In my personal time I’m involved in a community interest company that aims to create opportunities for musicians with learning disabilities, Constant Flux. A recent tour I was involved in, got me reflecting on what makes a successful project of this type.
With funding from Grants for the Arts, we were able to organise an
integrated tour for Daniel Wakeford,
a singer/songwriter with autism from Brighton. The project created the
opportunity for Daniel to play to new audiences in accessible venues across the
UK. The tour was also a chance for Constant Flux to test new methods of
supporting the touring network for musicians from the burgeoning learning
disability scene.
An
‘integrated’ line-up
In order to make these gigs integrated and
accessible, part of my role involved booking other acts with additional
support needs to play alongside Daniel, plus acts without disabilities in each
city. It was really interesting to see how easy this was in places like
Brighton and London, where we already have a lot of contacts, and there is an
established scene for this kind of work. In comparison, elsewhere in the UK it
was quite difficult to source even one band with disabilities to play. This
seemed to be for a variety of reasons: either there aren’t any organisations
doing music work with people with disabilities, or you really have to be
connected to local networks to find them.
Supporting
people to attend
In terms of audiences, I also made contact
with as many local learning disability organisations as I could find in each
town to encourage people with a learning disability to attend. Again, we
achieved the most integrated audiences in Brighton and London, which shows the
importance of really strong links with disability organisations in those towns
in terms of getting parents, carers and support staff on board to support other
people to attend. It’s also key to get these people on board to help promote the shows in the first place.
Accessible
venues
The third element is choosing venues that are
accessible to all, so with flat access, an accessible toilet and a low entry
fee, plus carers free or by donation.
All in all, it was an extremely successful project in terms of Daniel’s artistic development, links made with other disability organisations and enthusiastic promoters across the country, finding some new bands making great music, and raising the profile of this area of disability art to new audiences.
Hopefully we can continue our ultimate aim of breaking down barriers and creating a more sustainable infrastructure for these types of events in the future.
