We are committed to making our building and our work accessible. Below you can find out about how we can help meet some common access requirements. If you can’t find the information you are looking for, or if you would like to chat to someone about an accessibility at ARC, you can contact our Box Office team on 01642 525199 or email [email protected]
Companions Tickets and Accessible Seating
A free ticket is available to a companion accompanying a disabled person to an event, where it is an access requirement.
If you have any access requirements, such as requiring accessible seating, you can send us an access form and we’ll add the information you provide to your customer account.
Download access requirement form
You can bring this back to us in person during our opening times, email it to our Box Office team, or post it to us at the Address below. We’ll confirm with you when we have received this.
ARC
Dovecot Street
Stockton on Tees
TS18 1LL
Organisations and groups can also complete this form – you will just need to let us know the organisations name, the name of the person authorised to make bookings for your group, and let us know what the access requirements of members of the group are, including the ratio of companion tickets required for a group visit
Audio Description
Audio description is commentary that aims to describe body language, expressions and movements to blind or visually impaired audience members, thereby offering additional information about the film through sound. Our cinema is equipped with a system that delivers audio description through a headset. The audio description runs each time the film is shown and is undetectable to anyone not wearing a headset.
Many of our cinema screenings have an audio description facility. If you would like to use it when visiting our cinema, please let the Box Office know when booking your tickets. You can also let us know this by using the access requirements box when booking online.
BSL Interpreted
A number of our theatre performances are BSL interpreted and we are increasingly asking artists to factor this in when planning their work. If you let us know you are a BSL user when booking tickets, we can ensure that we find the most suitable seats to give you a good view of the BSL interpreter.
Subtitles and Descriptive Subtitles
We regularly screen subtitled films as part of our cinema programme. These may be foreign language films or subtitled films for people with hearing loss.
Screenings with subtitles will be indicated using S.
Subtitled screenings offer captions which transcribe dialogue only. Subtitled screenings attempt to give D/deaf and hard-of-hearing viewers an understanding of the spoken dialogue within the film, but do not include description about other aspects of the soundtrack, including music and sound effects.
Screenings with descriptive subtitles will be indicated with DS.
Descriptive subtitles, sometimes referred to as subtitles for D/deaf and hard-of-hearing people or captions, transcribe dialogue and relevant aspects of the soundtrack, including music and sound effects, attempting to give D/deaf and hard-of-hearing viewers an equal experience to those who are able to watch films without descriptive subtitles. Descriptive subtitles would include speech identifiers and descriptive elements such as [door slamming] and [kettle whistling].
Relaxed Performances & Screenings
We offer a number of daytime family theatre performances and cinema screenings designed to make trips to ARC a more relaxed experience for learning disabled people, people with autism and people with sensory or neurological conditions
Relaxed performances have a number of distinguishing features:
- Lower volume levels
- No foyer music
- Consistent lighting with auditorium lights on throughout
- There is a relaxed attitude to noise and moving around the auditorium
- You can reserve extra seats if you need space to be comfortable
- If you prefer not to queue please let us know when booking
- We can provide a chill out space should you need a break.