Enabling Lives Festival returns on 28 and 29 November with a new inclusive neighbourhood experience, bringing over 70 interactive festival programmes into the surrounding Redhill precinct.
Besides the Festival Hub at Enabling Village, the festival also moves into Redhill MRT station, Artra Festive Plaza and Delta Sport Centre, where people commute, shop, exercise and gather, creating new opportunities for visitors of all ages and abilities to learn, play and connect with persons with disabilities.
Visitors can also collect their festival passport at Redhill MRT station (Exit B), Delta Sports Centre or Enabling Village, and follow the self-guided trail featuring motifs created by artists with disabilities as their personal interpretations of inclusion. By completing activities at different touchpoints, visitors can collect stamps and redeem limited-edition merchandise featuring both characters at Enabling Village.
Festival highlights include:
– Inclusive sports: Familiar sports take on new dimensions when experienced together. At Delta Sport Centre, visitors can try blind football and inclusive pickleball; experience fencing and sitting volleyball alongside athletes of different abilities; or learn bocce from Special Olympics athletes.
– Dance, create and play in new ways: Discover different ways of experiencing movement, art and play. Deaf dancer and choreographer Ammar “Ameezy” leads a workshop exploring rhythm through movement, visual cues and vibrations. At the Portrait Cafe, visitors can interact with artists with ADHD, autism or cerebral palsy through gestures and visual cues as they create live portraits. They can also challenge national para-chess player Edwin Tan to a game, as he takes on two opponents simultaneously using tactile chessboards.
– Shop with purpose: Explore the largest I’mable Collective Market to date, featuring more than 50 brands across two days. Browse original artwork, handmade creations and everyday essentials, including products by creatives with disabilities and their caregivers.
– Multi-sensory theatre experience: Take little explorers on an immersive journey into the forest with Hu木an, a 45-minute sensory theatre experience for children aged three to five. Inspired by the National Museum of Singapore’s William Farquhar Collection of Natural History Drawings, the production invites young audiences to explore the natural world through touch, sound, smell and taste.
– Practical guidance for everyday encounters: Through Guiding Steps: Human Guide x Guide Dog, participants can experience navigating a neighbourhood route alongside facilitators with visual impairment, using specialised eyewear and white canes while learning appropriate sighted-guiding techniques. They can also meet guide dogs and their handlers to better understand their roles and how to interact with them.
