A South Tyneside family is thrilled to be able to attend a once-in-a-lifetime Ed Sheeran gig together - after fearing their disabled teenage daughter would be forced to miss out.
Last year, Hebburn mum Claire Lowther surprised husband Steve and daughters Lucy, 15, and Katy, 14, with tickets to the Mathematics tour show at the Stadium of Light on June 3. Because Lucy is autistic and has sensory processing disorder and global developmental delay, Claire knew she'd have to work hard to make sure her daughter could safely attend, so she chose her tickets 'with great care'.
She picked out seats near an access tunnel - so Lucy could get away from the noise and crowd if she needed - and on a low level, as being higher up and having to climb through the crowd up a lot of stairs was likely to be overwhelming. But when her tickets finally dropped on Monday, she found the family had been moved - to middle seats near the very top of the stadium.
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The move would have made the concert impossible for Lucy, who loves Ed Sheeran's music, not just because the seats were less suitable, but because Claire had worked for months to help her daughter feel safe at the event by looking at pictures of where they'd be sitting, understanding how they'd get there and how things would work. A change at such short notice wouldn't leave Lucy with enough time to get her head around what to expect.
She said: "We genuinely wouldn't have been able to go to the concert, I would never have put her in that position. As a parent you know what your child is going to be able to cope with or not cope with and we just couldn't have gone."
Claire immediately contacted ticket vendors Gigantic by email and then on social media, explaining the problem, but after four days and with the concert fast approaching, she had had no response.
On Friday, Claire spoke to ChronicleLive after the first reply she got from Gigantic told her, in an Instagram message, to email them, although she'd explained her predicament and made it clear she'd already emailed. On Friday, we emailed Gigantic's PR team, and although we've not yet had a response, just over an hour later the ticket merchants contacted Claire and, to her delight, the situation was soon resolved.
She said: "The first email I got was a really pleasant acknowledgment, which was all I really wanted in the first place, saying 'we are sorry this happened and we are going to look into it' and then I was on the phone to an absolutely lovely lady from the Stadium of Light.
"The seat she offered us are actually in the same place as our original seats, but the next block along, and they are accessible tickets, which demonstrates to me that I did pick right when I booked. She told me that if we had contacted the venue itself, rather than going through a ticket website, the accessible tickets would never have been changed, but I didn't know you could do that, I thought you had to go through one of the ticket agents.
"Where we're sitting now means that we can go in through one of the accessible tunnels, we're near the tunnel, we're near the end of a row. They are pretty much identical to what I had booked in the first place."
Claire was refunded for her original tickets and allocated the new Lucy will be able to enjoy.
And now that she knows the help is available, she wants to let other parents in a similar situation know. Claire believes it's important that youngsters like Lucy are given the support to experience events that other youngsters may take for granted
She said: "I'd like to think I'm fairly switched-on about what's available for people with disabilities but I didn't know about contacting the venue directly. It's always been a case of having the ticket websites open on three devices just to try and get tickets that will work for us. That's being a parent of a child with a disability, there's always a battle. I don't really dwell on it, you just get on with it
"But now I know that if you contact the venue they are likely to have some accessible tickets set aside.
"It's not about getting something for nothing, it's about equality, it's just about being able to do the things that other people take for granted. I want her to be able to experience these things so that when she's an adult she can make these choices herself as to whether she can cope with an environment like that.
"It's about giving her the autonomy to make those decisions when the time comes."
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