Extant – Post Enhance – Evaluation Summary – 2025/26 (Year 2)

Contributions from Caroline Jeyaratnam-Joyner (Enhance Training Manager), Ian Abbott (Operations Director) and Matthew Cock (Independent Evaluator)

Background

This is a summary of the outcomes of our Yr2 Post Enhance project. Post Enhance is a 3-year project working with up to 54 touring theatre companies and 18 venues and it is funded by the Paul Hamlyn Foundation. It enables us to train visually impaired facilitators and access workers to deliver access provision which supports small-scale touring companies and venues to engage with visually impaired audiences where audio description is not possible. Please click here to read the findings from Yr1, how we define Post Enhance and its origins.

We commissioned the independent evaluator Matthew Cock to evaluate the project and agreed a plan based on 13 outcomes for different groups and have shared a number of different ones here: visually impaired audiences (V), partner venues and companies (P), facilitators and access workers (F).

Our Year 2 venue partners were: ZOO Venues (Edinburgh), Battersea Arts Centre (London), Norwich Theatre (Norwich), Live Theatre (Newcastle), Attenborough Arts Centre (Leicester) and Liverpool Everyman and Playhouse (Liverpool). For Yr2, we have changed the grading methodology for 2025/26, by replacing green, amber and red with:

Grade A: good progress is evident, future improvement / progress is possible.

Grade B: some progress is evident, future improvement / progress is expected.

Grade C: little or no progress is evident at this stage of the project.

We have also added Ungraded: where no evaluation, or an insufficient amount of evaluation took place to be able to grade. [In Y1, these were scored as Red (now Grade C), but in practice, all those that were red in Y1 should have been Ungraded

Executive Summary

“There is no doubt that the Facilitators and Access Workers have been well trained and supported by Extant to deliver a high-quality service to venues and companies, covering awareness, guiding, communication with VI audiences, and delivering touch tours and programme notes. The excellent quality has clearly been maintained and improved in key areas across Years 1 and 2. There’s also evidence that – when it’s for the right type of production, and good engagement from the touring company – it works very well, and Enhance productions are hugely enjoyed by visually impaired audiences. It’s also clearly often the best form of access in many cases. Between them, survey respondents stated that Enhance was more ‘immersive’, ‘creative’, ‘holistic’, ‘hands on’, ‘personal’, ‘enjoyable’, and ‘cost effective’, when compared to traditional theatre AD.” [MC]

“The Yr2 development of Enhance Advocates – local visually impaired people who promote our social event ‘Meet Extant’ at the theatre, together with the specific Enhance shows across all regions – has led to deeply engaged audiences. The purpose of the roles is to offer paid, freelance work to visually impaired people, who grow new visually impaired networks to stimulate interest in going to the theatre in their area. We welcome people who have never been to the theatre before and those who have become fearful of going out after dark in unfamiliar areas. With this person-centred approach of telling people about the Enhance events, our Enhance Advocates help to bring down the barriers, and to meet people where they are at.” [CJJ]

“For Yr2, we set ourselves an ambitious challenge, to find a venue partner at the largest and most inaccessible performing arts festival in the world – the Edinburgh Festival Fringe – and see if we could make a difference in a festival context. James Mackenzie from ZOO Venues stepped up to the challenge and not only said yes to ensuring three of the productions that were part of the programme at ZOO would be enhanced, but he made a commitment that every production at the venue would have some form of access for visually impaired audiences by following our Ladder of Access. This generated a huge amount of industry and press attention, ensuring that Extant and the Post-Enhance featured on BBC TV, BBC Radio 4, The Guardian, The Stage, The Scotsman and many more. A case study for how festivals could become more accessible to visually impaired audiences was born.” IA

Summary of progress on Outcomes for 25-26

Visually Impaired Audiences

V1: VI audiences feel their access needs were met by Post Enhance

Grade A in Y2 and Y1

• 88% rated the quality of the Touch Tour as Good or Very good. (85% in Y1)
• 88% said that they Never or Rarely felt unsure about which character was speaking at any time during the production. (85% in Y1)
• 75% of survey respondents rated the quality of venue staff’s VI awareness and support as Good or Very good. (80% in Y1)

Overall, the response was, again very positive.

Partners

P1: Partner venues / companies broaden their ambition to reach more VI audiences

Grade B in Y2 (Ungraded in Y1)

One of the theatre companies – Handlebards – who worked with Extant in Year 2 (alongside partner venue Norwich Theatre) valued and enjoyed the Post Enhance process so much, they commissioned Extant to work with them on their new show, at a pre-production stage (Pre-Enhance). This delivered in May 2026 and in an interview with a member of the company, they described the experience very positively and noted that Handlebards were continuing to work with Extant in this new way, demonstrating the value of the collaboration.

Liverpool Everyman and Playhouse are planning to add Post Enhance on top to their existing commitment to delivering AD for shows. By running Meet Extant events and making this a part of their ongoing community and audience development, they are confident that this will bring in new and additional VI audiences and give existing VI audiences a broader choice of shows and performances.

P3 Partner venues / companies upskill in how to create and host enhanced shows

Grade A in Y2 +Y1

• Visual Impairment Awareness Training: 94% rated quality as Good or Very good (97% in Y1).
• Touch Tour training: 100% rated quality as Good or Very good (92% in Y1)
• Upcoming Post Enhance shows: 83% of company members felt Completely or Quite prepared. (100% in Y1)

Facilitators and Access Workers

“One of our Enhance facilitators created script-like programme notes for High Tides ‘And More Ghost Stories’ and Wild Rumpus’ ‘A Merry Misrule’ at Battersea Arts Centre. Both companies embraced the scope for immersive elements within the Touch Tour – ‘And More Ghost Stories’ took place with audience members listening intently to the atmospheric nature of the programme notes, then moving onto the darkly lit stage to interact with the actors, set and the props. Whilst the touch tour for ‘A Merry Misrule’ was promenade, leading attendees through the four immersive rooms of the show, creating an opportunity to enjoy a genuinely multi-sensory Touch Tour.” (CJJ)

F1 Facilitators / Access Workers train with Extant on Enhance methodologies, gaining confidence, skills and paid employment:

Grade A in Y2 (Grade B in Y1)

• 100% of Facilitators and Access Workers agreed or strongly agreed that the training fully prepared them for the delivery of Visual Impairment Awareness Training
• 100% of Facilitators agreed or strongly agreed that the training fully prepared them for the creation of Programme notes.
• 100% of Facilitators felt that the Post Enhance methodology has been ‘well’ or ‘very well’ received by the people they had trained.

Conclusion

“We go into Yr3 knowing that for Post Enhance to work a lot has to be right – the right type of production (e.g. we know that dance, circus and long, two act musicals work less well), the right type of engagement from the company (e.g. open to new approaches to access and who don’t make changes to the production after we’ve delivered the training) and organisations who have sufficient capacity in their schedule and staff’s time for preparation, training and evaluation (roughly 1-2 days).

The future of the programme might rely on the costs to potential clients being lower than traditional AD. However, Post Enhance costs vary, and in some cases can be higher than traditional AD (e.g. at a venue that already has the equipment, and a regular local audio describer).

One of the areas we’re thinking about is how we can use the Enhance tool kit (which will be distributed to all partners at the end of the project) alongside the documentary we’ve been creating for maximum impact. The documentary details all the different component parts of the Post-Enhance process, the impact of the programme on partners and the industry as well as advice for others who want to embark on this work in the future.” [MC]

“As has already been demonstrated with Handlebards in Norwich, Pre-Enhance doesn’t necessarily cost more when you plan it effectively in your creation and fundraising process. This is the first example that Post Enhance has catalysed from this wave and we want to see and influence more companies to bring access into their creative thinking at pre-production stage. One of the valuable pieces of data we worked out this year was, if our fee was 20% more than costs, we now know how many Posts Enhance shows per year we need to break even, and this includes the specific role to support and manage the programme. Another major impact in Yr2 was how Post Enhance dovetailed and connected with our artist development work at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe enabling us to deploy multiple internal and joined up resources to create a critical mass and a much bigger impact in one geographic area. This is something we will look to continue in the future.” [IA]

The full report is available here and in our Year 3 report, we’ll share how the facilitators and access workers worked with each other in the studio and premiere a new documentary which charts the story and impact of the entire Enhance programme.