Enabling Lives Festival 2026 Brings Inclusive Activities Across Redhill and Enabling Village

Enabling Lives Festival (ELF) 2026 returns on 28 and 29 November with more than 70 interactive programmes, extending beyond its main festival venue into the surrounding Redhill neighbourhood to encourage people of all abilities to connect through shared experiences.

Organised by SG Enable, Singapore’s national agency for disability, this year’s festival adopts the theme “Celebrating Inclusion and Abilities in Everyday Spaces”. The new Inclusive Neighbourhood experience will bring activities into familiar community settings where people commute, exercise and gather, creating more opportunities for people with and without disabilities to participate alongside one another.

Visitors can explore activities across Redhill before heading to the Festival Hub at Enabling Village, where more than 50 activities, workshops and marketplaces will take place over the two days.

At ARTRA’s Festive Plaza beside Redhill MRT Station, visitors can take part in four Inclusive Neighbourhood experiences. Portrait Café will feature four artists with different abilities, including a Deaf artist and artists with ADHD, autism and cerebral palsy. Visitors can watch their portraits take shape while communicating with the artists through gestures, visual cues and other methods suited to each artist. The completed portraits will be given to visitors as complimentary keepsakes.

Guiding Steps: Human Guide x Guide Dog offers participants a one-hour experience navigating a route led by facilitators with visual impairment. Using specialised eyewear and white canes, participants will learn appropriate techniques for guiding people with visual impairments and discover how human guides and mobility tools provide different forms of support. The experience also includes an opportunity to interact with guide dogs and their handlers.

Other neighbourhood programmes include District of Care: A Learning Tour with The Urbanist Singapore, which explores local stories and details of urban design and community life along a route to Enabling Village. Chit Chat Sing Song will bring an inclusive cast together for musical improvisation, transforming everyday encounters into spontaneous songs and stories.

Inclusive sports activities will be held at Delta Sport Centre, where members of the public can try adaptive sports under the guidance of para sport coaches and play alongside Special Olympics athletes and participants with different abilities.

Pickleball for Everyone introduces participants to the basics of the sport, adaptive gameplay and a doubles mini game with players of different abilities. Listen, Dribble, Score! offers an introduction to blind football, with participants relying on sound, communication and spatial awareness to practise ball control, dribbling and scoring with an audible ball.

Visitors can also try wheelchair para fencing using competition grade equipment, with guidance from Alvin Teo, a former Team Singapore fencer and SEA Games medallist, and Chloe Chew from the Singapore Community Para Fencing Programme. Participants will use training wheelchairs, protective equipment and Italian made Olympic fencing frames that secure two wheelchairs in place. At the Bocce Sports Try-out, Special Olympics athletes will teach participants the fundamentals before they put their skills into practice in friendly games.

To help visitors explore the different locations, ELF Passports will be available at Redhill MRT Station Exit B, Delta Sport Centre and Enabling Village. The self-guided trail features motifs created by artists with disabilities to represent their personal interpretations of inclusion. These include the Caring Lemon by Douglas Koh, described by the artist as “the only sweetest lemon”, and the 8-Pointed Star by Ong Xin Min, which represents the inclusion of different personalities. Visitors who complete activities at various touchpoints can collect stamps and redeem limited edition merchandise featuring both characters at Enabling Village.

At the Festival Hub, visitors can discover programmes that explore rhythm, performance, art, nature and accessible ways to enjoy familiar activities.

Deaf dancer and choreographer Ammar “Ameezy” will lead Rhythm for Every Body: An Inclusive Rhythm & Movement Workshop, where participants experience rhythm through movement, visual cues and vibration. The workshop explores how people can feel and express a beat in different ways.

In One-Handed Close-up Magic and Cardistry, Jackie Chionh will demonstrate intricate magic and cardistry using one hand and an ordinary deck of cards, showcasing card handling, fluid movements and visual techniques that typically require two hands.

Families with young children can look out for Hu木an: A Sensory Forest Adventure, a multi-sensory theatrical experience for children of all abilities aged three to five. Over 45 minutes, participants will explore nature through play, touch, sound, smell and taste. Activities include feeling textured leaves, discovering unfamiliar scents, spotting an owl and helping a kingfisher care for her eggs. The production draws inspiration from the National Museum of Singapore’s William Farquhar Collection of Natural History Drawings.

Visitors can also watch national para chess player Edwin Tan compete against two opponents simultaneously in Mind Over Sight: Simultaneous Tactile Chess with Edwin Tan, held beneath the Banyan Tree at Enabling Village. The programme will introduce visitors to specialised tactile chessboards used by players with visual impairments, showing how adaptations can make the game more accessible.

In Beyond Words: Live Caricatures & Visual Connection, Deaf illustrator and storyteller Issac Liang will draw expressive caricatures of visitors, using art to encourage interaction beyond spoken communication. Live performances will include Zelotones, a four-member band whose musicians have visual and physical disabilities and share a passion for creating and performing music.

The festival’s i’mable Collective Market will return for its largest edition yet, featuring more than 50 brands over two days. The marketplace will bring together social enterprises, caregiver led businesses, independent artists and partner brands, offering original art, handmade products and everyday essentials created by artists with disabilities and their caregivers.

Additional activities organised by Enabling Village tenants and festival partners will also take place throughout the weekend. Through its neighbourhood trail and Festival Hub programmes, ELF 2026 aims to create more opportunities for the public to experience inclusion through everyday interactions and shared community activities.