Inclusive Music And The Barriers We Forget

Esi Hardy (00:00)
The biggest learning for the delegates in the room was around, it’s all right to try. It’s all right to try and adapt something. And it’s okay not to get it right first time.

It’s about everybody learning that inclusion is really important and that we can do things differently as well.

Hi everybody, thank you so much for tuning in again, whether you’re on YouTube or Spotify or watching via the website. Thank you very much once again for coming along to listen and watch another episode of the Equality Edit, where we unpack equality one story at a time.

Today, I’m joined by my colleague, Rachel, who is going to talk about inclusive music. So I’m going to let her take over and introduce herself and what she does in a second. But as usual, if you haven’t already, please do subscribe, like and share with colleagues and friends and family, because the more people we get engaged in this conversation, the wider this conversation can be.

So for now, I’m going to hand over to Rachel to introduce herself. Thank you so much for joining us today, Rachel.

Rachel Wolffsohn (01:20)
Thank you for having me, Esi. It’s lovely to be here. So yeah, I’m Rachel Wolffsohn, I’m the general manager of the OHMI Trust. We’re a charity based in Birmingham and we seek to enable people with physical disabilities to participate fully in music making. I came into the work 12 years ago and originally I trained as a secondary school music teacher and then I stopped to have my son.

And when he was two, he had a stroke. So he’s got a permanent right side hemiplegia. And so you suddenly realise how inaccessible certain activities are, music being pretty high on the list and coming from a very musical family where, you know, I was a music teacher, my mum was a music teacher, my brother did a music degree. It was a bit of a surprise, I suppose, to find how inaccessible music making was for my son.

Esi Hardy (02:09)
And that’s quite a shock really, isn’t it? Because I mean, I know in education they talk about the two biggest events in education that support people with their socialisation skills are music and sports. So it really is a shock that music isn’t more inclusive. I know that the kind of society do a lot to make sport inclusive for disabled people. But why do you think there’s not so much in music?

Rachel Wolffsohn (02:35)
So, yeah, it’s one of those things when I go round and talking to groups of people about the work we do, I often challenge people to name Paralympic athletes and a whole list of people now will come off the tongue and we know who they all are. Then you ask about physically disabled musicians and there’s like stunned silence and maybe, there’s that drummer in Def Leppard or there’s Beethoven was deaf or…

Esi Hardy (02:49)
Mm.

Rachel Wolffsohn (03:01)
There’s Evelyn Glenniel who’s deaf as well. But it’s a bit of a stunted list compared to the sports equivalent. I think the biggest challenge for music is quite basic, actually. So if you think of any musical instrument, probably, not certainly, but probably you need 10 very dexterous fingers to play that instrument.

You think of guitars, trumpets, violins, pianos, whatever you can think of. Maybe the didgeridoo might be an exception, but there aren’t many of those. And so because the instrument that everybody knows and is available through your music shops and through your music services in schools, in the school cupboards, because all of those instruments present, the actual design of the instrument presents a barrier, no one quite knows what to do.

You know, people sometimes say percussion, but even percussion, you know, if you’re going to play a tambourine, you’ve got to hold it in one hand and hit it with another hand. ⁓

Esi Hardy (03:58)
Yeah. Yeah. And you need

to be able to carry a beat as well, don’t you?

Rachel Wolffsohn (04:03)
Absolutely, absolutely. So basically to make music accessible requires a complete new way of thinking in design of instruments. And that’s what OHMI aims to promote. We’re not engineers ourselves, we don’t redesign things ourselves, but we’re trying to gather the designs that are out there and then rework those, work with people to rework with them so that they can be

made more available in greater number and at a better cost because a lot of these bespoke adaptations, again, knowing the disability world, more broadly, anything that’s a bespoke adaptation has a high cost and is difficult to get hold of. So I think that’s why music is generally behind the curve when it comes to accessibility. It’s just purely about the design of instruments. They’re very complicated to start with and to make them work for someone with a

a different physical presentation is a challenge. And it’s a challenge often for people who might not be aware of the need of accessibility. There are actually very few instrument makers left in certainly in the UK, even globally. So, the chances of the person with the instrument making skills also having knowledge and understanding and appreciation of the need for people with a range of disabilities to come forward and rework the instruments is rare.

OHMI’s had a competition which has been running initially every year and now every two or three years, which is an international competition and that’s been about trying to find the instruments that act there. And certainly for the earliest years of that competition, generally the pattern was somebody without a disability had enjoyed playing an instrument or played to a professional standard, some acquired medical condition usually,

or trauma had come into their life and they couldn’t continue using the equipment that they had previously used. And because there was often an air of shock and trauma around that person, you know, the possibility of having a GoFundMe page or, you know, some financial support made the creation of an alternative instrument possible. And so there were quite a few people who had instruments developed like that.

And these things cost a lot of money. But having made that one instrument, the design sat with that person because they didn’t know anybody else who needed it. And what the competition did was encourage those people to connect with us so that we could point other people in their direction. This person got a design for that or this person’s made that. They don’t want to make another one, but they’re happy to share the design for you to make it or for somebody else to make it. So that was a really helpful thing in the early days of the competition is just

Esi Hardy (06:24)
Yeah.

Rachel Wolffsohn (06:45)
just finding out what’s already out there, finding out who those people are who have had a go at making something. And then once a design is there, often a different person can look at a design and say, OK, that’s that design’s been made by somebody with very specialist instrument making skills who knows very, very key technicalities of the instrument design. And now how can we make that more affordable or how can we replicate it in a more

Esi Hardy (06:47)
Thank

Yeah. Yeah.

Rachel Wolffsohn (07:13)
achievable way for a bigger audience.

Esi Hardy (07:16)
Yeah, so it’s kind of giving that inspiration to be able to take that further, isn’t it? Kind of, yeah, sometimes it’s hard sometimes when you have a blank page kind of to know where to go to start with, but having that kind of something that’s already there, like that template to build off can give some ideas. And there was so much stuff that you said that I want to kind of unpack, but I don’t want to jump around. So I’m going to keep some stuff for later because I know we’re going to talk about it more later.

Rachel Wolffsohn (07:27)
Yes.

you

Okay.

Esi Hardy (07:43)
But one of the things that struck me that you said that is so true, think, kind of when people have an accident or when something happens that changes somebody’s life, it’s so much easier to go to those GoFundMe pages to raise the money. And I’ve seen this across the board when it comes to disability equality and disability awareness and raising money for disabled people. When something happens,

when there’s a story behind it, people get on board, but when it’s just, you know, what’s the word, kind of status quo, it’s not, you know, it’s not that easy for people to engage with that, but it’s also not that easy for people to talk about it because, my disability is status quo. Nothing necessarily happened to me. Why? I I did, but I was too young to remember when I was four, I became disabled, but you know, that story would be boring because I don’t know what it is.

Rachel Wolffsohn (08:33)
Thank

Esi Hardy (08:35)
⁓ So there’s no story to kind of get people’s hearts and minds involved. And I’ve heard that in the military as well, where, you know, ex military people that become disabled get loads of money, they get millions of pounds because there’s that story behind it. But average Joe Bloggs that just is disabled are, well, you can go for it. But also, think disabled people, we don’t…

as a community, we don’t feel empowered to ask for that support as well. So going back to music specifically, we just think, we’re disabled, we can’t do it. So therefore we’ll do something else as well. So I went to school for disabled people. So the teachers, were used to teaching disabled people, but it was still like, you can’t, you’ll have to do something else instead.

Rachel Wolffsohn (09:10)
Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. And I think also, you know, going back to my journey as a parent, you’re trying to solve so many problems. You know, everything in life is a challenge, isn’t it? You know, nothing quite works as it needs to. So you’re trying to fire fight all of these different things as you go through life. And, you just you just find a way forward with one thing and your child grows or is bored if that and wants to try the next thing.

Esi Hardy (09:28)
Thank

Rachel Wolffsohn (09:44)
And I often say I have every sympathy with parents who just don’t, music’s just one thing too many because it’s not life threatening. Lots of people’s nice to have rather than essential things. And I often say to them, if I couldn’t work it through with my child, then somebody who’s got no musical background themselves, there’s no chance really.

Esi Hardy (09:54)
Absolutely.

Yeah.

And if it’s the kind of the support isn’t readily available, I mean, it’s hard enough to find the support that is readily available, but to find support that’s not readily available, I completely understand. I completely agree. My mum was actually saying to me the other day, so I grew up in the 80s, the early 80s and the 90s. That’s when I was in education.

And she was saying the other day that the fights that she had for me are, it’s astounding that she’s hearing the same problems today. You know, not to throw my age, but you know, 35 years later, the problems and the barriers that mothers of parents of disabled children are facing are exactly the same. And they are about how does my child get a decent education?

Rachel Wolffsohn (10:41)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, think a runaway.

Esi Hardy (11:00)
How does my child have equality in their education system? So it’s completely understandable that, you know, things like music, unfortunately, are way down on that list.

Rachel Wolffsohn (11:11)
Totally, totally.

And I think, you know, my son went through mainstream education. That was the right place for him in an educational sense, totally. And many of the children we work with are also mainstream. But I think when children are going through the system like that, their interaction with any one teacher or any one member of staff,

is quite fleeting and so the teachers don’t seem to build up that knowledge of equipment and resources and you know sources of advice or whatever they might need to really support that child and then retain that because they’ve got so many different children with so many different things but you know to know that for the next child coming through it’s likely to be a different child and a different pathway through the school and

Esi Hardy (11:56)
Yeah.

Rachel Wolffsohn (11:58)
They’re just not building up that, yeah,

Esi Hardy (11:58)
A different access requirement. Yeah.

Rachel Wolffsohn (12:01)
they’re not building up that kind of core knowledge that will help them work with that child. I mean, one of the things we’ve been trying to do over the last five or six years is actually support the music services that going out to schools so that if they’ve got, you know, that’s a smaller group of teachers that, you

they can have the knowledge, then they would likely to be the port of call for the schools to go to. And if they don’t know, they know us. You know, it’s trying to sort of get the information that way, perhaps, so that we’ve got more people knowing about it. But even if it’s just the sort of signposting of answers, because the next child might need a different solution. But if they know where there’s a sort of catalogue of options, that’s one thing we’ve been trying to do.

Esi Hardy (12:26)
Yeah.

Exactly, yeah.

Yes.

Rachel Wolffsohn (12:48)
And I think

that idea of not knowing where to start is certainly something that I still see in schools. And then you end up with a variety of responses, really. Sometimes you get the teachers who, well, no, you can’t do it. So, you you go over there and do some extra physio because you can do that. And we haven’t got time doing maths to do that because, you know, maths is far too important compared to music. Sometimes we get the…

Esi Hardy (13:09)
Okay.

Rachel Wolffsohn (13:14)
the teachers who come forward, or the schools who come forward and say, well, you know, so and so can’t use their right hand because they’ve got cerebral palsy, but the teaching assistant can hold the instrument for them. So that’s fine, you know. And I’m sort of saying, but nobody else in the class has an adult hovering over them to hold their instrument. So why should this child, and actually, if this is the way we’re teaching that child to learn the instrument, what’s going to happen when they want to go to band

on a lunch time or they want to go home and practice because music teachers, need children to practice. How is that going to work? Because you can’t take the teaching assistant with you to hold whatever it is up. Exactly. And then we also get teachers who then, I guess the more proactive teachers perhaps, who go home and they’ll spend a weekend in their shed or their garage trying to create a support for a trumpet. And that’s…

Esi Hardy (13:41)
Yep.

Exactly.

Rachel Wolffsohn (14:08)
It’s fabulous in one way that they’ve got that commitment to the students, but actually I’ve got a cupboard of things that, you know, for a very small amount of money, they can just be there tomorrow. So, you know, save your energy for something else and let’s do a tried and tested version and get that into schools.

Esi Hardy (14:24)
So I mean, I am going to share in the show notes how people can get in touch with you and how they can ask for support and get some of this equipment. let’s talk, I mean, we’ve talked about what’s not working for a bit. Let’s talk about what’s working for a little bit. So tell us a bit more about what are the, you know, I know this is a very general question, but let’s say what are the possibilities for a student with limited dexterity?

to be able to join in in a classroom activity.

Rachel Wolffsohn (14:55)
Sure. Well, we do have a website which I’ll give you the link for, it’s called OHMIConnect and that’s a really good resource to go in with your particular physical differences and identify the options that are currently available. In a very whistle stop tour version, if you think of brass instruments, so trumpets, trombones, French horns, tubas, all of those different instruments,

most of the action of the instrument is done by one hand, so usually the right hand except in the French horn when it’s the left. What the other hand is doing is really supporting the instrument, there’s a little bit more to it than that but in sort of early days terms that’s a good starting point. So with brass instruments if we’re able to support the instrument then if you’ve got use of one hand

Esi Hardy (15:31)
essentially.

Rachel Wolffsohn (15:41)
then you’re probably well on the way to playing. If you’ve got issues affecting both hands, then it might be a question ⁓ of using your best digits to make a combination effort to work it. But supporting the instrument is a lot of the effort in a brass instrument. If you think of a woodwind instrument, something like a flute or a clarinet or a recorder, you’ve got most of your digits being used to open and close holes or keys,

to make the different sounds and you are holding the instrument towards your mouth as well. So we have supports for those instruments again like the brass instruments so that they’re held in a playing position but we also have versions of the instruments that allow you to use one hand to operate all of the keys. You can have bespoke alternatives if you’ve got a different combination of fingers at work or something but that’s, you know, that’s

Esi Hardy (16:25)
Okay.

Rachel Wolffsohn (16:33)
That’s a slightly more expensive option. Those instruments are beautiful, very expensive. So we’re now going down the route where we’ve got the high end instruments and what we’re looking at at the moment is making them using a 3D printing process. There’s still quite a lot finishing, so it’s not equivalent in price yet, but it’s much cheaper than the woodwind version. And certainly when we’re giving them out to children in schools,

It’s a much better starting point. I’m a string player and strings are our hardest groove for instruments because neither hand is doing anything particularly mechanical. So it’s very difficult to replace the actions of either hand, either the hand that’s plucking or bowing or depending on the instrument or the hand that’s on the fingerboard. So they are harder. So sometimes we’ve got options using digital musical instruments.

Esi Hardy (17:22)
Okay.

Rachel Wolffsohn (17:23)
So those instruments allow, I guess, they’re not likely to take you as far in the same direction as a very high end violinist, for example, but they’ll certainly allow you to play. We’ve got things like on guitars and ukuleles, we’ve got a strummer mechanism that allows you to use a plectrum.

and the plectrum arm is controlled by the foot to a rope so it’s quite rudimentary in many ways but it kind of works. So that’s good for using a plectrum style of playing.

Esi Hardy (17:55)
So can you

Just for people including myself actually, can you explain to us what a plectrum is?

Rachel Wolffsohn (17:58)
Yeah.

Yes, sorry. It’s the little… So when you’re playing the guitar, the ukulele, you can have a little piece of plastic, like that sort of shape piece of plastic that you hold and you go across the string. ⁓ Sometimes when you…

Esi Hardy (18:09)
yeah. I have seen it. Yeah, I have seen it. So when I

was at university, I went to grammar school, and Paul McCartney’s grammar school of all places, just name-dropping a bit. And I met him and I ran over his toe as well. And he bought me a drink as a result. But going offbeat, there was a, I was doing a performing arts diploma.

Rachel Wolffsohn (18:17)
Okay.

Uh-oh.

⁓ okay.

Esi Hardy (18:34)
And we had to do a bit about ⁓ musicality and I’m not musical person. I like listening to music, I like dancing to music, but I’m not good at playing music. That is probably as a result of being told that I couldn’t when I was at school, but we’ll get into that in a minute. But I had to write a song.

And I wrote a song about our dog Basil and how much he was really annoying. I think it was Basil this thing smaller than a rat, stupid thing that can’t sit still or something. But you know, it got me a merit, so I was quite pleased. But I remember the point of my story is the guitarist that played for me was an amputee ⁓ and he used…

Rachel Wolffsohn (18:55)
Okay.

you

Okay.

Esi Hardy (19:20)
One of those, I can’t remember what it’s called, a plectrum in his mouth to play actually.

Rachel Wolffsohn (19:25)
Okay,

yeah. I know of another amputee who actually you can put him on my list of influences. Tony Memmel, he’s a singer and songwriter in Nashville and he has a short arm, I think just past his elbow, a congenital limb difference, and he is literally sponsored by Gorilla Tape and he has a technique of attaching a plectrum to his stump using Gorilla Tape which you can find on YouTube.

Esi Hardy (19:36)
Okay.

I will!

Okay.

I said, oh wow, because Nashville is one of the places where I’ve always wanted to go. It’s so cool. So that’s awesome. Yeah. So there are so many different, there’s so many alternative ways to achieve the same goal, right? I mean, I’ll ask you a bit of a controversial question. Do you think that

Rachel Wolffsohn (20:10)
Yeah, definitely.

Come on.

Esi Hardy (20:17)
as a disabled person, we should be realistic about what we can and can’t achieve when it comes to playing an instrument. Or should we think, well, I want to, therefore I need to find a way.

Rachel Wolffsohn (20:30)
I think it depends slightly on the situation. I feel, what I always say to people is our work, you know, the organisation is celebrating its 15th anniversary this year and we’ve come a long way. But, and so I always describe what we’re doing as emerging. We don’t have all the answers yet. But if someone doesn’t ask for it, we’re never going to try and find the solution. And I think I’ve in 15 years or

however long 12 years I’ve been working for Amy there are many things that I wouldn’t have imagined but someone else has so I think when we’ve got people if I go back to the very first competition winner was David Nabb, David had a massive stroke in his 30s, professional saxophone teacher at university in the States and I’m sure that had he

had that attitude of, you know, let’s be realistic. I’m never going to play the saxophone again. No saxophone would have ever been invented. And yet a saxophone was invented and he plays it and he’s back teaching professionally now in his 60s. So. You know, we need that vision, but we need that vision coupled with the finance and the person with the skill to do it. I now

Esi Hardy (21:29)
Thank you.

Yeah.

Rachel Wolffsohn (21:52)
have lots of people coming to us all the time saying we want saxophones. I have never yet got enough money together to buy one of David’s style of saxophones. So it’s, there’s a mixed bag isn’t it? We want those things to be out there but some things are possible given the money, given the time to have them made, given the person to have them. But I don’t think it’s on the disabled person to go…

Well, there’s no hope of me having this because I’m disabled. But there’s, I guess, a societal need or an OHMI need to say, well, OK, we’ve got lots of people who want these things and they should have the opportunity to have them. So what can we do to try and make that possible? But it can it can be a balance. You there can be a tension there between what’s practical and affordable and ideal. ⁓

Esi Hardy (22:35)
Mm.

Yeah.

Yeah,

I mean, it is so unjust that that if it’s practical but not affordable, that’s the reason why shouldn’t be somebody shouldn’t be doing it. I mean, sorry, carry on.

Rachel Wolffsohn (22:55)
Yeah, absolutely.

No, no, was just going say that if you ask me or my colleague particularly about saxophones, that that’s the instrument that is our biggest frustration that they exist. We just can’t afford it. And, you know, you go to a funder and you say, well, I’d like 12,000 pound, it’s going to benefit one person for it’s, you know, in sequence. They’re not interested in funding it. Yeah.

Esi Hardy (23:19)
Where

do you think the education authority needs to get involved with this? What do you think their responsibility for this is? If the problem is the funding and not the practical element of it, then surely there needs to be be a reason, there needs to a way to solve this.

Rachel Wolffsohn (23:28)
SAKE

Yeah, so my understanding, I’m not a lawyer and I get things wrong, but my understanding of the Equality Act is that the schools are responsible for providing equipment to allow an activity to take place in school. So when we first started with our Only Music Makers programme, which is we have two sort of branches of that that work to support children in school. When we started, we were just trying to basically test our instruments in the wild. You know, what happens if we give

Esi Hardy (23:51)
you

Rachel Wolffsohn (24:10)
a teacher and a child, a one-handed recorder. Does everything else work? Does the music they’re trying to play work? Can they work through their grade exams if that’s what they want to do? Can they play with others in the school recorder group? That kind of thing. And we started with recorders and trumpets on a stand because they were the two things we did have enough money to buy enough of. There isn’t any…

And by my understanding, there’s no legal requirement for schools to offer those individual music lessons. So some do, some don’t, some subsidise them, some don’t, some offer group lessons which are more affordable to parents. There’s a real mixed bag across the country. Where it’s slightly different is the next phase of work we went on to with our Music Makers programme. So we have Music Makers individual and we have Music Makers whole class.

And if you’ve been, you know, had any connection to primary education in the last 12 years or so, there’s been a real trend for the whole class of often around year four to learn one, they’re learning, effectively they’re learning music through the medium of one instrument. Now, in that case, there is no real legal avoidance of providing

Esi Hardy (25:16)
Okay.

Rachel Wolffsohn (25:24)
the right piece of equipment for that child. So if the whole class are learning the clarinet and you’ve got a child with cerebral palsy who’s got hemiplegia in that class or they’ve got a limb difference in that class, that child in my reading of the Equality Act should have, the school, specifically the school should arrange for that child to have an instrument that meets their needs.

That is one programme that we’re working on at the moment to try and get that information out of schools before those lessons start so that from week one that child has an instrument that they can learn. Now I haven’t yet come across a school where saxophone is an instrument. We have had clarinets and flutes which are also quite expensive. I think from a sort of legal perspective

Esi Hardy (25:53)
Thank

Rachel Wolffsohn (26:10)
the options are to find the adapted instrument so that they have that clarinet or that flute or whatever it is in that class, or they change the instrument to something that is achievable for everybody. So everybody has an instrument that they can do, even if it’s not the instrument that the school chose last year or might choose next year. So those to me are the two options where schools really, you know, the education system really does need to make sure that they’ve

they’ve made appropriate provision. But it might not be having everybody on a saxophone. So they’ve then got to pay 12,000 pounds for a saxophone that actually takes five years to produce and therefore is not going to be here for September, whatever we manage to do. And, and, you know, I still hear lots of horror stories even in the last few years. You know, there was one, one scenario where there was

⁓ a special needs unit within a mainstream school. So there were about six children in this unit. The whole school actually learnt musical instruments for three years, which is from a music perspective is good and actually quite unusual. The children in the unit for some reason had been withdrawn from those music lessons for the whole of year four.

And when we came in contact with the school, when this programme started, they were going into year five. So everybody else in their class had had a year’s head start on a brass instrument and they hadn’t. And the person I spoke to in the school to find out about the needs for the children for the upcoming year said, ⁓ just give them a drum. Now, no, no, I’m not giving them a drum. Everybody else is learning the brass instruments. How is this child going to entertain themselves for another two years

Esi Hardy (27:48)
Yeah.

Rachel Wolffsohn (27:51)
playing the drum. So we went in and we took some trumpet mouthpieces. I don’t know if you’ve ever had a go at playing a trumpet, but half the thing is making like a raspberry sound down a mouthpiece. Once you can do that, that’s kind of the biggest starting barrier. So we took some mouthpieces in. I think the teaching assistants in the unit thought we were a little bit crazy, but we took these mouthpieces in and we managed to get

five out of the six children making this raspberry sound down the mouthpiece before we left within the first half an hour. So after that we left them with the mouthpieces so that when they were in the unit, if they were doing the register rather than saying yes miss I’m here, they could make a rhythm on their mouthpiece or something because actually it’s these muscles around the face that you need to work on and that can be an issue for people with cerebral palsy as well. You know, the hand and the arm might be obvious but the facial muscles also can be

Esi Hardy (28:42)
Thank

Rachel Wolffsohn (28:45)
⁓ tricky to get going. So by having those mouthpieces and doing some fun things with them, it meant that those, you know, that kind of action of buzzing would help with the lesson where they were back with their class. As it happened, one of our funders, quite a high, high level funder, asked to visit our project that they were funding in the March. So six months in.

Esi Hardy (28:48)
Absolutely.

Rachel Wolffsohn (29:10)
And we went into that lesson and that was the lesson that they ended up seeing. And these children were all in the lesson playing alongside their peers, albeit their bass instruments were on a floor stand. Interestingly, there were two groups back to back. And in the second group, no one had mentioned anybody else in the other group, but it turned out that there was a girl who, I don’t know, I’m sorry, I don’t know what the correct…

terminology but I’m going to say short stature. don’t know if that’s Okay, Dwarfism. The right term. I apologise if it’s not the right one. Dwarfism. And so she hadn’t been flagged to us at all and she didn’t have an issue in some senses with holding the trumpet up. But actually it was quite tricky because she was trying to sit on the chair and her feet weren’t reaching the floor. So just that whole kind of balancing of her body. And because the trumpet was there on a floor stand.

Esi Hardy (29:36)
Okay, dwarfism. No, no, no, that’s called dwarfism. Yeah.

Absolutely.

Rachel Wolffsohn (30:02)
It was, oh, actually we could use this with this child too. So she was also benefiting from this equipment being available, even though, you know, actually her hands and arms were fine. But yeah, just that awareness of options out there that could then be reapplied for other people in that class situation. So.

Esi Hardy (30:22)
And I think

that’s the thing, it? That, you know, this is the business case and also the economic case that actually a lot of the instruments may only support one person, but also a lot of them will support a range of people in the classroom. Even if it’s not in that class, classes to come, you’ve got a bank of accessible equipment, but also a bank of gained knowledge that you’re gaining all the time about how to adapt and adjust your lessons.

Rachel Wolffsohn (30:50)
Yes.

Esi Hardy (30:50)
So a

Rachel Wolffsohn (30:51)
Yes.

Esi Hardy (30:51)
couple of weeks ago, Celebrating Disability ran a training session on inclusive classrooms. And the trainer wasn’t me. It was somebody with a music background, but also with a background of working with neurodivergent students. And looking at the feedback afterwards, The biggest learning for the delegates in the room was around, it’s all right to try. It’s all right to try and adapt something. And it’s okay not to get it right first time.

And it’s okay for everybody to have a go as well. It’s not just about that one student in the class, It’s about everybody learning that inclusion is really important and that we can do things differently as well.

Rachel Wolffsohn (31:30)
Yeah, yeah. You know, I’ve even had some of our brass instrument stands, we’ve developed it for somebody who would for whatever reason struggle to hold the weight of a brass instrument and they’re not light. But actually, when we’ve used them in sessions with new teachers coming in, said, ⁓ actually, everybody would benefit from this because one of the things children do when they’re playing a brass instrument is they push it into their lips when they’re holding it. And that stops this buzzing action that needs to happen. So,

you know, suddenly we’ve got a device that was invented for one reason actually has universal benefit, even if it’s just for that first few weeks. So they get the, you know, the action of buzzing without being able to push it into their lips because they’d be pushing themselves forward, you know. So I think often that’s the case with accessible equipment as well, isn’t it? You know, it’s developed for one reason, but actually it has much broader uses in other other mediums.

One of the kind of more wacky things is in contemporary recorder playing. I know people think of recorders as for primary school children, but they do have a professional world as well. One of the things that people like doing in contemporary recorder playing is playing two instruments at once. Well, if you can play two recorders at once, you can get some interesting sounds. You can be quite wacky with the sound you’re making, not just a straight recorder sound. But suddenly, if you give somebody two one-handed…

Esi Hardy (32:40)
Okay.

Mm-hmm.

Rachel Wolffsohn (32:52)
recorders, now they’ve got the full range of the instrument rather than just a handful of notes that they can play with one hand at the top of the instrument. So, you know, it’s a benefit to everybody to try and find solutions for the disabled population in this case.

Esi Hardy (33:02)
What?

That’s

Just about thinking outside the box as well. And then the other positive thing that comes out of that is that teachers hopefully will then go to their colleagues in the staff room and at lunch and go, oh my God, guess what? And it spreads. So you know, it starts in music, but then it spreads to maths, it spreads to sport, it spreads to drama and all of those things as well.

Rachel Wolffsohn (33:31)
And I think sometimes it helps, so the process we do with the whole class programme is we ask schools to identify children in a really brief questionnaire because nobody likes lengthy online questionnaires. And then we follow up with a video call and we have a process which uses. So if I if I say if you told me you’ve got cerebral palsy, doesn’t really tell me anything about how it’s going to impact you in your interaction with musical instruments.

So what we’ve done, which was kind of COVID accident, if you like, because we couldn’t go into schools and meet the children. So suddenly we had to find a way of seeing what they were capable of doing online. So we have a whole structure of, I guess, like physical tests, but with fun, you know, fun things. So we asked the schools to get half a dozen things together, like wrapping paper tubes and like squidgy balls, foam balls.

So we can see the fine motor, the gross motor, the weight bearing, the ombush, all of that kind of things, but in a really fun way that we just have these random half a dozen things on the table that haven’t taken anybody a huge amount of time to collect. They’re in the art cupboard, the staff room, PE cupboard whatever. And then the kids play around with them and we can instantly see where their fingers are moving and how much they can bring their hands up to whatever position is required for the music lesson. And I had a teacher, a special needs coordinator in this case,

Esi Hardy (34:28)
You

Rachel Wolffsohn (34:49)
speak to me before and she said, you know, this child, the parents say he hasn’t got good, fine motor dexterity, but I haven’t really, I haven’t really noticed it. So I said, OK, that’s fine. We’ll go through the process. So a child comes on the course, foam ball comes out and you can instantly see that this child cannot do this with their fingers and squeeze the ball. It just doesn’t work on the one hand. And, you know, we did the whole process, child went away, teacher just came back

absolutely flabbergasted that what the parents had been saying to her she just hadn’t seen in the child and suddenly there really is a barrier there you know so hopefully I haven’t ever followed up with her but hopefully that will have just kind of helped her understand the barriers that a child might be facing in other areas of school life.

Esi Hardy (35:36)
That’s really interesting, actually. So do you think in a lot of situations, teachers are not devaluing deliberately, but not taking on board, you know, what the parents and what the students are saying? I asked you a question, I’m just going to carry on talking, I apologize. And so again, I remember, so I, so before drama school, I went to college and mainstream college.

Rachel Wolffsohn (35:45)
No. Yeah.

Esi Hardy (36:01)
Where I was doing performing arts and part of that was music again. And I was always stuck in music, no offense. I wanted to be on the stage and they kept making me hold an instrument. But anyway, so we were in this music lesson with our teacher called Alex. And he was telling us to beat a rhythm on the table, tap a rhythm out on the table.

And I couldn’t keep up because I had cerebral palsy and I have limited dexterity. And I couldn’t. He said, Esi, you’re not doing it properly. And I said, Alex, I’m trying, but I can’t. said, you can’t use your disability for everything.

Rachel Wolffsohn (36:43)
Marvellous. Yes, until you’ve walked in another person’s shoes, huh?

Esi Hardy (36:44)
Mm.

And I just thought, I don’t even know what to say. I think that was one of the first big, I had been discriminated against, but not so blatantly to my face like that. And it just stunned me. And so anyway, back to the question I was asking you, do you think that often teachers deprioritize what the children and the parents know about their own child and themselves?

Rachel Wolffsohn (37:12)
Yeah,

I think that happens. And I think also people don’t understand the impact of a particular disability, which is why telling me that a child’s got cerebral palsy doesn’t actually tell me very much, really. Because another thing I get told most commonly with cerebral palsy is there’s an instrument called a tenor horn brass instrument where you’re doing the buzzing, but it’s kind of in…

sitting too low, you you kind of wrap ordinarily you would wrap your arm around it and you would use this hand to operate. So it’s kind of sitting on the laps and you’re just giving it a hug and that’s the way the teachers think about it. Well I know from watching my son and I’ve seen other people similar that sometimes that because cerebral palsy or in my son’s case a stroke is a neurological condition.

Esi Hardy (37:41)
Oh yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Rachel Wolffsohn (38:02)
It’s the brain communication to the arm. It’s not the ability to move the arm. It’s the brain, constant brain communication to the arm to put it where you want it to go, where the barrier is. And so, yes, a child might, if they’re really concentrating hard on the holding of the instrument, they might be able to hold that tenor horn in a playing position. But the minute they’re trying to also concentrate on their vowels or their embouchure or what the music’s going on or…

Esi Hardy (38:12)
Mm-hmm.

Rachel Wolffsohn (38:30)
what’s happening over here in the classroom. That ability to hold that instrument actually is the thing that goes. And my son will often have his arm up as if he’s got his hand up in the air and there’s no getting it down. ⁓ And I think it’s that sort of understanding that unless teachers have had some kind of experience of cerebral palsy at a more close connection level,

Esi Hardy (38:44)
Yeah, absolutely.

Rachel Wolffsohn (38:57)
they often don’t appreciate that sort of a challenge. It’s just, you know, it’s just, oh, well, of course he can hold it. Look, come on little Johnny, hold it. Yeah, but that’s what we’re doing.

Esi Hardy (39:07)
Yes, just like this. Yeah,

Open your hands. But also I think that for me, and I’ve seen my other friends who have CP as well, or cerebral palsy as well, you know, one minute we can do something and then the next minute we can’t do that same thing again. And I would find it with like yogurt pots. Like one day it will work perfectly and I’ll eat it perfectly. Like an in quote, and I’m saying this deliberately,

‘normal person’ and then the next day I’m completely disabled with my yogurt pot. It’s everywhere, over my eyes, on the wall behind me, in the next door neighbour’s table, everything. But I have experienced myself from an outsider’s perspective. It’s like, well you did it a minute ago, what’s wrong? Why can’t you do it now? And people not understanding that our limbs do not move independently of each other.

Rachel Wolffsohn (39:38)
Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Esi Hardy (40:00)
So if I move my foot, then my arms gonna go in the same direction. Which is really hard for picking things out of the fridge.

Rachel Wolffsohn (40:03)
Yes. Yeah.

Yes, yes. And also, you know, for some people, one of my friends ⁓ is an amputee and some days she’s got prosthetics and she walks into a place like, you know, everybody else. And then the next week, her prosthetics have rubbed and she’s got blisters on her stump and she’s in a wheelchair because she can’t wear her prosthetics. And that’s quite common, you know, and you can’t expect one week to be the same as the next week for lots of people.

Esi Hardy (40:34)
Exactly. And you can’t, we need to shift to this mindset from that child being difficult and then shift it more to we need to find a solution that mitigates the barrier at every event reality. ⁓ And we, I mean, I know we’re saying, you know, the teachers need to have more awareness and everything, but you know, I also know we talked about this before when we talk about what we’re going to talk about today, that, you know, teachers are

Rachel Wolffsohn (40:45)
Yeah. Yeah.

Esi Hardy (41:01)
limited on resources, limited on the time they have to plan for these things as well. And I know that you told me about an example of a child not being able to engage because of that very reason.

Rachel Wolffsohn (41:13)
Yeah, so when I was a teacher way before I was a parent, I probably was in my second or third year of teaching and I had a young lady in my year seven class, she’d had some kind of spinal trauma as a result of surgery that had failed and she was a wheelchair user.

My classroom was the first floor on the first floor of the school building and I think music was the only subject where there were only first floor classrooms so she had no option or we had no option but to take her upstairs. There was no lift at the time. As I left they were installing a lift but when I was there, there was no lift. So this young lady was, without putting too fine a point, she was dragged up the stairs on a reverse evacue slide into my classroom every week.

That couldn’t happen and this was in the early 2000s, might not be today but it wasn’t the 40s or something either. That couldn’t happen until everybody else had cleared the stairwell, obviously for everybody’s safety. So basically she was brought late into my lesson every week having had this trauma of being brought up on this evacuee slide.

Esi Hardy (42:10)
Yeah.

Mm.

Rachel Wolffsohn (42:27)
I look back with heart, you know, I sometimes stand there in front of teachers saying, this is what you need to be doing and feeling like I’m beating them around the head that they’re not already doing it. And then this is the thing that grounds me. It’s like, it’s not that easy because she would arrive in my classroom. And, you know, at the time I was probably teaching 500 students a week. So every week it would be like, I haven’t thought about you. I haven’t even planned. I haven’t thought. And you’d fudge it for the week and, you know, you’d do your best with

what was in the room already and what you could imagine to do. And then the lesson would end. She’d be taken back down on the vacu-slide and repeat, repeat, repeat. And I’m ashamed of that. And I don’t know where she is now, I’ve no idea. But it’s hard as a teacher because I did actually quite a long teacher training. I did a two year teacher training degree on top of my music degree. And even then,

Esi Hardy (43:21)
Yeah.

Rachel Wolffsohn (43:23)
accessibility

inclusion wasn’t really covered in any sort of meaningful way when it came to adapted equipment, certainly not with any music specific way as to what’s available or not. I’m not even sure if that’s any better now either, to be honest. I don’t know.

Esi Hardy (43:41)
So I’m not saying this with any level of knowledge about what’s going on in education for music teachers or for teachers in general at the moment. But I can imagine that the sections on inclusion are at the very least integration, which I know is not a word we like to use anymore for very good reasons. But I think it’s probably more based on SEND Special education needs rather than the inclusion, the way that you and I think about.

it today.

Rachel Wolffsohn (44:09)
Yes,

Yes, yes. And actually the whole SEND thing is an interesting term because as a teacher in my mind, it’s not a bad term. It’s about the particular things that are needed for that child to undertake their education. And I think it’s now become very mixed with particularly learning needs and then seen as a, I don’t know, it’s seen…

Esi Hardy (44:17)
Hmm.

Yes.

like an ⁓

Rachel Wolffsohn (44:39)
Yes, yes,

Esi Hardy (44:39)
extra special thing kind of.

Rachel Wolffsohn (44:42)
Rather than just actually this child needs this chair to sit on, this ruler to type or this computer integrate, you know, interaction thing. It’s just become so I’ve had parents say, well, my child doesn’t have special needs, but they do have cerebral palsy. It’s like, as a teacher, that doesn’t quite fit together. I know what you mean. I do know what you mean. It’s a shame that that term has become it’s sort of

Esi Hardy (45:04)
Yeah, yeah. The system, yeah, yeah, I we’ve

been the systems made it so that you know that there’s like an oxymoron, which is ridiculous. Absolutely. I would say, you know, when I was at school, sure my mum would have said, no, Esi doesn’t have special needs, but she has cerebral palsy. Yeah, because you know, every child has special needs in that way, everybody should be taught in the way that works for that child. Absolutely. But going back to your kind of

Rachel Wolffsohn (45:09)
something that’s not made in

Yeah. Yeah.

Esi Hardy (45:33)
experience that you shared. You know, you say, and I remember when you told me about it before, I had a similar reaction. So first of all, you know, personally, I know you can’t tell people how they should feel. But you know, I don’t think I think it’s easy for us to take that on ourselves and think that we did wrong. But if we don’t have the support, the resources, the knowledge to do anything different, then…

It’s about kind of looking what else could have happened in that situation. The other thing that I thought of when you told me in the first place was, you know, what that child must have been thinking all the time they were in the classroom about how they don’t feel included, you know, how they’re not thought about or it feels as though they’re not thought about. Also, my gosh, I have to go back down the stairs again. You know, know that child is on an evacuee chair, but it’s going to be exhausting because that child has to hold themselves in a certain way,

Rachel Wolffsohn (46:19)
time. Bye.

Esi Hardy (46:27)
in order for it not to hurt as much. So they’re physically exhausted, they’re probably emotionally exhausted as well. They’re probably embarrassed because the most important thing when you’re a young person is how you’re perceived to other young people. And so they’re embarrassed. They never then have that group that they can go to and leave class with. And so it’s all this kind of the lesson itself, but all the peripheral things

Rachel Wolffsohn (46:40)
different.

Yes.

Esi Hardy (46:54)
that are ⁓ impacting the child’s ability to engage and then learn in the way they need to learn as well.

Rachel Wolffsohn (47:01)
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I am glad that as I left, they at least put a lift in. I can’t promise that everything else was in place, but at least they put a lift in.

Esi Hardy (47:12)
So I would like to kind of ask you a little bit about kind of the advice you would give others. So a lot of our listeners are disability inclusion leaders. I can imagine that over time after we develop awareness of this episode, there’ll also be teachers and music teachers. I’m going to share this with Music Mark as well, share this with all their teachers as well. So what advice, so starting with teachers,

general teachers and music teachers, what advice would you give people when it comes to inclusion and accessibility if they’re coming from a point of view that they don’t know anything?

Rachel Wolffsohn (47:51)
Yeah, so I think a sort of a few things to think about to start with. So just because someone has a disability doesn’t mean that their interest in music is going to be any different. They might not be interested and they might not have been anyway, or they might be the, you know, the most passionate musician that the disability doesn’t impact the interest. So if there’s an interest, we should be finding ways forward. And if they are certainly if they’re in a whole class

Esi Hardy (48:10)
Mm-hmm.

Rachel Wolffsohn (48:17)
environment where everybody else is playing the instrument, we need to find a way forward that gives them an equal opportunity. I think there is a bit of a mindset sometimes about, well, to give you an example, when we sent a Freedom of Information request a few years ago about provision for disabled students, the immediate mindset went to special schools.

Esi Hardy (48:41)
you

Rachel Wolffsohn (48:42)
About 90% of all children with a physical disability at the moment are in mainstream schools. So if you haven’t come across a child in your school or if you’re not aware of having come across a child in your school, maybe have another little look at the register and see who’s actually there because there are a lot of children and there is DfE information about which schools have identified children. So if you’re a school teacher, then…

That information, I believe, will have been provided by your school to the DFE. But if you’re a music service teacher, have a look and see the number that the school have declared, because that will give you an indication of who you’re looking for. In our experience, it’s about one and a half, on average, about one and a half children per primary school. And then obviously the secondary schools are bigger. I know you can’t have half a child, but that’s statistically where it sits. So.

Esi Hardy (49:28)
Okay.

Thank

Rachel Wolffsohn (49:39)
Having established that there almost certainly is a need for this in your school probably and it’s important to find a way forward. I think it’s also about giving that child an equal experience. So it’s about independence. So we need to get that child being able to perform whatever instrument they’re learning independently because everybody else performs independently. You we don’t want people holding things up or pressing that button for them. We need to find a solution that allows

for that child to learn and play on their own. And they might not do that. They might not play independently to start with, but the possibility needs to be there that they can develop the skills needed to be able to play independently. And we’re not setting up equipment that stops them. And I think it’s about possibilities for progression. I often hear teachers talk about, well, they can play

on the recorder, you know, they can play B.A.G. with one hand, so that’s fine. And it’s like, but then what? We’re starting them, we’re teaching them a skill, we’re getting them interested in this musical instrument, and then we’re saying, well, you can play the first three notes and then that’s it. Your glass ceiling is, and it’s a very low glass ceiling. So, you know, it’s thinking through the expectation, our expectation, we talk about the potential for virtuosity.

Esi Hardy (50:35)
Thank

So there’s a glass ceiling already there. So low.

Rachel Wolffsohn (50:58)
And we know that in real life, very few people make it to be a virtuosic musician and that’s fine. kids particularly will start something when we can get bored of it or they can’t be bothered to practice. That’s normal. That’s across the piece. That’s nothing to do with anything other than kids being kids. But if we’re starting, we want to start them on something that gives them that potential for virtuosity and allows them to progress

Esi Hardy (51:12)
Thanks.

Rachel Wolffsohn (51:26)
with their peers. And I think that another thing that people often think is that they, you well, there’s no, there’s no sort of special needs group here for them to go and play with. But if they’ve got the instrument that allows them to play alongside their peers, they can play in any ensemble they want to, any genre to any standard, any location. You know, if there’s a clarinet, if they’re playing a one handed clarinet, they can play in the school wind band, the school orchestra, the jazz band, the pub

jamming session down the road, know, they don’t have to, we don’t have to think of them kind of going across over here somewhere to play because that’s where all the other people with disabilities play. So it’s about that proper inclusion. Inclusion is not siphoning off to a special group just because they’ve got a disability. Another thing that I’ve come across before is, I guess it demonstrates a lack of

Esi Hardy (52:10)
Thank

Rachel Wolffsohn (52:18)
thought process. So on the face of it, looks really good. You know, I’ve seen music services with a statement of our ensembles, know, sort of our school ensembles are open to all. And you kind of think, okay, well, that’s good. We want things to be open to all. But have you actually looked at your venue? Can somebody with a range of access needs actually even physically get into the venue?

And what happens when they arrive. Your activities are open to all, but if you don’t have an instrument that’s available for everybody to play, what’s that person going to do when they arrive? And sometimes it can be even more basic than… Instruments are one level of complexity, but sometimes it’s also… my son, going back to my experience with my son, he sang in a choir.

Now you’d have thought singing in a choir would be OK. He can stand. His toe drops a bit, but he can physically stand. So that’s OK. And then they do all their actions. And suddenly all the actions were with the right hand. And in his case, he can’t use his right hand. So he’s then trying to fake it with his left hand. And his left hand’s going up here because everybody else is doing this. He’s having to do this somewhere. Just looking at

Esi Hardy (53:26)
Yeah.

Rachel Wolffsohn (53:31)
what’s going on in the room. And as far as I could tell, and no one ever told me I was wrong, he was the only child that had a hand impairment. So why not do left-handed actions for that song? That’s not a big shift, but it would make that inclusive. I often see things like clapping. You go into school and they say, right, clap the rhythm. Well, actually, clapping is a bimanual activity. So why not do…

Esi Hardy (53:41)
Exactly. Yeah.

Mm.

Rachel Wolffsohn (53:57)
some body percussion and we can use one hand on a thigh or make a sound, let’s go round the room and see what sounds can you make with your bodies that’s a little bit less fixed on clapping. So it’s just thinking through, I guess, every stage of your lesson and just making sure that you’re not excluding somebody in that class, just for something that’s avoidable. Adapted instruments are…

possible and encouraged and all the rest of it, but sometimes it can be even much more simpler, much simpler activities than that, where the barrier is coming in as well.

Esi Hardy (54:28)
I’m.

Completely, and I completely agree with everything that you’ve said actually, and this whole thing about, you know, open to all, we all know what that means. That hardly ever means disability, does it? It means open to race and other minority groups, but it doesn’t mean adapting a lesson so that it fits a disabled child or a disabled adult.

Rachel Wolffsohn (54:49)
No. No.

Esi Hardy (54:52)
Absolutely. And you know, I’m so glad that you mentioned about kind of the other little activities that go in like clapping. I hate it when people say now let’s all stand up and clap and jump around. Because immediately I feel excluded because I can’t do any of that. And you if I have to do it in rhythm with something, then it’s gonna be even harder. So clap or I mean, if clapping is part of kind of the sound you want to make, maybe half the room does it while the other half

Rachel Wolffsohn (55:00)
Thank

Esi Hardy (55:22)
does something else. Or you know, when I remember, I used to run drama classes for children. And we would play physical activities, physical games, because you know, they’re young children, they need to burn off exercise. But I would, I would need to adapt it for myself, but also anybody else that needed it adapting. So we used to play this game called zip, zap, boing. And I would say so, so you zip, you turn your body to the left, zap, your body to the right.

Boing, you kind of thrust your body across and that shows the next person what they have to do. And I would say you can either do it with your body or you could do it with your head or you could just say which direction you want to go in. So that there are always other ways to adapt the same thing so that everybody can feel included and what inclusion means for them as well.

Rachel Wolffsohn (56:11)
And the other thing is thinking, so say you’ve got a music centre, orchestra, and that venue is fine. It’s also thinking ahead of the other activities that that ensemble might do. So, you know, they’re going to do a performance in a local theatre, is that local theatre accessible? Or if they, you know, I don’t know, go on a trip to Germany, wherever, you know, it’s…

Esi Hardy (56:24)
Mm-hmm.

Rachel Wolffsohn (56:36)
all of the activities because what you also don’t want is for the child to get into the orchestra rehearsals every week and then not be able to perform in the concert because they can’t get on the stage. yeah, the whole accessibility of other venues is also, as I’m sure you’re well aware, know, a lot of the time it’s the audience is thought about but not necessarily the performers and having that space for performance is essential.

Esi Hardy (56:45)
Okay.

So true, so true. so true. you,

And just sticking with that kind of field trip for a minute, it could be Germany, could be Bristol, it could be anywhere really. But when you’re doing field trips, you generally have those extracurricular activities as well. So you might be going in the orchestra, but around that you might be taking the children to the zoo or something. Making sure all of those activities are inclusive and accessible as well.

Rachel Wolffsohn (57:14)
Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. ⁓ thank

Esi Hardy (57:24)
And making sure that if that child needs their assistant or whoever it is that’s with them, that that doesn’t impede that child’s experience as well. Because they’re being followed around by an adult all the time.

Rachel Wolffsohn (57:33)
Yes.

Yes, and I think often actually, particularly our extracurricular things that aren’t core school curriculum, often it’s the parents who are asked to take that role. And while parents might be willing to do that, is that giving that child the same experience of independence, you know, as their peers, if they’ve got mum hanging around?

Esi Hardy (57:47)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah,

I took my, so I didn’t take, so when I was, I think I was, I think eight, the LEA were making it difficult for me to have a classroom assistant. So my mum came to be my assistant, I thought it was for a week, she said it was about six months. And I ended up calling her Mrs Mum, because everybody else was calling her Mrs Hardy, and I kept forgetting that she wasn’t Mrs Hardy to me.

And she was really good actually. She came out in the playground and ran around with a child with us. But not every mother can do that. They might have other children. At the time I was an only child, my sister wasn’t born until I was nine. So she was able to do that. But also, you send your children to school so that you can have a break as well. And if you then have to come on that activity with that child, then that’s your break gone.

Rachel Wolffsohn (58:47)
Yes.

Esi Hardy (58:53)
It’s about thinking about those other things as well from both perspectives. So the other side of our audience are disabled people. And I suppose by extension, you know, we talk about children, their parents. So what advice, we talked a little bit about the importance of empowering through adapted musical instruments. But what advice would you give to disabled people and people that care

Rachel Wolffsohn (58:57)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Esi Hardy (59:22)
⁓ for disabled people.

Rachel Wolffsohn (59:25)
So yes, I think a lot of the things we’ve already said will be applicable. One of the things that we offer as a charity is we offer a hire scheme. So because these instruments are often quite expensive and quite tricky to get hold of, we have a catalogue of instruments that people can try and we generally hire them for a year as a standard period of time so that people can really get to grips and see

Esi Hardy (59:34)
Mmm.

Rachel Wolffsohn (59:51)
whether it’s going to be the right solution for them. The main aim is that people can try it before they buy it. So having established that it is the right thing for them, that they do go ahead and buy it. But equally, we know how expensive they are. So we do have people that have hired things for many years. We’re trying to run it like a library. So if somebody else is waiting, then the instrument will go on to them. But if not, then that’s fine. You can have it for another year. So that’s one way of

Esi Hardy (1:00:09)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Rachel Wolffsohn (1:00:17)
people having access to the instruments and really understanding them for their own situation. It also offers parents an opportunity or schools an opportunity to hire for the year. So if their child is doing whole class recorder whatever, they can actually hire for that year so that they’re not having to buy something because often, you know, not

in every case, is the child interested in music, they’ve just got a year to get through, or they might really want music but not want that particular instrument that they’re having to learn in school. If it’s a case where the school are insisting that everybody plays a particular instrument, I would always encourage parents to get the school to hire from us and that’s fine because I don’t think parents should have to incur the cost of a hire process just because their child’s doing something in school if nobody else is.

Esi Hardy (1:00:58)
Good. Absolutely.

Rachel Wolffsohn (1:01:04)
I think having the approach that we talked about earlier about not being limited, if you really want to learn something and we don’t have the right option, come to us and we will do what we can to find a way forward. I can’t with everything. I wish I could. I wish I was more of a magician, but we will certainly try. So never be afraid to come and ask what we can do and find a way forward.

But yeah, we may or may not be successful. But I think it’s about going with your heart of what you want to do and challenging those who say you can’t. There’s another person on my influencer list, maybe, Nicholas McCarthy. Nicholas is probably around his early 30s now, I should think.

So we’re not, you know, not that long ago, he wanted to learn the piano and he contacted various music teachers and whatever. And he didn’t mention that he only was born with his left arm and until further down the conversation and often then got rejected in whatever he was, you know, with whoever he was trying to work with. But he did eventually find his way forward and he ended up being the first person through the Royal College of Music to graduate as a pianist.

Esi Hardy (1:02:14)
and

Wow.

Rachel Wolffsohn (1:02:26)
left-handed,

Left-handed one-handed pianist and he’s still making a career and he actually made his proms debut in the BBC Proms at the Albert Hall last July. I was in the concert which was fabulous. You can still see that on the iPlayer in the UK. So for him the instrument isn’t different but the mechanism of playing it is the repertoire is and he just had to find a way forward for himself but we’ve been able to work with him

Esi Hardy (1:02:34)
I’ll miss it.

Rachel Wolffsohn (1:02:50)
and one of the exam boards over the last four five years to make sure now that there is an exam repertoire that is available for one-handed piano. So again, a kind of Covid accident. When exams had to be stopped during Covid, they had to move to a video model of exam where you record it all and send it in for adjudication. And because of that,

I don’t know, I’m guessing, although you’ve clearly had lots of musical exposure, you probably have never done a grade exam. But one of the things with grade exams is they give you a big list of scales and then they pick three or four on the day that you have to play for the examiner. And obviously because there was no examiner in the room, they couldn’t do that. So they changed it. So there are four pieces now on the video exams. so making the exam, we don’t want an easier exam. We want a fair exam for somebody

Esi Hardy (1:03:23)
Okay.

Rachel Wolffsohn (1:03:39)
with it playing one-handed piano repertoire, equivalent to those who are using two-handed piano repertoire. So there are four pieces now that you pick and it gets around the issue of making the scales, one-handed scales, the same difficulty too, because there are no scales. But Nicholas has been working with us on that and that’s been great because it’s meant that his experience has now made it an easier path for those who are following through.

Esi Hardy (1:04:06)
to do.

Rachel Wolffsohn (1:04:08)
And whether you want to do grade exams or not, it’s exposing that style of repertoire. And the technique is slightly different because you want to make it sound like a whole piano. So there are various things that you do differently at an earlier stage to make it kind of sound equivalent. But again, going back to what we were saying earlier, having that one-handed piano repertoire aimed at people with disabilities, actually, when you’ve got a child who’s just not very good at using their non-dominant hand,

Esi Hardy (1:04:14)
Yeah.

Rachel Wolffsohn (1:04:36)
Or maybe they’ve fallen and broken their arm and they’re in plaster for six weeks, you know, enables them to keep going or focus on that technique. But yes, I’m not quite sure how I got there. But anyway.

Esi Hardy (1:04:47)
No,

You know, hearing about Nicholas, it’s so great that, you know, after he, you know, he now has a career in music, he still wants to support the empowerment and the kind of the direction of other disabled people in music as well. So, you know, I really like hearing that as well. I mean, not every disabled person. I’m not saying that we should as disabled people always turn around and do it for others, but it’s really nice

Rachel Wolffsohn (1:05:03)
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.

Esi Hardy (1:05:14)
when we are as a community working to empower the people that are coming up behind us as well. So let’s talk about your influences. I know you’ve shared a couple. Can you tell us who are your influences and who would you recommend for people to look up next? Other than obviously you as well. But other than OHMI who else would you recommend?

Rachel Wolffsohn (1:05:20)
Absolutely, yeah.

you

So, yes, I mentioned Tony Memmel. He’s the guitarist and Nicholas McCarthy, who’s a one-handed pianist. David Knapp is also a really good saxophonist in the States, so he’s definitely worth looking at. I’m not sure that he would go with the label influencer because that sounds very young and hip. I’m not sure if David is young and hip, but he’s a very good saxophonist and demonstrator of the one-handed saxophone.

Esi Hardy (1:06:00)
Thank

Rachel Wolffsohn (1:06:07)
There’s a lady called Edit van der Burg who’s a Hungarian flautist who plays a one-handed flute. She’s also going to hopefully be coming to a concert that we’re going to do in September. So if you would like to see her in the UK, it’s to my knowledge, it’s the first time she’s performed here, but I might be wrong about that. ⁓ Yeah, 12th of September, Birmingham Conservatoire. If you’re around, and see it. There was someone else in my brain who has vanished.

Esi Hardy (1:06:23)
What think?

Rachel Wolffsohn (1:06:32)
Ooh yes. So other organisations as well. There’s Drake Music. Drake Music tend to focus more on the kind of music technology and novel instruments, but they will work with adults more, think, making an instrument that’s really bespoke for their needs. So ⁓ one user of those instruments is John Kelly. And they invented an instrument called the Kellycaster, which is sort of guitar-esque

in its sound, so he’s definitely worth looking up. And there’s another organisation, well in fact there’s another two organisations we work with quite closely. One is Open Up Music. So Open Up Music do a lot of work in supporting special schools to have ensembles within their schools and they also run the National Open Youth Orchestra. So that is an ensemble that is aimed at

bringing disabled and non-disabled people together to perform together and they’ve got various groups around the country that then come together for some concerts as well. So National Open Youth Orchestra, I think you can go up to 25, you can join the National Open Youth Orchestra and it’s an auditioned process but in a very access, it really is a very accessible way. And another organisation we work with is called Music of Life and they have two strands.

So they do lot with choirs in special schools particularly and bringing children together to sing. But they also have another programme that’s for deaf musicians, it’s led by a deaf flautist, Ruth, whose last name escaped me. But they do a lot of work in training teachers with using BSL and working with deaf students.

So go and look those up.

Esi Hardy (1:08:21)
I’ll put all of those in the show notes for anybody who wants to look any of those up. Also, I’ll find the details of the performance in September and I’ll post the show notes and the tickets as well. Last question, if you could look back on yourself when you were starting your career as a music teacher, what would you tell yourself that you didn’t know at the time?

Rachel Wolffsohn (1:08:24)
Thank

I think I would tell myself that there are ways forward for everybody, but you don’t have to know it all standing in the moment, but you need to know where to look for it. Because things change, things move on. It’s like having the Encyclopedia Britannica on the shelf, isn’t it? You know it’s there, you know where to go for it. You don’t know everything that’s written in it. But there is an answer in there.

And you know there’s an answer in there. it’s not assuming that people can’t and it’s not assuming that you’re expected to know everything about every person all the time. But go and find out, go and look it up, talk to those people as well because I think sometimes people are afraid to have conversations with people with disabilities. And maybe I’m too much too direct sometimes, but I just find asking people how they’re.

What are their ideas? This is where our barrier has come. What do think we could do? And just having those conversations. People with disabilities are very used to managing their conditions and finding workarounds. One example, if I ever have a… I’ve many times had children with bilateral limb differences. My first question to them is not, can you write? But it’s, how do you write? Because you know that they will find…

found ways how they write. I don’t know how they write and generally, you know, it could be, well, I use my toes, right, kick your shoes off, let’s see what your toes can do on this musical instrument. You know, it’s that kind of a conversation. So, yeah, just having those conversations, asking the questions, assuming it’s possible and then looking at the way forward for where those answers might be found.

Esi Hardy (1:10:23)
in.

And it might, you know, it’s also, I think that if you ask somebody the direct question of how do you think this could work for you, it might be a big question. But as you say, how do you do this and how can you do this? Rather than how do you think you can play the guitar is a much easier question. And thinking about, you know, bringing in other parts of a child’s life. So, you know, what else do you do? Do you like playing computer games? How do you hold the console?

Rachel Wolffsohn (1:10:48)
Yes.

Yes,

Esi Hardy (1:10:58)
and then working it out from there. So using what

Rachel Wolffsohn (1:10:58)
exactly.

Esi Hardy (1:11:00)
that child already knows about themselves rather than making them think about something that they’ve never thought about before is really helpful. And bringing in the parents into that conversation as well, I think.

Rachel Wolffsohn (1:11:06)
Absolutely.

Yeah,

Yes, yes. Parents are really important. Sometimes parents can be actually the limiting factor. They just assume that it can’t be done and they can be, well, you know, I remember being at a conference for families with children with limb differences and a grandma actually came up to us and I said, with the one-handed musical instrument to us. And she said, well, my grandson hasn’t got any arms, so you’re no good.

Esi Hardy (1:11:17)
Yep. Yeah.

Thank

Rachel Wolffsohn (1:11:39)
I said, oh, hang on a

minute, come back. And I showed to her a video. This is another person you could put in your influence it’s Felix Kliser. So Felix Kliser has got short stature again and was born with no arms. And he plays the French horn at professional standard with his feet. And so I showed this lady a video of Felix playing his French horn. And she was just blown away that her grandson, who was tiny, three or something, that’s possible. And to me,

to me, if we can open up music as a way forward, then it perhaps opens up other things being possible. It opens up that kind of imagination of, well, I didn’t know you could do that. So maybe this thing that they really want to do, which might not be music. I mean, there might be Esi

Esi Hardy (1:12:27)
I didn’t imagine that, but it might be.

Rachel Wolffsohn (1:12:32)
But that

just opens up the potential for other things as well. It’s not, you know, my passion is music obviously, but it’s just opening up all sorts of things in life that might be possible rather than just having a big list of can’t dos, whatever.

Esi Hardy (1:12:35)
the possibility.

So true. Yeah.

And the reason why I, you know, I’m not, music isn’t the beginning of my kind of ambitions is because I was, you know, I learned when I was really young that it wasn’t possible or I was told that it wasn’t possible. So I left it. I mean, I’d love to be, you know, and I say it’s a joke, but I would actually really like to be in a rock band. You know, that would be my dream, playing electric guitar in the rock band. Not only can I not sing.

But again, that’s something that you’re taught, you can’t say you can’t do it. And so you stop trying, but it’s about, well, let’s see how it’s possible. Let’s have some lessons and things like that. So absolutely brilliant. Thank you so much for joining me today. This has been a really good conversation. I’ve really enjoyed it. And I’ve picked up a lot of stuff that I’m going to pass on to people when I’m delivering training as well. So thank you so much. Is there anything else before we end that you would like people to know?

Rachel Wolffsohn (1:13:44)
I don’t think so, but come and see our website. We’ve got links to all sorts of things. And if we don’t have the answer to the question you want, come and ask us and we’ll do our best to answer it.

Esi Hardy (1:13:53)
Brilliant, and I really love the attitude that we might not know everything, but it’s something else that we know we don’t know, so we’ll look for it. I really like that outlook. I think it’s brilliant. So thank you so much for tuning in once again, everyone. Don’t forget to like and subscribe, and we look forward seeing you in another three weeks for another episode of the Equality Edit. Bye, everyone.

Rachel Wolffsohn (1:14:17)
Bye.