Introduction
This episode of the Sound Without Sight podcast features an interview with Joanne Roughton-Arnold, a visually impaired operatic soprano, CEO, and disability arts trailblazer.
This article includes links to listen to the podcast, a summary, resources mentioned in the interview, and the full transcript.
Listen to podcast
Summary
Joanne is the CEO and Creative Director of formidAbility, the UK’s only disability-led opera company (to our knowledge). Her visual impairment has never curbed her own ambitions and vision as an opera singer and producer, and she has established herself at the forefront of accessible opera.
Joanne came to us fresh from her ground-breaking tour of Song in Sign, a project combining opera and British Sign Language acting that has shaken up the opera sector and brought new Deaf and disabled audiences to opera.
Joanne speaks about a wide range of topics, including:
- her work as a leader in disability arts, including setting up her company formidAbility.
- her experiences of working as an opera singer with a visual impairment, including singing with the Paraorchestra.
- her experience of applying for Arts Council England funding, and how she has helped to improve the experience for other disabled applicants.
Resources referenced
- Arts Council England Access Support
- forScore sheet music reader app
- Employment support for blind and partially sighted musicians
Full transcript
Please note this transcript was automatically generated, and may contain erroers.
Sound Without Sight, connect, collaborate and create.
Hello and welcome to the Sound Without Sight podcast.
In this episode, we welcome Joanne Roughton-Arnold.
Joanne is a visually impaired soprano and CEO and creative director of Formidability, the UK’s only disability-led opera company, to our knowledge.
Joanne covers topics including her work as a leader in disability arts, including starting up Formidability, her experiences of performing an opera with a visual impairment, including singing with the Paraorchestra, and her experiences of applying for Arts Council England funding, and how she has helped to improve the experience for other applicants.
Joanne starts with an overview of her musical journey so far.
We hope you enjoy.
Hi everyone, thank you so much for joining.
My name is Joanne Roughton-Arnold.
I am a Kiwi, you can probably tell by the accent and the lack of vowels.
So I came over to the UK to study the violin with a fantastic teacher in Oxford called Kajar Habas, who was Hungarian, and to pursue a career as a violinist.
Then over time, I went to Trinity College of Music in London to do post-grad violin and at the time, I could have a second study and I had this urge to do some singing.
So I began singing as a second study and fell for it hook line and sinker because not only obviously with music making, but because you have text and you have stories to tell and languages, which I’ve always been fascinated by and find utterly delicious.
Then I began to realize that it might be easier, she said naively, to pursue a career as a partially sighted or sight impaired singer than as a violinist, because I was struggling in orchestras, having to share a music stand and I could always reach the page of music nearest me, but the other page was always out of focus.
I have nystagmus, which means everything is more and more below the further away it gets, and I struggle with depth perception and with bright light.
So yeah, so as a singer, of course, I thought, oh, you don’t have to share a stand, this could be good.
You get to sing it from memory or hold your own book.
Fine, great.
And then I gradually made this decision to change to singing.
I went to Birmingham Conservatoire to do my masters in voice.
All those years of playing the violin mean that you get such strong musicianship skills.
And sitting in orchestras and playing chamber music, playing some solo work and playing contemporary music and having to really be on the ball with really challenging scores, meant that when I got to music college, my audition, they said to me, well, you can sing contemporary music then, like contemporary classical music, because you’ve got the musicianship skills.
And I thought, yeah, all right, so I’ll do that.
I also happen to love Bach and Handel and Mozart and all the standard rep, but sure, I’ll dive into this world of contemporary classical music as well.
And I got more and more interested in it because there’s something really exciting about getting a piece of music that’s written for you.
I will be able to commission new work.
When I left music college, the head of theatre gave me a reference because basically in college, they were really supportive with my sight impairment and making sure I had the access and places I needed.
It was all fine.
But stepping out into the big wide world as a professional singer and then suddenly having to walk into auditions and do your stuff and not…
Well, yeah, it’s so competitive.
And to give everyone a really strong reason to hire you as opposed to any reason not to hire you.
My sight condition isn’t really obvious unless you’re particularly well-versed in what the stagmas looks like.
So I learned how to mask it on stage.
And I would go into an audition and I was saying, and no one would be any other wiser.
But I got given this really lovely reference by our head of theater so that I could, the advice was to do the audition.
And at the end of it, say to the panel, by the way, I’m partially sighted, no big deal.
Here’s a reference to assure you that I’m not any kind of health and safety risk because that’s what they will get worried about.
And he basically had said that I was doing everything else all my colleagues were doing, no, never a danger, never any minimal extra technical time to cope with any access issues.
So I tried the strategy, did the auditions, gave them this, made it quite light of it, because I figured trying to keep light hearted was a good idea.
And the reaction I got from audition panels was embarrassment and no work.
And so I just decided, okay, then I have to not say anything and I have to keep this a secret.
I never imagined that when I switched from violin to singing that that would be a thing.
So I stopped saying anything and I got my first contract singing in the chorus at Opera Holland Park.
And I thought, okay, that’s how it is.
And so then Opera Holland Park functions as a summer festival.
And so each summer they rehire freelancers for the chorus.
And you can start to get some little small stepping out roles.
And I have a young artist scheme.
So I began to get little bits of extra work as well as the chorus.
And I just, I kept keeping secrets.
So I like, I’ll put my cymbal cane away before I got to rehearsal.
So no one would know.
Only some closest friends in the chorus knew that I was partially sighted.
And they were just really supportive and utterly lovely.
And I remember the very first season, the first production I was in was Carmen.
And the female chorus come on, basically having a massive fight.
We were all cigarette girls come running in on the stage, having a big physical 50 cuffs going on.
I’m sighted by Carmen.
But Opera Holland Park, the stage is built on the outside of Holland Park House.
And so you get onto the stage, running down some stone steps onto this wooden stage that’s been built there for the summer.
Oh, wow.
I don’t have depth perception.
So running down stone steps where they all kind of look the same height to me, is a little bit scary, even though I knew because in rehearsals we’re being, you get to know, but since I’ve walked down some steps, the muscle memory, I learn how deep a step is, it’s fine.
But in the moment of the adrenaline and everything, who knows what could happen.
And my entrance was choreographed that I would be effectively dragged on by the hair by my lovely mezzo-soprano friend, with a really dear friend, but we had to have this fight.
And she knew I’m party-sighted, so we had a thing going where she would just whisper step, step, step as we came on.
And I happily ran down those steps.
We had our fight.
I did the choreographed fall on stage that was meant to happen, and no one was in either.
Why is it?
We did things in the opera hall in part like, oh, we did rigoletto.
And in part of that, I had to climb up two-meter scaffolding, up a ladder, and spend some time up there with one of the gentlemen in the chorus, pretending to do, I’m sure you can imagine, what.
Or we had time until we had to come on with carrying a lighted flame, and they could flame.
So all these things, which potentially could be really dangerous, and they didn’t know that I’m sight impaired.
But eventually, 2012 Paralympics came along in London, and it felt like things were changing.
And I actually remember I got an e-mail from the lovely James Rizdin when he was working for RNIB, telling me that Opera Holland Park were partnering with them to do a workshop for blind and partially sighted children based around the children’s opera they were doing in the park, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.
And James was saying, it would be really great if you could be involved with helping to lead the workshop, but we’re really aware that you haven’t disclosed to them.
And so this might mean needing to disclose.
And I decided it’s time.
It’s time to actually stand up and own this.
Oh, wow.
I didn’t really realize that, where there was a specific moment where you kind of switched.
It was.
That was the moment.
And I’m really glad because then I went up to one of the producers after a rehearsal and I said, so I’ve been talking to James at RNIB.
And he’s like, oh, because I’ve had quite a lot to do with them.
And I said, because I’m partially sighted.
And how did that feel?
Well, it felt quite extraordinary.
I said, her jaw just hit the floor.
This was the fourth summer I’d worked for them.
And I said, look, I haven’t said anything because in my experience, people make two and two make five, and they make all the wrong assumptions.
And I said, look, I’ve used as examples.
I said, I’ve climbed two meter high scaffolding.
I’ve carried lighted naked candles on the stage.
I haven’t fallen off the stage and I haven’t set fire to the theater.
So I think I’ve earned my stripes.
And she was just fantastic.
This producer, Sarah, she just straight away said, of course, they wanted me to be involved with the workshop.
So they already had someone leading that year, but they got me to co-lead with her.
And the following year, I led the workshop myself.
It was such a relief to know I could walk into rehearsals and not hide anymore.
So to be able to go up to the director and say, it would really help me if you use my name or use names when you’re asking people to do things, because directors have a habit, particularly with the chorus, of just kind of looking at you, trying to make eye contact with you and saying, you, I want you to come downstage and do this little job on stage, or I want you to interact with that person over there.
And I wouldn’t know who they’re looking at.
Yeah.
And you don’t want to be, on one hand, you don’t want to miss out on opportunities by thinking they’re talking to the person next to you, and then you miss out.
But you also don’t want to be kind of elbowing to the front and being the one that’s pushing yourself forward in a way that’s unpleasant, or being misunderstood like that.
So little things like that, really, that little kind of relief of being allowed to be me and all the facets of me was quite a change.
I’m so glad to hear that it was a relief.
I mean, obviously, it must have been scary at the time to start disclosing.
Yeah.
But I’m glad you feel like it’s been a positive step.
Yeah.
I was wondering now if we could speak a little bit about formidability, using all that, your personal experience in what is now your opera company.
Yeah.
So maybe tell us a little bit about what formidability is, what it does.
Yeah, sure.
So formidability, and we spell it with a lower case, but with a capital A for ability in the middle because the emphasis is on the positive.
We started in 2019.
I co-founded it with Holly Matheson, who’s a wonderful New Zealand conductor who’s based up in Scotland.
And we met actually at Opera Holland Park because she was conducting a chorus one year when I was there.
And we go on really well.
And we both feel really passionately about wanting to make classical music and opera a much more inclusive and welcoming place for people both on stage, backstage, in the audience, in governance, and all the areas.
And so we decided it was that, well, first of all, I’ve had that lived experience I’ve described and the frustration in the opera sector of the lack of inclusion.
And then I’ve had a really positive experience with singing with Paraorchestra and seeing what amazing things Paraorchestra does for making the concert part of our world more inclusive.
And I decided the opera sector really needs this.
So Holly and I decided to try and to start from with ability with the idea of trying to drag the opera sector, kicking and screaming into the 21st century in terms of attitudes.
Because in my experience in opera is that when they talk about inclusion and diversity and equality, they tend to be talking about ethnicity, they talk about gender, they might be talking about sexuality perhaps, but disability doesn’t even get in the room.
There are voices for change and there are people, organizations trying to make it better, but it’s a long, long, long way behind.
So our idea was to create this little company and start small and try to create productions that are as high quality as we possibly can.
Like Paraorchestra does, have a mix of disabled and non-disabled people.
There’s no point in trying to be only for disabled artists when you’re trying to change the sector, you’re trying to become mainstream.
It’s about integrating, I think.
We’re both really passionate about that.
So what we’re trying to do is to wake up the big boys and girls and the opera companies to say, disability and talent are not mutually exclusive.
And I really like to draw the parallel with the Paralympics.
And if you think about the way Paralympic athletes are applauded and respected and cheered for all the incredible talent and skill and hard work on display when they’re out there doing their thing.
And I know it’s been a really, really hard one, but they get that respect now from I think the vast majority of people.
No one sits there and watches the Paralympics and goes, well, you know, they’re not really very good, are they?
You know, it’s all right.
But, you know, whereas there’s that feeling in the arts, and we’re trying to change it and change public perception, change the industry perception.
So that’s what we’re doing.
And also to do productions, but also to do advocacy.
So I’m out there speaking and banging the drum and shouting at people and saying, yeah, you need to change your attitude.
And also doing some community work, but it’s really, and some community workshops, and also some student workshops.
So at the latest project, we did some workshops in Conservatoires about working inclusively.
And so that we hope the students, when they graduate, start to change the way they work, and we change the workforce for the better.
So it’s really, really great.
And I think it’s really good as well that you concentrate on that integration and bridging the gap.
I very much agree with that, rather than having a separate stream of activity or a completely separate ensemble that is only for disabled people, where possible, like doing everything that we can to tie together the industry and kind of propagate that inclusive practice across the industry.
I think that’s way more effective when it’s a mixed group.
Absolutely.
And I actually remember, because I’m sure many of you will remember Sally Zimmerman, who she came, she’s been there by my side for the whole journey of becoming a singer and just just being an incredible tower of support and sensible words and so on.
And she came to Formidability’s very first production, which was at the Arcola Theatre in London, at the Grime-Born Festival.
And yes, it is a play on words, not Glinde-Born, but Grime-Born.
Because it’s all a bit grimey.
The Arcola Theatre used to be a paint factory, and it’s got that grungy kind of, you know, that feeling inside.
So Sally came to our first production and we had a Q&A afterwards and she posed the question in the Q&A, but I didn’t realize it was Sally talking because she’s in shadow and I couldn’t see her.
And I should have recognized her voice.
And I don’t know why I didn’t.
But she asked this question that she said that next to her had been a woman from the States who was visiting London just for a few days and wanted to go to the opera.
But in August, there’s not much on in terms of the opera, nothing at the Royal Opera House, you know, it was quiet.
So she came to the Echolah Theatre to see our production of A Double Bill, of Hot Spur by Gillian Whitehead, who’s a New Zealand composer, and Pierrot Luner, which is one of the most difficult works in the concert repertoire, but we did the semi-staged version.
And we had a physically disabled dancer on stage with me.
We also had a deaf actor on stage, profoundly deaf and everything was integrated with visual cues so that he would know when to sign and so on.
And Sally said, this person next to her, just came along because she wanted a great night at the opera, and she went away really happy having had a wonderful time.
She had no idea she was watching disabled artists.
And Sally in her lovely provocative way said to me, did I mind that?
Of course not.
I said, that’s the point.
That’s exactly what we want.
It’s not about, oh, look at the disabled people on stage.
It’s about come and see great art, come and experience storytelling through music and staging and movement and any other things we can dream up to put on stage as part of the overall package.
When Sally sent me an email the next day about that, she said she felt that we’ll know we’ve achieved it when Familability can throw off the label of disability led and just be happening.
Absolutely.
And I guess on that, so we got a community question now from Kate Rizdon.
And I guess she’s asking, given where the opera industry and the arts generally is at, how do you kind of balance that ambition?
So when you’re, I guess, commissioning composers and selecting repertoire and, you know, working with different musicians, how do you kind of balance that?
Do you specifically target musicians?
How does that kind of work?
It’s a really good question.
And balancing act is definitely the right phrase.
It really, really is.
Bearing in mind, we’re really young and we had the pandemic the year after we started, because we started in 2019.
First show was August that year, pandemic hit.
And then we had a couple of years of very little going on.
And then we came out of the pandemic.
So, but I, each production, each project starts with a little kernel of an idea in my head, or something someone says to me that, and I think, oh, this could be exciting.
And then the creative juices start to flow.
And then it’s all about how to make that artistic idea a reality, using as many, as strong a representation as possible of disabled artists with the skills we need to make that artistic vision a reality, and make it at the level that’s going to be taken seriously by our industry that’s so ableist.
So I think the best example is with Song and Sign, it was our latest project, with a little bit of background.
That idea came into my head in about 2021, I think it was, yeah, late 21, early 22.
And I wanted to, initially I thought, oh, wouldn’t it be great to do a concert with like a song recital, which would normally be soprano and piano, or one or two other singers and piano, and maybe bring in some British Sign language.
I’ve seen one or two bits like this on YouTube, I thought that’s a really interesting idea.
And then it kind of evolved, and then we thought, well, what if we commission something new, and we expanded our forces, because each, the first performance production we did only had one singer, which was me, but we had an ensemble of like seven, 10 musicians in total.
And then the orchestration, that was for the Potsborough Imperialian Act.
When we, with a song recital, we only needed a pianist for the instrumental side, but I wanted to have more singers, to increase to two singers, so we brought a tenor in to sing with me.
And then I wanted to have, for the signing, initially we were thinking about using deaf musicians who sign, because I wanted the signing to be in sync with the music.
And we wanted to commission a new work for these particular forces.
So Holly Matheson on the board, we were playing around with some ideas of different composers, and she suggested Rylan Gleave to me.
And I was like, oh, I’ve met Rylan, because I know, I’ve read Rylan on Zoom, so Paraorchestra, he’s working with Paraorchestra, he’s fantastic.
So I got in touch with, I listened to some of his music and I really liked what he was doing.
And I’m always looking for a composer who understands how voices work, because not all composers do.
Sometimes they just say, what’s your highest note?
And they write everything up there.
And that’s really not helpful.
And Rylan’s great at storytelling and being really imaginative of colour and all sorts of things like this.
So I had a conversation with him with these ideas, and he was really buzzing about the whole thing.
We got some funding for a research and development week or so in London, which we did, and we learnt from that.
And then we decided to shift from the idea of having deaf musicians to having deaf actors.
And so it became two opera singers, two deaf actors and a pianist.
And, you know, Rylan Woods of Paraorchestra, he identifies as his neurodivergent.
We had, and then I wanted to make the program for our song and sign performance.
It culminated in Rylan’s new work, which is based on Oscar Wilde’s The Happy Prince.
And I wanted to make the whole concert a celebration of diversity in all its forms.
That’s what we’re all about.
Diversity is a great thing, a good thing.
A difference is good.
And we’re banging the drum for a sign for the whole industry.
And Jamie.
Yeah, I love integrating it as well as in the ensemble, but in the actual material and the repertoire as well.
That’s great.
That’s what we’re doing.
And then what I did, sorry, is that I thought, okay, Jillian Whitehead in New Zealand, who wrote Hotspur that I sang, and I commissioned an opera from her back in 2015 called Iris Dreaming.
She’s got this fantastic song cycle, which is called Awahereya, which is the Maori word for braided rivers.
And it’s all about how we are one single, the whole message to the whole 20-minute song cycle, which is in Maori and in English, and mimics Bird’s song as well, just for fun, because why not?
She has this underlying message that one platter of thread is strong to endure, but many different coloured threads come together to make an infinite strong woven cloth.
And that metaphor is very clear, what she’s talking about.
So I started the concert of Song of Sight, starts with Awa Hereya in its entirety, ends up in a Northern European winter, having gone from the New Zealand summer forest, via a series, like songs from the classical repertoire, and I was speaking classical, a broader sense, by a range of composers and poets who either, who had some kind of difference.
So it might be disability, it might be neurodivergence, it might be deafness coming on, it might be that there was gender, there was ethnicity, there was sexuality.
So, I mean, the song, it’s a really famous song, but songs by Richard Strauss, and one of them has the song Morgan, which is just the most delicious love song.
And the poet was a gay activist at a time when you couldn’t be openly gay.
So, we brought all these things together, and then we worked with an incredible BSL, deaf BSL creative consultant who translated all the texts from these songs into BSL, into British Sign Language, and brought in flavors of language that I didn’t, you wouldn’t know unless you were a fluent BSL user.
Like, there are specific gay signs.
So, he put some of that into the translation for this particular song.
Wow, and that’s the value and the power in just collaborating, right?
Exactly.
It’s the stuff that just wouldn’t have come out if that was just one person kind of dictating, this is what this piece should sound like, this is what the ensemble should look like.
Absolutely.
And we’ve also had the experience of working with musicians who, with us on various projects or research and development and so on, different guises, who have actually said to me, who have actually, as it were, come out to us quietly and said, I am disabled, but I don’t tell anyone.
And have felt empowered, have felt that they could do that.
Obviously, we respect that they don’t wish to identify publicly in that way because of fears about the industry, which is awful.
But the fact that they feel that they can, and we’ve created a safe place, is really, really important.
So a lot of our learning for each project, it’s not just what goes on stage and what the public see, but it’s also the systems and the processes that we are learning bit by bit and putting in place to make sure people feel safe and that they can do their best work without worrying about the kind of things that might worry them in a quote unquote normal opera company.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I’m really glad to hear that.
I’ve got a question now from Aya or Aya.
Sorry if I’ve mispronounced your name there.
And Aya is asking, what’s the best advice you would give for someone starting up their own business in music?
I guess, were there any particular barriers as a VI person?
And what solutions did you find?
Oh, really great question.
So I think it depends what kind of business you’re meaning.
If you’re meaning, like the kind of thing we’re doing, isn’t like being a production company that’s not for profit.
And now at the point we start to think about charity status, but we’re trying to get funding for arts creative projects.
It’s really challenging.
I would, you go into it, do it, do it.
If you’ve got a passion for it, and you feel like you’ve got a really brilliant idea, and you love it to bits, and you’re prepared to work ridiculous hours, do it.
But be prepared for some hard times.
I’m so glad that we started for Mitability, and I’m really excited by the work we’re doing, but it’s really not been a bed of roses.
And I know you know about this, Jo, but I talked about at an event we were at, but just to get the funding for the actual tour for Song and Sign when we went public after we’d done the research and development, it took me 11 months of unpaid work.
I was working about 20 hours a week on funding applications.
I put in five various applications to Arts Council England, and two formal complaints, because I went through some quite difficult times in that process where they didn’t follow their own processes the way they should have done.
But both those complaints were either fully or partially upheld, and have resulted in some improvements, quite significant improvements, for other disabled applicants.
Well, no, all disabled applicants, me included.
So I want to let you know that things are a lot better than they were.
Yeah, I think we’ll come on specifically to Arts Council stuff in just a minute.
I’m just wondering, I, whether that answered your question?
Yeah, or like teaching others, for example, how to either play music or use a digital workstation.
Yeah, teaching.
Well, I got a lot of teaching under my belt.
Yeah, I’ve been doing a lot of that and doing like my own private teaching practice from home or sometimes it’s been in other spaces or it’s been in schools.
And so on.
I think for teaching, it’s really about getting out there and doing it and starting small, thinking about, I’m sure that the RNIB would have some pointers for you in terms of tech to help.
Also, I highly, highly recommend, although it’s a really visible process to go through, but it’s really worth applying to access to work.
If you’ve got some clear ideas of some things that would help you to work on a level playing field, that someone say who is not disabled doesn’t need, absolutely apply for that support because you’re entitled to it, and it makes a massive difference.
Really helped me when I got that in place.
I would echo as well.
I mean, do feel free to reach out, assuming you’re in the UK, reach out to RNIB via the helpline into me, the music team, and I’d be more than happy to do some kind of support around what that business might look like and how you might want to get there.
So I’m just going to move us on now to a section about Arts Council funding.
And Sarah, I think you’re going to lead us through this bit.
Yeah.
So you’ve kind of started touching on it, which is great.
So could you just give us a bit of background on what Arts Council funding you’ve applied to and what the process was like?
Sure.
Yeah.
Before I started FormatAbility, I made my first application to Arts Council England as an individual artist.
And I got a grant, which was incredibly exciting.
And that’s what enabled me to produce the world premiere of Iris Dreaming.
After I got the funding to commission the composer from Creative New Zealand, which is New Zealand’s version of the Arts Council.
And at that point, I didn’t have any support, and it was really hard because the Arts Council’s portal, which they call Grantium, is horrendously and notoriously inaccessible.
It’s just tiny text boxes.
And oh my goodness, it’s awful.
But I’ve had some project grants from them.
That was the first one.
And I’ve had a Developing Your Creative Practice grant, which I’m currently using as well.
So the difference is that project grants are for both for individual artists and for organizations.
Developing Your Creative Practice is only for individuals.
The Developing Your Creative Practice, or DYCP, as they get referred to, kind of like it’s a real free for all.
It’s competitive, it’s really hard to get one.
But the idea, the way it was described to me was, imagine you are creating your own master’s program and put all the things into it that you would like to do that would help you develop in a new direction and you put together a budget and you make the application.
So Developing Your Creative Practice grants don’t necessarily result in a public performance.
They’re not, that’s not what they’re about.
They’re about developing you as a person, as an artist in some way, professional development.
But it has to be something new for you.
So for example, me as an opera singer, I couldn’t apply for Developing Your Creative Practice to pay for vocal coaching or acting lessons or the kind of things that I already do.
I had to make it something new.
So for me, it was about developing as a leader, as an arts leader, and about bringing, as I put it, to the Arts Council, making formidable disabled talent mainstream instead of niche.
So that I included things like some executive coaching, like about really thinking mentally how I’m going to be a better leader, giving me confidence to speak publicly without having to write a speech, actually just stand up and talk off the cuff.
I’ve had, I included that in there, doing British Sign Language training.
So I passed Level 2 as part of my DYCP.
Working with an artist manager to help me get work speaking in public as well as singing work.
Redesigning my website is kind of in the process of happening at the moment because the old one is very clunky and dated.
But project grants are things that need to have a public benefit.
So it can be performances, it can be workshops in a community, it can be developing something new that isn’t going to get a public showing in that grant, but that you’re planning to lead towards some kind of public performance, I think.
And now I’ve got to say the excess support team at Arts Council England are absolutely fantastic.
Really could not sing the praises highly enough of the wonderful Luke Moore, who heads up.
And the process that I went through and all the tears and blood, sweat and tears and frustration and everything, when I was going through those 11 months of trying to get the funding, Luke and his team were incredible at helping me through that process, helping me through the process when I needed to make a complaint and supporting me in that.
One part of a complaint that I made was that the large print versions of their guidance weren’t fit for purpose or they weren’t all there.
So I told them that I was applying for a grant of over 30,000 pounds, so it’s the bigger project grant.
I downloaded what was supposed to be the guidance and it had missing, it had like broken hyperlinks, it had spaces in the middle of a hyperlink, which means of course it wouldn’t work.
Yeah, and there were spaces missing between words and the text, which made it ridiculous to read.
And there were just lots of things like this that were a problem.
And when I asked a senior staff member at Arts Council about this, she just didn’t know what to say and she just kind of shrugged and said, oh, well, that’s all there is.
So that’s what led me to complain.
And as a result, they did an organisation-wide audit of their documents and making everything accessible.
So if anything’s not there, then it’s just going to be because they’re in the process of fixing it.
But they’ve also, you can get support from the Arts Council for access support paid by Arts Council England when you write an application.
And there are links on the Arts Council website.
I’m sure we can, maybe Jay can help you get the hold of that if anyone wants.
We’ll put them out in the chat and also in the notes afterwards.
That would be great.
You have to apply for the support, you have to fill out the form and so on.
But you can get, it’s really, really valuable.
And when I began to be able to make applications with a support worker helping me, what a difference.
Yeah, really good.
They won’t write it for you, of course.
It has to be your, the Arts Council want to hear your voice.
They want to hear your passion for your work, coming through.
Those are the grants that are more like you to get awarded.
But a support worker will level the playing field, will help you deal with, if grantium is the problem, getting things on to it.
They will do that.
For me, one of the big problems is just getting all the budget into a spreadsheet.
And because spreadsheets are horrendously inaccessible, I’m sure we all know this.
So I work with my support worker to make sure the budget gets developed and then they can move that across into the application portal, into Granteum for me.
And it saves me a lot of time staring at a screen trying to do this very slowly.
Awesome.
I mean, that’s a really good starter, I think.
I think we’re just looking at the time.
We’ll move on a little bit and talk about accessible performance.
So how do you go about making the spaces that you perform in accessible and dealing with props and stuff like that?
Is there anything specific that you do?
Yeah.
For me, of course, everyone’s, we all know, your visual impairment is very different for everybody.
And so for me, I have quite limited depth perception.
So I need to know where the surfaces change, where there are steps, if there’s anything unexpected, if there’s anything that’s not really clear on stage, I need to know where it is.
So I will choose to, if I’m going to say, for example, I’m going to work in a theatre or wherever I’m going to be, I want to go on that stage and have a little walk around and just learn where things are.
And then knowing also that when the light, when the stage lights are up, that can change everything.
When you’re able to be open with producers, directors, whoever, about having a visual impairment and you can say, and you can actually say to them, that stage light’s actually causing me a problem, it’s just amazing.
Whereas before I felt I couldn’t do that and I had to manage it all by myself.
So we had one production at Opera Holland Park where we were, it was in Russia, it was a snowy scene, and they had put sacks of sand on the stage to make little mounds, like little hills, and they’d covered it with white, gloss-painted white tarpaulin.
So I couldn’t see where these were, and this is before I told them that I was sighting PED.
And there’s a bit in the scene where we had to walk up the path of this and stand there and having a little chat and looking graceful.
And I do remember almost going head over heels.
I managed to save it, but it was a little bit scary because every night the sand shifted slightly in the sacks.
And that wasn’t quite where I remembered it was before.
I totally get you there, Jo.
So I actually have nystagmus as well.
So yeah, I mean, that kind of mapping out your environment around you is so important.
And quite often, if stuff has changed, my brain won’t tell me it has because it’s remembering how it was.
You know what I mean?
It’s a funny one.
It’s a funny one.
Yeah.
I think other things like, I remember in one production, I had to sing, so singing out and not looking down, while putting flowers into a vase.
And I knew that if I just tried to put them in normally, I would miss and I would keep going to get the flowers.
This is before I just didn’t want the audience to be distracted by or it wasn’t a funny scene, so it needed to keep the mood right.
But I just figured out, okay, if I just have one hand holding the top of the vase, and if I can just feel the end of the stem and feed it in and do it by feeling that way, and just keep singing out and pretend like there’s nothing different happening and just carrying on, and it worked, and nobody’s any the wiser.
So I think, oh, there’s one show we were doing, a very, very, very silly scene from Office in the Underworld where I as Eurydice had to chase Jupiter, who was supposed to be in the form of a fly.
That’s completely believable.
And I had to chase him with a butterfly net, and I was supposed to catch him in the net.
And when you don’t have that perception, and you have no idea how long this long-handled net is in reality, and I had to somehow catch this singer in the net.
But our director was brilliant because he understood, and he knew that I was sight impaired.
And so he said, don’t worry, the singer will be on that mark on the stage.
You be on the other mark.
It’s the right distance.
And if he needs to, because Jupiter actually wants to be caught, he can just wiggle his shoulders and get into the net.
It’s fine.
No, no, no.
And actually what happened after the performance, because that was at Morley College, they have an opera course there that I was doing to get some more stage experience.
And the principal of the college was there, and she came up to the director afterwards and said, I thought you said you had a sight impaired student.
I didn’t see her.
Where was she?
I like that.
I like that.
But I mean, that whole thing is just evidence of having a team around you that knows what you need.
And there’s obviously like, there’s no barriers.
Everyone just knows what’s going on and that you just make a tiny little adjustment and everyone’s all good.
Yeah.
What about technology for notation or anything like that?
Is there anything particular that you use there?
Yeah.
Well, I mean, oh my goodness.
The iPad, I use a large iPad, a 12.9 inch one, and Forescore, this incredible app has been such a game changer for me.
When I was at music college, iPads hadn’t quite come out then, and the way they managed was to give me A3 photocopies of music.
So I would have to stand in chamber choir, effectively looking like I was holding a giant newspaper in front of me, which was just ridiculous.
But now, with the iPad and with Forescore, the way I get it to work and the way it meets my needs, is to have the iPad on landscape, which means it’s showing me half a page of music at a time.
And because of the size of the screen, effectively, it is like looking at an A3 page.
So it’s double the size of a printed score, normal size.
And then being able to pinch and zoom on specific bits.
If I want to really check something that I can’t quite make out there, there might be something funny about a font.
For me, sharps and naturals look quite similar.
So I have to go into those.
And it lets me notate on it.
So when I’m learning a new piece of vocal music that’s in a language other than English, the first thing I have to do is to type in a literal word-for-word translation over every single word.
So that when I sing it, I color each word with the right imagination, the right dramatic contention.
And for scorelet to do that, you could annotate on the PDF, typing and move it around so that it’s lines up where you want it to.
You can use different colored pens.
So I’ll use the Apple Pencil and put my breath marks in.
And you can use different colors.
So I choose to use red for breathing.
I choose to use blue for things to do with the text I’m singing.
I might use different colors for tips from different coaches I’ve taken it to.
Or if I need to scribble some stage directions, I might do that in another color.
So it’s been incredible.
And you can, for instrumentalists, you can have a Bluetooth pedal to turn pages.
I know plenty of musicians who are not disabled or sight impaired at all, who will choose to actually perform using Forescore, and they can play hands-free, be able to play the violin and not have to put your bow down and turn the page every time.
It’s just brilliant.
And I think that that’s an important distinction, is that this isn’t kind of specialist software.
It’s the same app that everyone’s using.
It’s just they’ve built in some really good features.
And I think particularly if you need quite significant enlargement, there’s the reflow feature as well.
Do you have to use that, Jo?
I’ve tried it a little bit, and it is incredible because it’s where the software can recognize a stanza, so a bunch of staves that get played at the same time, and it can recognize these and fill the screen with that, and then make it flow across like in one long ribbon, as though someone’s cut up the page and stuck it, sellotaped it all together in one great big long rim.
And I’ve found that that can be really useful.
And the last time I tried to do it, you couldn’t annotate when it was in that mode, but I don’t know if Fourscore have changed that.
And that’s something I hope they might, because I know they’re always updating the software.
So that might be something that’s changing.
I’ve had a student who’s used that, who in the school I was teaching at in London, for the first time ever, I had a sight impaired student come along and I looked at her and I thought, which of you got the stagmas?
And I said, I just went gently.
We had this conversation when she walked into the room and she said, oh, by the way, I’m partially sighted.
And I said, oh yeah, so am I.
But you know, most people when you say, I’m partially sighted and they go, so am I.
What they mean is, yeah, I wear glasses, but they don’t actually know what they’re talking about.
And so I saw it didn’t really register with her that I just said that I’m partially sighted.
And so we carried on with the conversation, taking her to the register for her and just getting her set up.
And I said, does the word stagmas mean anything to you?
And she just looked at me and she goes, I think that’s what I’ve got.
She said, snap, so have I.
And we had the same underlying thing with ocular albinism, so the bright light is an issue.
And so it was really lovely because then I could say to her, okay, I can see you’re struggling with the light, turn side on so neither of us is looking at the window while we’re trying to communicate with a bright light behind us.
Or I got the school to install Forescore onto her school iPad because she’s very fortunate, she has an independent school where all the pupils have a school iPad.
And so they’re quite restricted as to what software they will put onto the iPads, the school ones.
They don’t have access to the general App Store, but they made an exception.
They put that on for her and it just made all the difference.
She began using that reflow version.
So yeah, I’m just thrilled by that difference that they made.
I’m glad to hear it.
So I put link in the chat to Forescore.
And we actually have, I’ll post it in a sec, we’ve got an article on Sound Without Sight talking about different options for using apps like that to display scores in large print.
Great.
So Sarah, I think you were going to ask some questions now about other general support.
Yeah.
I wanted to touch on how you use access to work and if you could give some information on that.
Yeah, absolutely.
This is my first year having it.
So I was a bit slow in getting around to doing it.
But it’s been really great.
It’s a long process applying.
When I applied, it was a 14-week wait between you filling in the online form and getting a caseworker moving forward.
But at the moment, I’ve heard that it’s longer.
I know that it’s, I want to say, 24 weeks or something awful, but it’s still worth it.
The form that you have to fill in online is very much the medical model of disability, so it feels really negative.
And you have to imagine yourself on your worst day, but if you’ve got a condition that fluctuates at all.
And, but also have a, it really helps to have a strong idea of what support would help you.
So you can have there three different kinds of support and you can get any mixture of them.
So one is like equipment and anything that’s going to help you to do your job.
So I got them to get me a good like daylight lamp to use by the piano.
And I actually, and I also got them to get me a portable magnifying makeup mirror so that when I go perform somewhere and I’m stuck in a little dressing room with a mirror sort of like three feet away and doesn’t have any kind of magnification and poor lighting, I can still get my makeup on and still see what I’m doing in some way.
There’s also, this is like, so you might say software, that kind of thing might be useful or yeah.
What else?
Travel, travel to work.
So taxis, if you can’t use public transport, then they will look at taxis for you.
Or a driver to drive your car if you have a car, if you can’t drive yourself.
So, I’ve got the taxis, and then there’s the support workers, and there are multiple different kinds of support workers that can get slightly confusing.
They have a thing called job aid, which is a kind of support worker who does elements of your job for you that you find difficult because of your disability.
And you can have up to, I think it’s 20% of your hours in a week that you normally work.
They will pay for somebody to do that work for you.
There’s another kind of support worker, which is called enabling.
And that’s someone helping you to do your job that making things easier.
So one thing that I find really tricky, but an important part of my work is networking.
If I go to an event, I walk into a room full of people.
I don’t know who’s there.
And if people are wearing like name tags or something, I can’t read them unless I peer inappropriately at their chest.
And that’s not the best first impression, you know.
I know that one.
So I have enabling, part of my enabling support is that my support worker can go with me to an event and do a circuit of the room and to see who’s there, and then come and make sure I get to speak to the people I need to speak to.
And in a very natural way that isn’t kind of waving the big flag going, you know, this person needs help, you know, but it’s just a very normal thing, or, oh, have you met so and so, and let’s have a conversation.
So I really, I find that incredibly helpful.
Yeah, having someone with me in meetings, maybe to take notes for me, and helping me with the funding applications when I’ve got to write these big, deal with big budgets, and it’s all really complicated, and the spreadsheet’s just awful to read.
So because by the time I can, by the time I zoom in on the spreadsheet big enough to read it, I’ve lost all sense of where the rows and columns are, and it could be, could make a mistake, which we could have quite significant consequences.
So that’s just made a huge difference.
Yeah, so basically, you fill in the online form, then when that’s gone through however many weeks it is at the moment, a caseworker picks it up and then gets in touch with you and talks about what you need, you talk to them about what you need, and then they put together a package that then gets approved and then away you go, you start making all your game of support in place and making claims.
So yeah, it’s great.
It’s just frustrating that you have to do this whole negative thing.
But they also, the DWP, they don’t really understand how the arts work, so you have to explain to them in words of one syllable what you do, and the way you work, you probably don’t go to the same place every Thursday to work the same hours or whatever.
Work varies.
I was able to get them to understand that and put in a really flexible grant that I can move around and use in different ways if I need it.
Yeah.
They will even pay for your support worker to go abroad with you.
So if you get booked to go and perform in, I don’t know, in Paris or something, and you need an access support worker with you, they will pay for the support workers’ travel and accommodation and so on.
So it’s brilliant.
But just be prepared for a ton of pay for it.
Well, not a ton, but quite a bit.
There’s a bit of admin that’s involved.
Yeah, there is, yeah.
Well, that’s nice to hear because I think sometimes it’s so easy to be really negative about access to work, and it’s good to hear that when everything’s in place, it does work.
It really does.
Thank you for that.
That’s all right.
And I think we were talking the other day, Jade’s got some links to organizations and himself and at RNIB as well who can help with bridging that gap in language between the arts and DWP and how to make the application as smooth a process as possible.
I used a, there’s an organization called Disability Arts Online who I, and I went, they had a webinar and I went on and I watched, joined that and picked up some tips on how to do the, make the application and in a way that makes them understand what your needs are as an artist star.
And it really, really, really helped.
Awesome.
I was about to mention that.
Yeah, go ahead.
The link in the chat with a Sound Without Sight article written by Daisy, which is really concise actually.
And there’s a lot of information on there on support that is available for VI musicians.
So I read it early and even I was like, oh, I’ll check that out.
I’m not, I’m not.
So yeah, it seems like a really helpful list of organizations that can be approached.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But I was also wondering as well, like what else can you recommend for people to, I’m guessing in terms of self-care, so that we can cope with the stress of working in this industry?
What a good question.
I think, yeah, this industry is challenging and looking after our mental health and our physical health is so, so important.
And when we’re already also, you know, the extra energy that it takes to just to navigate life with a disability and the ableism that we will encounter in all of that, the lava, it just makes it, it makes it harder still.
So I think, I think being kind to yourself, feeling like you, you do not have to be Superman, superwoman, super whatever.
You’re, you’re allowed to be tired.
You’re allowed to take breaks, listen to your body, surround yourself with people who are positive and encouraging and, and who you trust.
Get, if you, if you can get this access, support in place and you can get a really good support workers who understand that mental toll that, that all of this can take, then it’s just, that is worth the weight in gold.
Just, just incredible.
I think, oh, something else that’s really worth bringing up is, is BAPEM, British Association of Performing Medicine.
They are fantastic.
And I have called on them before.
So if things are rough, if you’re having a hard time, if you’re feeling like you really need some, some kind of, some support, someone to talk to who understands it, they’ve got some fantastic people that they can call on and, and it’s free.
So I would, I highly recommend approaching them if that’s, if that’s of help.
I think personally, I think in terms of, I’m very much a glass, glass half full person.
And I, and I’ve, you have to develop a thick skin in this industry and, and you get a lot of rejections and you just have to remember it’s, actually it’s normal and it’s not personal.
That’s not, but it’s really hard not to take it personally.
And just, if you really love it, keep going, keep doing it.
I, I kind of, I just don’t take no for an answer.
I have a habit of, someone tells me what he tells me, I can’t do it.
I’ve got a habit of metaphorically holding up two fingers at them and saying, well, actually, yes, I can, and I will.
And that’s what got me through that rough patch with Arts Council.
Oh, so another tip for you for Arts Council.
Sorry, I’m jumping around a little bit here.
If you have got an organization which is disability led, then for Arts Council England regard you as part of their pool of priority applicants.
It does not mean that they prioritize your application in terms of they’re going to give you money, but what it does mean is that they prioritize you for having a conversation with one of their relationship managers.
So you can actually get a named person who you can talk to about your application when you’re in the process, when you’re thinking about it, when you’re putting it, you’ve got this idea and you’re wondering about how to apply to them.
We did that with, I found out about that just towards the end of the pandemic.
So I reached out with my formidable hat on, and we got put in touch with a fantastic guy who was so supportive and encouraging, and stood by us through the thick and thin.
He no longer works for Arts Council, but when we have a new relationship manager, and she’s brilliant too, so there are, what I did learn through that tough period is that there are a lot of really wonderful human beings working for Arts Council England, who are utterly passionate about what they do, and really do want to see the industry become much, much more inclusive, and are working really, really hard and difficult circumstances to try and make that happen.
So it’s just nice, they’re the human face, they’re human faces.
That’s really cool.
Yeah.
Awesome.
Well, we’ve just gone past the hour.
So we’ll open up to general Q&A in just a second.
We’ve got just a couple of kind of quick fire ones, Jo, if that’s okay.
Firstly, do you have a top tip that you’ve not mentioned already?
Apart from just never say no.
Yeah, I mean, that’s a good tip.
Never take no for an answer.
That’s my top tip.
It’s really it.
Stay positive, just believe in yourself.
Yeah, absolutely.
Totally agree with that.
So next one from Adelaide Jang.
Are there any orchestras or ensembles that are kind of specifically for blind or VI classical musicians?
So specifically blind or VI, there’s the Inner Vision Orchestra.
I’m not sure that it’s specifically classical though.
I think it’s a bit more crossover.
There’s of course this Paraorchestra, which is more broadly disabled, so it’s not just VI.
And they’re absolutely brilliant to work with.
There is Rebound, isn’t there?
Yeah.
Sorry, what was that?
I recently went to auditions with the Inner Vision Orchestra.
But I had to cancel playing with them at the British Museum because I am a concert grand harpist.
And I can’t, you know, getting a harp to the British Museum requires somebody to drive it.
And I don’t have that support.
So that’s my biggest issue as a classical harpsist.
Like I didn’t…
I got my orchestra debut this year with the Con Philharmonic only because I didn’t say no.
I kept turning up to their rehearsals.
I found out they were rehearsing and I kept turning up wearing harp shirts going, like, do you need a harpsist?
I know you’re playing Ravel.
They were playing near me and it was easier for my mum, who’s disabled also, she could get me there in the car with the harp.
But as far as the British Museum goes and InnoVision Orchestra, I have to sadly cancel that, which is why I was really interested when you were talking about the support that’s available because, yeah, when you have a concert grand harp, you need to be on paper or taxi, otherwise, you’re not going to get very far.
No, absolutely.
I mean, definitely, go to Exist to work and push all the buttons and fill out the form, and I would love to see the look on their faces when they see an application from a concert harpist saying, Oh, brilliant, because seriously, all the luck in the world, do it.
Yeah.
I don’t think there’s many of us around, because it’s such a large instrument.
And yeah, that was my dream.
To be a paid orchestra harpist.
Yeah.
Oh, good luck.
Good luck.
It’s such a gorgeous instrument.
I remember sitting at college as a string player with the harpist when we were in our class as well, and sitting there thinking just in awe of the skill of playing that beautiful instrument.
I got featured, my biggest thing this year, I got featured on the World Harp Congress spectrum, but I had to pay my dad to drive me and my harp to an aquarium, so I could record there and then any money we got, we gave it to the aquarium and to charity for saving whales.
Oh, wow.
That’s amazing.
Wow.
I love that.
Well, I hope you get there, Adelaide.
I’m sure you will.
And hopefully, Access to Work can support you moving forward.
Thanks for the great links.
Yeah.
They can also pay your dad to drive you quite seriously.
They will do that.
He’s getting a bit too old to drive now, so I am going to probably need a professional driver.
But yeah.
Well, good luck.
So yeah, just a couple more quick fire ones about composing foot for voice.
So Adil Kerkady, Adil is asking, why do singers often change vocal register between the sung and spoken parts in an opera performance?
That’s a really good question.
So it’s all to do with getting the text across clearly.
We do try very, very hard to make our diction clear to the back of the theatre.
It’s not an easy thing to do.
And in the lower middle part of the voice, it’s much easier to be really clear.
But when you’re singing up high, there’s so many harmonics going on in the, and the pinging away that it’s much harder to make your text, the consonants in particular, heard when you’re singing high.
So that will be why.
So in an opera, you get this sort of spoken bit is kind of half spoken, half sung.
It’s sort of, it’s a thing called restative, which is where they, that’s where the action in the opera happens.
And it’s the kind of the, the toing and froing, the conversations might, might happen in that bit.
And then, then after that, you might sing an aria or a duet or something, and you’ll be going up higher in your range and you’re kind of singing about how the character singing about how they feel about what just happened or what’s about to happen.
Because really opera is about, a director described this beautifully in a workshop I was in.
She said, opera is when the character’s feeling emotions that are so big that the only way they can express them is to sing.
And so when we sing opera, we’re singing big emotions and there’s big sound, big resonance and that when that goes up into that higher kind of heady part of our range, it’s quite hard to get the text across.
Cool.
And about writing for specific voices, Adam is also asking, should parts use the whole range of a particular voice?
And is it safe for there to be a few notes outside of what is the kind of generally expected range?
Good, really good questions.
There’s no need to use the entire range at all.
Use the sounds that you feel express the text to tell the story.
So start with those words.
Start with a story you want to tell or a poem you want to set to music.
And think about how you’re going to get the emotion of that across in music.
And if that means using some lower notes, don’t use them.
If that means going higher up, use it.
Mixture.
I really love singing things where a composer is playing with the words and playing with the meaning and showing that in the way they’ve set the melody or the harmony.
The going out of the standard range.
I think what you need to do is think, is if you know which singer you’re writing for, and you ask them what their range is, then you’re okay.
Don’t write outside an individual singer’s range if you ask them if you want them to sing for you because it’s not going to happen.
It’s like asking a violinist to play an E below the bottom G of the instrument.
It doesn’t work.
It’s not going to happen.
Yeah, asking a flautist to play a note a fifth lower than the middle C.
It’s not going to happen.
It’s going to change the instrument.
Bearing in mind that the voice is an organic thing.
It’s just like sight is a spectrum.
Our vocal range is a spectrum too.
So I’m a soprano and you probably get told, oh, middle C to maybe the C two octaves above, if you’re an opera singer.
For a choral singer, you might be told, go to the A below the top C, so like an octave and a sixth above middle C.
But my range, I go down to the C below middle C, and I go up three octaves and a half above that.
So it’s just so individual.
That’s really great.
Thank you very much for that.
So that’s all the questions that we had submitted in advance.
So we are going to stay open until about half past eight, if you’re okay for that, Jo.
If we’ve got any other questions in just a second, everyone will be able to unmute now.
Do put your hand up first so that we know who to go to.
But yeah, any other questions, please fire away.
Adelaide, yeah, feel free to come off mute.
What projects do you have planned with Formidability for the future?
What would you like to do?
Oh, wow.
So we’re toying with some ideas at the moment about how to further develop the Song and Sign project.
I think looking further ahead, we’re going to be really careful, grow slowly, because otherwise you risk the organization falling apart.
So you’ve got to go bit by bit by bit and gradually increase the funding, increase the size of the organization, and both in terms of running it and the number of people that we can work with in a production.
I mean, a dream would be to put on an opera from the standard repertoire and show the other opera companies that you can do this with disabled artists or with a strong mix of disabled and non-disabled artists, and can you adapt a story from a standard repertoire opera in a way that says what we wanted to say in the 21st century?
Because a lot of these operas are about, oh, the woman, the surprise dies at the end.
Or, you know, it’s like, it’s just, where are the roles for the strong older women?
Or whereas, yeah, some of this, there’s some of the stories are kind of of their time, should we say?
You know what I mean?
But there’s, but there are ways to adapt them and think about how you could make it more relevant, I suppose, for a 21st century audience and the kind of the way we think now about all sorts of…
I think you can make, I think, and excuse me if I’m wrong, I’ve just been studying it recently.
Oratorios are a lot more adaptable, I feel, than the operas.
Hmm, interesting.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I mean, I’ve sounded a staged messiah.
That’s what I studied recently, the handled messiah, so I’m comparing it to Bontemurdy’s Orphea.
Okay, yes.
Yes, because there are ways you could, you can play with all sorts of things and put a story around the music.
It could effectively write a play, I suppose, that has the music in there.
Yeah, really interesting ideas.
Change gender roles and all sorts.
Yeah, there’s all sorts of possibilities.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Brilliant.
Thank you very much.
And Kevin, we’ll move on to you now for a question.
Hi Jo, Kevin here.
We’ve met many times at Paraorchestra.
How are you?
Yeah, very good.
Really, really good talk.
And it really interesting what you were saying that, you know, your ambition would be to get this, to get your work kind of expanded and out into bigger operas and things.
Is that something that you’re considering doing, doing more kind of, kind of access coordinating with the bigger operas because of the great things that you guys are learning at the moment as a company?
You mean as in working with the bigger opera companies or?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Almost like collaborating with them.
Interested in collaborating.
And it’s quite a tricky line to tread because we’re getting, I think there’s a lot of interest, a lot of goodwill, and opera companies want to do better.
But they also, what we’ve got to be really careful about is making sure we are not just giving them information for free.
Otherwise, having worked so hard to get the company going, and it was going to be heartbreaking just to say, and here it is all on a plate.
This is how you do it.
When actually they need to learn to value skills and life experience.
And so, yeah, so we’re looking at ways of expanding the business model and ways that we can kind of encourage companies to collaborate with us.
And that could mean collaborating on a production.
I mean, that would be amazing.
And learning by working with us rather than just having us come and give them a talk.
As I think that lived experience is so important and ultimately, we want it to be normal for any opera company to be working with disabled people on stage and creative teams and governance.
It’s just going to become normal and not not not newsworthy.
You know, that will be the goal.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
You want it to be sort of the standard, the norm rather than it being this big thing.
Yeah, ultimately.
Yeah, you want the production to be the story, not the fact that there are disabled people in the production.
It’s always a very interesting, fine line, isn’t it?
Yeah.
I don’t think we’re there yet, unfortunately.
No, I think it will be a while, quite a while.
There’s a lot of work to do.
Do you think the industry is becoming more open, do you think?
I think it is.
I think ultimately, companies are probably, it’s who’s at the top, who’s sitting around the table on the board of trustees.
And I think there’s change needed there.
So we need much more diversity in the governance and the leadership of these big companies, so that there’s real meaningful change and not just of tokenistic little projects and real changes to the way they recruit and their processes.
I’ve had really interesting conversations with people working in the industry who are passionate about wanting to see change and are working so hard to make it happen, but are finding it such a slow process because you get people in the governance end who just don’t understand.
You kind of need that diversity and that inclusion at every level within a company, right?
For stuff to actually meaningfully change quickly.
And I think the more that we can show that the talent is totally there, the more that naturally that talent will flow up.
But yeah, that process does take a little bit of time.
Yeah, absolutely.
And I think there’s quite an interesting thing that we’ve come across and we’ve kind of come up against a bit with Formatability.
We would regard ourselves as disability led, you know, I mean, quite clearly, I’m VI and our board is, the majority of people on the board are disabled or neurodividend.
But there’s a group of fundraisers who have made a kind of arbitrary decision that unless, in order to say that you’re disability led when applying to them, you have to have 75% of your board has to be disabled and 50% of your senior management.
And it’s just, it’s a ridiculously high bar when you think about the barriers that there are to disabled people being on a board.
It’s voluntary work, the energy that it takes.
If you’ve got a disability that is draining with energy and you’ve got it in a living, then how are you going to find the energy to do some voluntary work and sit on a board?
Yeah, that’s an issue.
And I think that we’re going to need to bang a drum about that as well.
Another thing, another one to jump up and down.
Yeah, that’s a really interesting one that they’d put a definition on what disability led is, but that’s actually having a real impact on being able to apply for funding because…
And I think they’ve…
I mean, it’s a thing they’ve decided for all sorts of different communities.
So they’re saying whatever community you say you represent, in order to say you’re led by that community, that’s the kind of thresholds they’re putting.
And I just don’t know how many disabled people were involved in that particular conversation about the disabled part of it, you know?
I totally understand the intention there, but I feel like that’s a good precedent to set once you’ve already got a good number of people working at those high levels.
But yeah, at the moment, it can create a barrier in actually assembling that number.
Precisely.
We need, as an emerging company, a young company, you need the people on your board to have the skills to make that company secure and stable and to be able to grow and do the work it needs.
For sure.
Trying to do tick boxes with a positive discrimination way, it can be problematic just for that very reason of how many people have got the time and energy.
Yeah, yeah.
So I think we’ve got two more hands up, which we’ve probably got time for if we’re quick, but we’ll draw the conversation to close after that.
Aya, did you have another question?
Yeah.
So what is the best way you would like to collaborate with other artists?
I think find people that you, first of all, just simply get on with, like meet and get out there and go to any industry events you can, if you can get, if you could find a way to get there and physically, like it makes such a difference, just simply like making friends, get on with people, getting on with people and start to find a mutual shared interest.
I’m, oh, let me, look, what else?
I think for me, it’s been going to performances as well, and just talking to people in the audience.
You know, having a chat to people is really helpful.
Finding any, I don’t know what, what kind of, I’ve forgotten what music you make.
Or depends what’s going on in your community.
If there’s any groups, any ensembles that you can get involved with, and grow up from there.
Does that help?
Yeah.
But what if it’s like with artists, if you know what I mean, collaborating with artists?
I think it’s about, it’s having shared vision, having a shared conversation about what you want to create together.
And then batting ideas back and forth, bringing your own experiences, seeing where your experiences are in common, where they’re different, how that can spark off ideas.
So how would you reach out to them, though, in the first place?
I think for me, just from a slightly more contemporary background, so my background is in pop and rock and stuff like that.
So for me, it’s been going to gigs that I’ve enjoyed and actually just having a conversation with the artist afterwards, if they’re at an appropriate level and they’re just in the bar afterwards or something like that.
It’s also been, you know, I might find new releases from small artists who are in my local area, and just drop them an email saying, I really like this track for me.
I’m a recording engineer and a mixing engineer.
And I’d say, I think I could add value to your work.
These are some of the things that I’ve done.
And you kind of just open up a conversation that way about like the value that each of you bring to a project.
Yeah, that’s a great answer, Joe.
And Adelaide, one final question from you.
Are you working at all in conjunction with the Musicians’ Union?
I, well, I personally, I belong to the Incorporated Society, sorry, no, the Independent Society of Musicians, so the ISM, and I also belong to Equity.
When Formulability is creating contracts and so on, then we use Equity and MU guidance for rates and working conditions and so on.
Does that make sense?
Is that what you’re meaning?
Or was there, have I missed the point?
No, I wondered if you were collaborating with them on anything about kind of rights for self-employed disabled musicians, kind of fail-safes, access riders, things like that.
I’ve never heard of Equity before.
I only know about the Musicians Union, and I hadn’t actually joined them because I didn’t think, I thought, what’s the point?
I can’t gig, I can’t get out of my house.
I’m just an online YouTube and Twitch harvester at the moment, maybe, so I didn’t know about Equity.
Can I suggest, Katie’s here, who’s my artist manager, she’s on the call, and she is heavily involved with the MU, so just take a moment to answer that.
Thank you.
Yeah, I wanted to, just on the, I was gonna add, just on what, how Formidability have worked with the MU is that they provided support to us while we were mid project with some stuff to do with safeguarding.
We had a number of safeguarding related reports, which I think is a thing that can happen when there are a number of people with protected characteristics together.
And we, we had some stuff in place.
We had, we had safeguarding procedures and structures and so on in place for the organization.
But some of the things that came up, we weren’t expecting at the MU provided some support with that, which was really invaluable and really helpful.
But if your question is about what the MU can do for disabled artists in general.
So I’m actually on the board of the MU and I’m not, I haven’t come here prepared to answer this question on their behalf.
So like, I can’t, I don’t know everything, but I do know that they are extremely aware of many issues that face disabled musicians and working very hard to make their organization more diverse as well.
And they have lots of ways that you can kind of connect with them and benefit from their services and the campaigning that they do, and so on and so forth.
And also, yeah, I mean, discrimination is a big worry, especially when it comes to, you know, in my line of possible work, for example, weddings, right?
I am a non-binary, neurodivergent and registered blind musician.
And those are things that you want to show somebody that, you know, might want to hire you.
But there are also things that put people off.
And it’s like, that really is like what Jo was saying about, you know, do you divulge all of your differences?
Can it be a blessing?
Can it be a curse?
You know, you never know what to keep a secret or what you should tell them and what, you know, you might be liable for if you don’t tell them that you have these things going on.
Yeah, absolutely, absolutely.
From a union perspective, one thing they offer is various insurances.
So if you’re going out gigging and you’re a member with them, you have your membership comes with, again, I’m not prepared to list exactly, but things like public liability insurance and personal injury cover and also instrument insurance.
That’s a very like good process for that.
Yeah.
The other thing that they have is they have a safe space that you can report any kind of harassment to and they are really good at dealing with it and really set up to deal with it.
It’s very hard to, there are loads of safeguarding issues in freelance music making.
You mentioned weddings and things, there’s loads of safety issues there.
Yeah, that’s a concern because you wouldn’t know, I mean, if you don’t know who to contact, you wouldn’t know who to report those things to.
And there are a lot of situations that might make you feel very uncomfortable and put you off essentially living your dream.
Yeah, absolutely, absolutely.
So I think, yeah, to the union part of this, I think, yeah, that reporting mechanism is there and it’s very important part of the industry.
But I think a lot of the questions that you’ve raised are applicable a lot more widely.
Amazing.
Well, I’m going to draw us to a close there.
I hope Adelaide, that’s given you some encouragement that there is support available.
Hopefully, some of the links that we put in the chat will be useful as well.
Jo, I want to thank you so, so, so much for your time.
I know we’ve gone a little bit over time, so thanks for sticking around.
It’s been such a good talk and, yeah, we’ve covered so many different topics there.
And yeah, just thank you again so much.
You’re welcome.
Later.
Thank you.
