Colorado's Shine Music Festival adding color accessibility

Karl Denson's Tiny Universe is headlining this year's Shine Music Festival. Denson is an American funk and jazz saxophonist who's played with the Rolling Stones and Lenny Kravitz's band. Dopapod drummer Neal "Fro" Evans will be bringing his Neal Evans Fro Down to the festival as well. While the music will be first class, Shine Music Festival is known for being one of the most accessible experiences in the nation.

"Our mission is really about removing barriers that prevent any individual from being apart of the collective community. So, we hope that we prove by doing what we do with Shine Music Festival, is that anyone whether you're a restaurant, or a venue, or a festival, that you can kind of step outside of the ADA box and take things a little bit further," said Shawn Satterfield, Founder & President of Shine Music Festival.

Traditionally venues partition off a section for people with disabilities. Satterfield feels that is wrong thinking and too limiting.

"We create various spaces throughout the venue that allow people to choose what works for them, so they get to choose how they want to participate in the day, just like most of us get to do on an every day basis," Satterfield explained.

Every year, technologies like Feel the Beat and Full Body Sound allow people to feel the music through their feet or skin. FLOW provides performance sign language interpreters. The Sensory Club creates a safe space where people with sensory sensitivity can retreat when they need to. This year, Shine has partnered with EnChroma which will be providing glasses that allow everyone to see the red-green spectrum.

"And because everything we do is always for the good of everyone, we will also have color enhancing glasses for individuals with normal color vision," Satterfield explained.

Another change to this year's festival, the last three hours will be ticketed. Shine Music Festival starts at 12pm with lots of interactive experiences and music on two stages. That part of the Festival will be free. The ticketed part starts at 6:45 with The Copper Children and runs through Neal Evans Fro Down and Karl Denson's Tiny Universe.

"It's a lot of work to raise that money; and with the decline in donations…public donations decreasing over the last couple of years, it really came down to how do we do this. We still kept most of it free, so six hours of it is still free," Satterfield said.

Shine Music t-shirts are sensory friendly. They're made of super soft Supima Cotton with low seams and no tags for people with clothing sensitivities. They also feature the Shine logo in tactile braille. It's those little details that make Shine such a thoughtful inclusive experience.

LINK: For Tickets & Information about Shine Music Festival

Shine Music Festival is Saturday, August 24th starting at noon at ReelWorks Denver.