Bringing accessibility to the forefront of Aotearoa’s Music Industry.
Establish Music’s Frances Dickinson is aspiring to make accessibility a mainstream concept within Aotearoa’s Music community, through the release of a brand new Accessibility Framework.
In 2021 Establish Music launched the Access All Areas Project project to explore participation barriers that exist within the music industry for disabled music practitioners. Now, Access All Areas is delivering a ‘first of its kind’ music-focused Accessibility Framework, with the aim to increase music opportunities for disabled people.
Dickinson is a leading music coach and has worked with some of New Zealand's biggest musical artists including Grammy award winner Lorde and Six60. She also happens to be Autistic, but prefers to use the term ‘neurodiverse’ to describe her way of relating to the world. “The inspiration for the Access All Areas programme came from my own experiences” she explains. “I’ve had to overcome the challenges of being a neurodiverse music practitioner within a competitive industry, and it’s not always been easy.”
The Accessibility Framework is being delivered online in a series of multi accessible formats, and draws ideas from Aotoearoa’s leading disability strategies and from the experiences of the disabled music practitioners who took part in the Access All Areas coaching programme. Dickinson hopes the framework will help to “elevate the voices of those who need to be heard” through a series of approaches and principles that focus on improving access to future opportunities, environments and career pathways for all disabled people.
In November 2022 the Access All Areas project is delivering a series of free workshops and leadership seminars throughout Aotearoa to present the ideas in the Accessibility Framework and receive feedback from the wider community. “We are very proud of the work we’ve done, but it really is only the beginning,” Dickinson says. “Moving forward, we want to gain feedback and ideas from the music and disability communities on how we can move the ideas in the framework forward, and the workshops will provide a forum to do this”.
The Access All Areas project has been funded by the New Zealand Music Commission through the Capability Grant Scheme. More information regarding the workshop dates can be found through the details below.
Contact: 021 08322083