Extant and ZOO announce Edinburgh Festival Fringe Partnership

Extant and ZOO are working in partnership to make ZOO the first fully accessible venue for visually impaired audiences at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 2025. All shows in ZOO’s programme will offer different forms of access for visually impaired audiences, including audio described performances.

Headlining ZOO’s accessible programme for the festival will be three shows featuring Extant Enhance, a pioneering programme that augments performances for visually impaired audiences, providing low-fi interventions of live programme notes and creative touch tours, presented by the theatre company one hour before the performance.

Extant will also provide all ZOO’s staff and the show’s creators with visual impairment awareness training. Visually impaired audiences will be encouraged to attend performances through ‘Extant Theatre Club’, and we will add to this unique programme our second annual ‘Open House on Access’ event.

We hope that this collaboration between Extant and ZOO will provide visually impaired people with the confidence that they will be welcomed and supported when attending performances at the world’s largest and most exciting arts festival, Edinburgh Festival Fringe. For full details on performances and events, please visit ZOO’ website www.zoofestival.co.uk

Hear from James Mackenzie, ZOO Artistic Director on this partnership:

“We’re incredibly proud to be working in partnership with Extant to make ZOO the first fully accessible venue for visually impaired audiences at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 2025. Theatre and live performance should be for everyone, making work accessible isn’t just important – it’s essential. It brings new audiences into the conversation, and makes space for more voices and work to be shared. We’re hugely excited to be leading the way on this with Extant and very glad to be making the Fringe more accessible.”