6 Minute English / Disability in music and theatre

Note: This is not a word-for-word transcript.

Hello. This is 6 Minute English from BBC Learning English. I m Neil.

And I m Georgie. Many people love watching movies at the cinema or going to the theatre to see a play. But have you ever imagined what an art gallery would be like if you were blind, or how a deaf person might feel at a music concert?

In the UK, The Equality Act of 2010 guaranteed the rights of disabled people to equal access to education, employment, and services, including music, theatre and the arts. Since then, the Disability Rights movement has worked hard to break down barriers for disabled artists and performers, and their audiences.

In this programme, we ll be hearing from a musical composer whose work using new instruments allows disabled musicians to express their lived experience through music. The phrase lived experience emphasises the unique experience of disabled people, plus the fact that this gives them knowledge and understanding that others do not have. And, as usual, we ll be learning some useful new vocabulary as well.

Great. But first I have a question for you, Georgie. Despite 2010 s Equality Act, it s still difficult for disabled musicians and music fans in the UK to perform and see live music. A study by disabled musicians group, Attitude is Everything, found that one third of music venues provided no disabled access information at all. But which London music venue was recently given a Gold award for accessibility for disabled musicians and audiences? Was it:

a) The Royal Albert Hall?b) The Southbank Centre? or,c) Brixton Academy?

Hmmm, I ll guess it was The Royal Albert Hall.

OK, Georgie, I ll reveal the answer later in the programme. Megan Steinberg is a music composer at Royal Northern College of Music, where she collaborates with Drake Music, a leading national organisation working in music disability and technology. Megan composes music to be played by new instruments . Here she explains what a new instrument is, to BBC Radio 3 programme, Arts Ideas:

So, they may have been mass-produced, or semi mass-produced, or they may have been designed and built by the musician themselves, just like a bespoke instrument for themselves. And they re designed to be accessible to maybe just that one individual performer, or maybe also to lots of different performers with disabilities or differences.