Drake
Music, Technology and Disability.

Georgina has started working for Drake in 2018 , leading a composition workshop for young people with disabilities.

Drake Music is a national arts charity working across the UK and a leading organisation working in music, disability and technology.
It has bases in Bristol, Manchester and London.
Drake is National Portfolio Organisation for Arts Council England and are also funded through Youth Music.
The organisation has been pioneering the use of assistive music technol-ogy for over 20 years. This enables more people to make music.
In that time, it has developed lots of imaginative methods of teaching, learning, writing and playing music.
Drake specialises in using technology to break down disabling barriers to making music.

What we do

Central to our work is the belief that everyone can fulfill their creative and musical potential, given the right opportunities.
We work where music, disability and technology meet to:
• create opportunities and instruments that make music fully accessi-ble
• increase participation in music-making at all levels
• build an integrated musical culture where disabled and non-disabled musicians work together as equals
Our skilled team has an excellent track record of developing and delivering outreach, training and education initiatives for disabled musicians of all ages and abilities.
We research and develop new accessible musical instruments and tech-nologies to create more ways with, by and for disabled people to make music.
Our artistic development programme supports disabled musicians to pro-gress their work and we offer training and consultancy for teachers, music hubs and other organisations.

Young people ensemble for the disabled

Georgina started working for Dadafest in 2013 as a lead musician for the Young Dada ensemble delivering weekly sessions for a group of young vulnerable people with disabilities.

 DaDa – Disability and Deaf Arts- is a Liverpool based organisation which aims to inspire, develop and celebrate talent in disability and deaf arts.

 The Young DaDa Ensemble project delivers accessible music-based activities to young disabled people aged 11 – 20 in Merseyside The project has two strands, Explore(basic) and Evolve(advanced)

 DaDa – Disability and Deaf Arts is a Liverpool based organisation which aims to inspire, develop and celebrate talent in disability and deaf arts.

 DaDaFest produce opportunities for disabled and d/Deaf people to perform and access the arts, including training and a festival programme.

Adults and autism

 Georgina led this innovative project in 2015 in Knowsley for the Adult disability services supported by the Autism Innovation Fund.

The project aimed at providing support for initially six service users but through careful planning of time and resources Georgina was able to extend the offer to a further two service users taking the participants up to eight. The two additional participants had additional and complex support needs and we felt that is was important that the opportunity was made available to service users with a wide range of support needs.

Each participant had the opportunity to contribute to their own one page profile at the beginning of the project.

At the start of the project all participants were assessed using the Spectrum star with a review at the midpoint and a planned reassessment at the end of the project. Many of the participants have been able to demonstrate individual breakthroughs – increased confidence & communication skills – in some cases learning a new language ( French ) and writing musical scores and songs, turn taking, working as part of a team.

A wide range of musical instruments were purchased as part of this project which included: chimes & shakers, ukulele, small harp and a Theremin which provided  more choice and control for each participant.

All of the participants were given a journal at the first session and they were able to keep their own diary and record of each session.

Three participants have been working towards an Explorer award linked to the Art Awards programme. It was hoped that all participants could be supported towards this award but there is an upper age limit for the programme which limited registration for this award.

The project has also provided opportunities for the participants and their families to attend a number of different community base performances, including theatre and musical events.  It has introduced a new genre of classical music to the service users which has been extremely well received.

Classical Expressions Case Study LF

Classical Expressions Evaluation Report