RNCM Disability Week 2024 (31 January – 2 February)
RNCM Disability Week 2024
31 January – 2 February 2024
Various Venues
Curated by composer Megan Steinberg and in memory of Lucy Hale, this year’s Disability Week was an inspiring festival full of fun and energy.
Visitors commented on the buzz in the building and the importance of programming disability-oriented events. The Neurodiversity Project umbrella installation in the cafe and Drake Music instrument demos on the concourse welcomed students, staff and visitors into a week celebrating diversity and representation.
Artists featured included, Amble Skuse, Kris Halpin, Steve Varden, Clarence Adoo, Morwenna Louttit-Vermaat, Maria Sappho, Billy Payne and RNCM students Maia Payne, Gema Lu Cai, Elio Gaviria and Will Sharland.
Audiences and artists came from across the UK to take part in Disability Week, learn about new music and technologies through the lens of neurodiversity, disability and d/Deafness. It also was a wonderful opportunity for artists, researchers, makers and advocates to meet each other and talk about the future of new music and disability.
I really want everyone to feel welcome to join in with these three days of ground-breaking events that showcase work by underrepresented artists from across the UK. Whether or not you identify as disabled, d/Deaf or neurodivergent, the music and technology showcased in this week is really engaging and accessible for everyone. The aim of the week is to learn about and promote accessibility in music and technology, with a particular focus on AI. We will be welcoming and hearing from various musicians, makers and researchers who are paving the way for accessibility and new technology in music.
— Megan Steinberg (RNCM PRiSM Lucy Hale Doctoral Researcher in Association with Drake Music)
About Lucy Hale
Lucy Hale was a composer and disability advocate, who died in January 2021. Lucy was known for her innovative approach to composition and her passion for breaking down barriers. In 2021 Lucy was planning to begin her PhD at the Royal Northern College of Music, in partnership with Drake Music and PRiSM, having won Collaborative Doctoral Award funding to investigate disability and accessibility through the composition of new works for accessible musical instruments. This research continues in her name, now carried out by Megan Steinberg, who will be showcasing some of her work at this celebration of Lucy’s life.
Schedule
Wednesday 31 January
4.15pm // Carole Nash Recital Room
RNCM Research Forum | Amble Skuse
The Cyborg, the Tryborg and the Crip Tech – Navigating the use of technology interfacing the body
Free admission (no ticket required)
Thursday 1 February
1pm – 6.30pm // RNCM Concourse
Instrument Demos (with Drake Music & Open Up Music)
Free admission (no ticket required)
3pm – 5pm // Studio 8
Workshop with Maria Sappho
Free with ticket // Book HERE
6.30pm – 7pm // Carole Nash Recital Room
RNCM Student Chamber Works
Free with ticket // Book HERE
7.30pm – 8.30pm // RNCM Concert Hall
AMI Études
Tickets:
£4 (Under 26s and Students) + £1 Booking Fee
£8 + £1 Booking Fee
Book HERE
Friday 2 February
6pm-7pm // RNCM Theatre
RNCM Opera Scenes (with BSL Interpretation)
Free admission (no ticket required)
7.30pm – 9.30pm // RNCM Concert Hall
Song in Sign
Produced by formidAbility
Tickets:
£6 (Under 26s and Students) + £1 Booking Fee
£12 + £1 Booking Fee
Book HERE
Programmes
RNCM Research Forum | Amble Skuse
The Cyborg, the Tryborg and the Crip Tech – Navigating the use of technology interfacing the body
As we look further towards the use of technology as assistive and additive to the body, we forget to ask the question, what’s wrong with being human? Amongst discourse of the Posthuman we find modes of thinking which replicate enlightenment racism, sexism and ableism. Hurtling towards a future whilst maintaining parochial mindsets of hierarchy and power dynamics are we just doomed to repeat ourselves in an ever more dystopian comedy of errors?
Disabled Studies currently holds some of the most exciting and radical philosophy on this subject. Disabledness places people in the position of “outsider” which gives a unique position from which to be able to critique postmodern hyper-capitalist technological development. Disabled people’s perspective however is viewed as existing in a silo, only relevant to other disabled people. What might happen if we considered this outsider viewpoint as a revealing perspective, dealing with the key question of “what does it mean to be a human being whilst dependent on technology and humanity?”
Amble Skuse is a musician and artist, working with found sound, voices, electronic processing, and site specific locations. She works with oral history archives, interviews, community memories, radio interviews, found sounds and site specific compositions to explore myriad identities in myriad locations.
She explores these ideas of identity and power through a lens of intersectional feminism. Her focus is on disability, and she is currently studying for a PhD looking at ways in which a disabled composer / performer can ustilise technology as a tool for composing, improvising and performing.
Her work has been featured on BBC Radio 3’s Late Junction, and has taken her across the world, from Edinburgh to Singapore on a 10,000 mile train journey, to Canada to develop an improvising platform with disabled musicians, to China to explore the role of ‘being’ in improvisation, to Croatia to perform with the female coding ensemble OFFAL. She is a Creative Entrepreneurs Fellow and a BBC Performing Arts Fellow. She holds an AHRC scholarship for her research.
Free admission (no ticket required)
AI Music Workshop with Maria Sappho
Maria Sappho is an improviser, artist, and researcher in the UK. Her work is deeply involved in experimental AI where she has an ongoing collaboration with the world’s only multi-modal creative AI named Chimere. In this workshop, Maria will work with participants and Chimere to consider a range of techno-moral questions and share perspectives on individual experiences regarding exclusion, access, and representation within these technologies.
This will be followed by developing a series of new experimental compositions exploring the diverse applications of AI in notation and score development, interdisciplinary practice, and socio-creative work.
About Chimere:
Developed by Jonathan and Tim O’hear. Chimere is a community centred AI initiative, interested in interjecting marginalised communities, artists and activists into the core of narratives around AI’s role in our cultures. It is currently being utilised by a diverse group of collaborators across South Africa, Lesotho, Switzerland and the UK, working with groups of people whose experiences are not dominant in current AI design and dataset development.
Communities that work with Chimere are creatively tackling questions surrounding access issues, language dominances, historical biases, and global relevance, and are committed to questioning hegemonic narratives in AI design, ethics, and legislation. Who does AI serve? How does it not serve us? And what can we do to take charge of our own voice and representation within the development of these machines?
Free with ticket // Book HERE
RNCM Student Chamber Works
In this concert, RNCM students create and curate their own performance in response to RNCM Disability Week.
Isaac Albéniz Corpus Christi en Sevilla
Gema Lu Cai (BMus 4) – piano
Will Sharland Whorlton Hall
Elio Gaviria (MMus Composition) – piano
Ludwig van Beethoven (arr Franz Liszt) Adelaide
Maia-Maria Payne (BMus 1) – piano
Free with ticket // Book HERE
AMI Études
Megan Steinberg. Photo credit: Sam Walton
Discover new, bespoke and unusual instruments that are being used to meet access needs in this unique concert. AMI stands for ‘Accessible Musical Instruments’, and this concert celebrates the upcoming launch of composer Megan Steinberg’s debut album ami études. An ‘étude’ [French: ‘study’] was historically composed to teach the unique capabilities of an instrument to its students. They are usually short and sweet, exploring a different aspect of the instrument in depth and detail.
These new pieces will explore the sounds and intricacies of accessible musical instruments for disabled and neurodivergent artists.
Megan Steinberg Air Space (for Clarence Adoo)
Kris Halpin 冬球 Fuyu-Kyū
Steve Varden Sails Amongst the Trees
Morwenna Louttit-Vermaat Études de Bâtiment
Group Improvisation
Performers:
Megan Steinberg – AMI Études
Morwenna Louttit-Vermaat – rainbow harp
Steve Varden – synthesisers
Kris Halpin – Mi.Mu gloves
Clarence Adoo – Headspace Instrument
https://www.rainbowharp.co.uk/
https://www.drakemusic.org/blog/becky-morris-knight/artist-profile-steve-varden/
https://www.drakemusic.org/technology/instruments-projects/mi-mu-gloves/
http://www.clarenceadoo.co.uk/
Tickets:
£4 (Under 26s and Students) + £1 Booking Fee
£8 + £1 Booking Fee
Book HERE
RNCM Opera Scenes (with BSL Interpretation)
Vocal and conducting students present some of opera’s greatest moments in this free series of staged scenes. A perfect way to feed your curiosity.
We’re delighted to welcome BSL interpreter Paul Whittaker who will be signing this evening’s set of opera scenes as part our Disability Week. Learn more.
With excerpts from:
Vicente Martín y Soler Il burbero di buon cuore
Libretto by Lorenzo Da Ponte based on the comedy Le bourru bienfaisant by Carol Goldoni
Sung in Italian
Giacomo Puccini Gianni Schicchi
Libretto by Giovacchino Forzano based on the Divine Comedy by Dante
Sung in Italian
Benjamin Britten Owen Wingrave Op 85
Libretto by Myfanwy Piper based on a short story by Henry James
Niccolò Piccinni La buona figliuola
Libretto by Carlo Goldoni based on the novel Pamela; or, Virtue Rewarded by Samuel Richardson
Sung in Italian
Free admission (no ticket required)
Song in Sign
We’re delighted to welcome formidAbility to the RNCM. This staged concert sees two opera singers, two signing actors, and a pianist joining forces to create a feast for the senses in a joyous merging of song repertoire and signing.
Be transported to a New Zealand forest in Dame Gillian Whitehead’s Awa Herea (meaning ‘Braided Rivers’), bask in the gorgeous music of Richard Strauss and Duparc before smiling through tears in a new take on Oscar Wilde’s famous story, The Happy Prince by Rylan Gleave (composer) and Max Chase (librettist).
This event is BSL interpreted, audio described, and captioned throughout.
About formidAbility:
formidAbility produces opera that places accessibility at the foundation of the creative process, rather than adding it as an afterthought. They collaborate with the world’s foremost artists working for or with disability.
Tickets:
£6 (Under 26s and Students) + £1 Booking Fee
£12 + £1 Booking Fee
Book HERE
The RNCM Disability Week 2024 is made possible by Arts and Humanities Research Council via NWCDTP, who are supporting Megan Steinberg’s Lucy Hale Doctoral Award, a Composition PhD in association with Drake Music exploring and widening accessibility in music. More information about the Lucy Hale Doctoral Award can be found here.
