Arts Access Scheme - Digital Membership System

Arts Council England intends to commission a Digital Membership System (DMS), as part of a programme of work to develop a UK-wide access scheme, which will improve access, usability, and inclusion for D/deaf, disabled and neurodivergent people to creative and cultural activity across the UK.

The access scheme will improve the D/deaf, disabled and neurodivergent audience experience of creative and cultural organisations by offering practical tools that will help organisations offer better access provisions in a more efficient manner, underpinned by industry backed access standards for the sector as well as training and support to meet those standards.

It will also provide audience insights for partners and participating venues.

The scheme's DMS will be one of the cornerstones of the scheme, as a tool which facilitates the connection between creative and cultural organisations and their customers.

The DMS will allow customers to sign up to the scheme and create a profile giving details of their access requirements.

Organisations will also sign up via the DMS and create profiles for their access provisions and performances.

The database of organisations and their provisions will be used to create access directories to aid customers to find events and activities that meet their requirements.

Organisations will also be able to subscribe to the access scheme, giving them access to the database of customers and their requirements.

The DMS will therefore be a tool which allows customers to quickly and easily share their requirements with any arts or cultural organisation they wish to attend, either through tech integrations with their existing ticketing and CRM software or by manual look up.

We are open to different approaches to delivering a DMS either being procured from a consortium or a single multi-disciplined supplier, with the development work occurring within the UK.

We would welcome the opportunity to talk with a supplier or suppliers about potential solutions, either using existing technology or developing a new system for the task.

We are particularly interested in speaking with disabled-led or organisations with a particular focus on disability and accessibility.

We would like to engage in Pre-market engagement in August/September 2023 to explore the available options for developing the DMS.

Please note, this early market engagement is not the start of the formal procurement process, but an opportunity to discuss the project more openly before the formal process begins.

We do, however, have a developed scope of requirements that we will share with those we invite to take part in the pre-market engagement to inform the discussion.

Please forward some brief information (max 2 sides of A4) about your organisation and your experience of developing similar digital systems to procurement.services@artscouncil.org.uk .

Please put "Access Scheme; Digital Membership System" in the email title.