People with disabilities have a right to access the full range of social activities and services available in a society. Nonetheless, the way that the built and social environments are constructed restrict access of the group to participation, and hence, their rights of citizenship. This paper looks at how those engaged in the organisation of events can facilitate the involvement of people with disabilities in the conferences, festivals, and sporting events that they conduct. The paper begins by providing a brief overview of selected statistics and legislation associated with disability in Australia. The paper then looks at the operationalization of event planning in Australia through a review of complaint cases made under the Disability Discrimination Act, 1992. The review provides an insight into the current discriminatory practices employed by event and venue managers. The paper then presents a 'best practice' case study of the Sydney 2000 Olympic and Paralympic Games to show how disability and access issues were incorporated into the event planning and operations processes. The paper concludes with some directions that event and venue managers may employ to better incorporate people with disabilities within their programs.

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This study explores the relationship between large-scale sporting events (LSSEs) and education for sustainable development (EfSD) from the perspective of the host communities in which they take place. Over the past decade there has been an increasing acknowledgement by both the owners of these types of events and their hosting communities that they offer meaningful opportunities to engage in practices linked to EfSD. This acknowledgement, however, has not been accompanied by any discernible interest by researchers. This exploratory study goes some way towards redressing this situation and in so doing provides a platform upon which future research in this area can be built. Additionally, its findings are intended to be of value to communities who are bidding for, or hosting, LSSEs. A case study-based explorative research approach was employed in this inquiry utilizing the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games (SOG). This event was chosen in part because its practices in the sustainability area are generally well documented, but more importantly because it represents a watershed event in terms of the engagement of a LSSE with a sustainable development agenda. The conceptual framework used to guide this study drew upon stakeholder theory and the limited literature associated with sustainable development and LSSEs. Secondary data in the form of reports, studies, audio visual, and other material, along with personal interviews, were used to explore the elements of this proposed framework and their relationship to one another. The study found the process of EfSD in the context of the SOG to be: dominated by the government sector; involve a diverse range of programs and initiatives; largely of an informal educational nature; and to have impacted organizations, groups, and individuals (to varying degrees) across the community. The EfSD process was also found to have been influenced by a number of factors, with some serving to strengthen the process, while others acted as constraints upon it. Additionally, the study identified a number of host community EfSD legacies, along with the potential for such legacies to extend to non-hosting communities.

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The impact of public events on their host communities has been an area of increasing researcher focus over the past decade. While acknowledging this, little effort has been directed at identifying those practices purposefully employed by the organizers of such events for community engagement purposes. This exploratory study, undertaken in the Australian context, seeks to go some way towards addressing this gap in the literature by examining one type of public event—folk festivals—which anecdotally have a reputation for being proactive in the area of community engagement. The methodology for this study involved an extensive literature review, a series of in-depth interviews with senior managers of selected folk festivals (20), and an examination of secondary data sources relating to these same events. An analysis of this material resulted in the identification of a number of community engagement practices. These practices were grouped under three broad headings: transactional, transitional, or transformational. Additionally, a number of factors were identified as drivers for the adoption of these practices, while others were found to impact upon their use and/or effectiveness. It was also determined that a broad range of formal and informal community groups were embraced through the community engagement process. The significance of the findings from this study lie in their capacity to provide event organizers, both in the folk festival area and the broader public events field, with a deeper appreciation of the range of potential community engagement practices, along with key considerations in their use, as they seek to build a positive operational climate within their host communities.