JLF : A palace fit for a festival
Over the past nine years, the Festival venue, which is very much part of the soul of the Festival, has grown along with many other aspects that have made this event the greatest literary show on earth.
Each year everyone at both Diggi and the Festival is attuned to the successes and challenges faced, and takes positive steps to improve facilities so that the audiences and speakers are offered the best possible experience.
Over the past years, the Diggi Palace has thoughtfully invested in creating a Festival site that retains its heritage look and feel while allowing for all modern amenities like disabled friendly access.
Even in this heritage building there have been many changes over the years to make way for more people, more partners, better catering, bigger entrances and exits, wider stair cases and pathways and of course more toilets.
There is now an open space to allow audiences to move more freely between each venue. Over 106 toilets and cafes are now installed at each of the 6 venues within Diggi Palace ensuring that people don’t have to cross the site for a bite to eat or a comfort break.
Over 30 chefs produce they food for the Festival visitors and the vegetables are organically grown on the family’s farm 30kilometers away in Ramgarh.
The lane leading up to the Diggi Festival entrance has been widened to 55 feet and the local administration JDA has illuminated it with streetlamps and cleaned the area and the city in preparation for the Festival.
Wheelchair access and Ramps have been put in, walls knocked down – everything possible to make the spaces around the venues as open as possible so even in the event of large crowds moving from one to the other.
This year there are more spaces that have opened up for Festival use than ever before, every living creature thought of… even the birds and squirrels are trained from weeks out to look for food on the roof tops rather than down on the ground where visitors may disturb them.
