Leading the way: How Drake Music Scotland is empowering disabled artists to change music for good
Drake Music Scotland (DMS) has provided disabled people with music-making opportunities since 1997: from establishing Scotland's first Digital Orchestra of disabled musicians to creating an innovative new music education tool in the Figurenotes software.
Drake Music Scotland aims to support people of all ages and with a wide range of disabilities to play, learn and compose music independently. They take an artist-led approach to supporting and working with disabled artists, music creators, and musicians at various stages of their careers.
Through their Create Programme, they’ve been supporting emerging artists embarking on their first professional shows, working with established musicians to develop their skills and networks, and partnering with creative organisations and businesses in the music sector.
By providing intervention at key career stages for the artist and working to promote inclusion in the wider music sector, DMS is forging a path for more disabled artists to work in the mainstream, achieve more ambitious artistic ideas – and ultimately diversify the sector.
In 2021-22, Drake Music Scotland provided training opportunities to almost 700 people over 60 sessions, working with organisations like Piping Live!, The Music Education Partnership Group, New Music Scotland, and their own in-house Disabled Artists’ Network.
“It’s made working with things on a much bigger scale and on a much bigger capacity far easier than it would be if I was on my own.”
- Sean Logan
Image: Sean Logan in Full Spectrum by Colin Hattersley
Pianist Sean Logan launched his first professional show Full Spectrum at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 2022
Sean has Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and uses his music to connect with the world. He says the support he received from Drake Music Scotland for Full Spectrum allowed him to be able to focus on making the show the best that it could be.
Not only were DMS there to work with him on the creative concept, but they also helped to manage his schedule, and support his administration and marketing.
“It certainly wouldn’t have been as good a show if I was having to allocate loads of time to registering it for the Fringe website and things.”
For Sean, this kind of well-rounded, ongoing support is necessary for disabled artists to successfully deliver a high-quality piece of art.
“It’s meant that as other things have come up in my career,” says Sean, “I’ve made bigger successes and progress. They’ve been able to be with me at that step of the way as well and continued to offer all kinds of different support.”
Images: Sean Logan in Full Spectrum by Colin Hattersley
Watch Sean perform as part of the Pianodrome sessions.
“I feel very happy to be in a position where I can kinda do Scotland proud,” he says.
“I know for a fact that if it wasn't for the level of understanding about what my work is and what I'm trying to achieve [from] bodies like DMS, I certainly would not have been in quite as easy a position to be doing what I’m doing now.”
Award-winning musician and composer Ben Lunn is Drake Music Scotland’s Associate Composer. Embedded within the organisation, he’s had the freedom to work and write and, importantly for DMS, the chance to mentor other up and coming composers.
Ben describes the opportunity as “quite a major blessing.”
He’s been working with DMS for many years, and following the success of Diversions in 2019, a concert collaboration with Drake Music Scotland, Hebrides Ensemble and The Queen’s Hall Edinburgh, he’s been able to work on numerous projects to support other disabled composers.
One of these was Echoes, a concert that premiered new music by nine disabled composers from across the UK.
Image: Echoes Concert by Sandy Butler
“How do we make it accessible, welcoming, relaxed, but not patronising?”
Having works solely by disabled composers was central to Echoes, which focused on showcasing their work and creating an environment for peer-to-peer development.
With composers from Wales, Scotland and England, Echoes was an experiment in how to make a concert safe, comfortable and accessible, and how to bring disabled musicians and non-disabled musicians together for peer-to-peer learning.
Ben describes it as being “quite a learning experience” and that “everybody’s players learned a huge amount of working with people in that way.”
“It was then also the realisation that that was the largest concert of disabled composers that has ever happened in Europe, if not the world.”
“It’s a lovely thing,” Ben says, and he hopes that Echoes was not only a high-quality performance of work made by and with disabled musicians, but that the methods and approaches they used to bring it all together can be adopted, too.
9 disabled composers
3 UK nations represented
8 premieres of new work
Featuring the world’s first digital orchestra
In his role as Associate Composer, Ben also co-founded the Disabled Artist’s Network, a multi-purpose platform, led entirely by disabled artists working together to identify where they can make the most impact in the world.
“We've been able to help support individuals with applications,” says Ben, but “the main challenge the network faces is how to identify and create support.”
Being an artist-led network means they’re taking the time to understand the needs of their group members, but that doesn’t mean they haven’t had a few successes already.
“The first real victory I think we managed to get as a network was pairing Clare Johnston with the wonderful classic ensemble Eegeru.”
Disabled musician, composer and performer Clare Johnston began to experiment with music technology when working with Drake Music Scotland, where she fell in love with the possibilities offered by iPad apps to create music with the disabled artist’s voice at its heart.
She was first inspired to work with musicians outside of Scotland after seeing an opportunity from the British Council to make music with people from underrepresented countries.
Together with Ben, she secured funding from the British Council and PRS for Music Foundation to work on a development project with the Kazakh contemporary music ensemble Eegeru.
“We wanted it to be a true collaboration where we were taking in and learning all about the Kazakh instruments.”
Clare was keen to broaden her horizons, to share learning and to learn in return.
There was a chance to explore each country’s traditional instruments, music and music culture, as well as the experiences of disabled musicians.
“I think it always inspires us as composers to work with any different groups,” she says. “The further away from our style and our environment and the things that we've been doing already, the better development we often get.”
Image: Clare Johnston by Neil Jarvie
“It was absolutely amazing to be able to present these talented musicians with a score that had been written for an instrument that is not at all like their own.”
The work with Eegeru is ongoing but the impact it’s had on Clare, and the musicians she’s collaborated with so far, has been profound and has opened up new avenues of discovery for her as a musician.
“Clearly across barriers of time and space and language, you can really still understand that person's emotional and cultural point of view in a piece of music.”
Sound and Music is on a mission to maximise the opportunities for people to create and enjoy new music.
Based in the UK, their Fair Access Principles are designed to act as a code of best practice for running successful, open and inclusive artist development programmes, competitions and awards for composers.
Hannah Bujic, Co-Head of Artist Development at Sound and Music, shares that the principles came out of conversations had between staff members, centred around issues of fair work for composers and musicians.
“We wanted to find a way to start positive conversations about best practice of artist development programs and what it means to be working with composers,” says Hannah.
“Composers are, by the nature of their work, working on their own. [Sound and Music isn’t] a union or a membership organisation, but we wanted to be able to do something to support composers who felt like they didn't have a voice.”
The Fair Access Principles try to support sector organisations to improve the accessibility of their selection processes so that a more diverse range of composers can have equality of opportunity.
Sound and Music carried out consultation work when building the principles with organisations like DMS. “Drake Music Scotland was one of the original signatory organisations when we launched the Fair Access Principles in February 2020,” she says.
There’s a lot of work to be done in the sector to encourage real change, and it may be a slow process, but it’s worth being part of it, says Hannah. “We do have organisations who come to us and say, you know, we'd love to sign up, we're just not sure whether we're going to be able to do this.”
“We’d much rather have you in the network, being part of the conversations, coming to our annual assembly, where you can really share the challenges and issues and talk about how we can best address them.”
Discover more about recent signatories to the Fair Access Principles
“If you're not seeing those people who look like me or sound like me being part of [a programme], you're never going to be reaching the under-represented group.”
Working on the Fair Access Principles has also helped the staff at Sound and Music reflect on their own ways of working.
“It has helped us as an organisation, not just to think about our relationships with composers who we work with, but how we're thinking about ourselves as a team and the ethos behind it,” she says.
By encouraging sector change through the Fair Access Principles, and providing support and space for artists like Sean, Clare and Ben to create and develop their practice, we can see that the impact of empowering disabled artists to lead the way goes far beyond the individual.