade of the Art Gallery of South Australia); 

I Love Adelaide (located on the Goodman Crescent Lawn at the University of Adelaide, North Terrace)