Lydia Lewis speaks to four musicians with special educational needs, who share their experiences of stigma, inaccessible music environments, their personal journeys of discovery, and the relationship between music and SEN.
I spoke to Robyn Rocket, Alison Wormwell, Calum Perrin and Deri Heptinstall about how their various special educational needs affected their experiences of becoming a musician, making music, and getting into the music industry. Alison is an Australian bassoonist based in the UK, who also works as a writer and journalist. Alison has dyslexia, which especially affects their ability to read music. Alison uses the pronoun they. Calum Perrin works in sound design, composition and theatre. He is autistic. He is a musician in residence with Paraorchestra and has worked with BBC radio. Deri Heptinstall, also known as Derilicked, is a DJ and Producer. He has ADHD. With his new album release, Deri’s music style spans all UK underground music. Robyn Rocket is a trumpet improviser, and the creator of a gig series called Robyn’s Rocket. Robyn is autistic. She has hemiplegia on the left side, and nystagmus which affects her ability to read music.
Stigma
Some of these musicians share the fear they feel when talking about their SEN. Robyn Rocket tells me that these fears are perpetuated by a general narrative in society about musicians with SEN and their ability to do the job. Alison Wormwell fears telling orchestras about their music dyslexia. ‘A lot of classical musicians who are disabled will never disclose their disability status when working with an orchestra because they’re scared of being discriminated against,’ Alison says. Calum tells me this is because of a lack of understanding of disability in the music scene, and Deri explains that this kind of stigma can translate into children with ADHD being excluded from music spaces.
As Alison says, your accessibility requirements don’t make you less of a musician, and they don’t make you less able. Deri wants musicians with ADHD to go for their passion. ‘Take breaks and don’t overdo things!’ he says. Alison points out that it’s often left to the person with the disability to illuminate everyone else about it, and this can take a lot of energy. This should be addressed systematically by society and not single handedly by the individual. People’s needs must be advocated for so that inclusive music environments can be created. The more these environments are nurtured, the better the music, says Alison.
Access
All four of these musicians feel that awareness, support and education about SEN is too limited. Deri tells me that his schools weren’t equipped to handle many neurodivergent people, and he found himself struggling with his behaviour. Robyn found her school’s music education difficult because ‘if you’re not using skills in the way they want you to, then you’re not meeting the grade.’ She remembers feeling overwhelmed at school because this kind of education ‘doesn’t work for a lot of SEN kids.’
The lack of societal understanding towards people with SEN also resurfaces later in life. Calum says it can be ‘physically painful’ if communication isn’t clear in music training, and training can effectively become inaccessible in non-disabled arts because of the long working hours and infrequent breaks. For Robyn, gigs are frustratingly inaccessible, and she found it hard to learn to navigate them, faced with venue inaccessibility and unclear directions.
Discovery
When I ask Robyn how she overcame the barriers she experienced at school, she tells me that learning circular fifths was a massive step in her musical journey. She also plays the trumpet using guitar and loop pedals, which aids her short-term memory. For Deri, it was accepting that he had ADHD once he left school and feeling his creativity came back to life. He found that through his music he can ‘add enjoyment to life.’
Calum saw a massive difference at university. ‘Things got a lot better,’ he says. This experience revealed new types of music and he also tells me it helped him think more critically about music making. These positive and inclusive music environments were the turning points in these musicians’ journeys.
The turning point of Alison’s musical journey was in 2021 when they discovered they had musical dyslexia, ‘really quite late in the game,’ Alison laughs. Alison had always used aids to help them read music and assumed they were ‘a bit slow.’ When they saw someone use a blue overlay to help with reading, they gave it a try too. ‘I felt like I was reading music for the first time. I rang my mum, and I cried.’ Journeys of discovery all look very different, and there is no right time to find what works for you and your needs.
Environment
I ask the four musicians about the nurturing effect of safe, positive and inclusive music environments. Working with Paraorchestra in mixed disability groups has shown Calum that ‘there is no right way of working.’ He finds this reassuring. Accessibility is central to how they organise their events, and it’s an integral part of the experience for the audience. Calum believes that working with diverse groups of people can rejuvenate the arts. Similarly, Alison says that working with people ‘from all different backgrounds, needs, genders,’ creates a richer working environment. Deri says he ‘always felt left out and different to other people,’ before he started his career in music, but now he feels more accepted by the creatives he works with. Robyn describes her gig series as being ‘inclusive conscious,’ meaning she works towards making everyone feel welcome in music spaces. ‘I want people to see what access can look like,’ Robyn shares when asked about her gig series. This is done by curating a stage that looks like a spaceship, having disabled and gender-neutral toilets and rocket badges that everyone wears, showing who they want to talk to.
Making music with SEN
Before realising they had music dyslexia, Alison had to work hard to read music, and they used aids to help them. This means that they can make predictions on which direction the music is going and make ‘those accurate guesses.’ When reading music, Alison visualises the notes and believes this comes from who they are, as they have always interacted with ideas in a conceptual way. Alison has now realised this plays an important part in their music-making.
ability to read music.
When I ask Robyn about the relationship between her autism and her music, she says it was ‘hard to know if being autistic has an impact on the music,’ but she tells me she thinks music helps her. Robyn used to worry when she found out about autism, that she ‘wouldn’t be able to pick as much emotion from music.’ But, she says, ‘I do feel emotions when I’m listening to music, but I often seek out music that matches my emotions.’ Robyn struggles with socialising and finds it draining. Music jams are helpful because ‘you can’t really talk at the same time.’ Jams allow Robyn to ‘connect with other autistic people,’ in a way a neurotypical person might not be able to do.
‘As soon as I pursued music, I definitely learnt that the creative industries are where people like me can fully express themselves,’ Deri tells me when I ask how his music has aided his ADHD. Despite this, he does believe that his ADHD means that he has to work a lot harder than others to be in the music industry.
Calum tells me his autism ‘isn’t super substantial to how I think about myself.’ In response to my question about whether music aids him, he says that ‘the abstraction of music is very helpful,’ in the sense that it is ‘completely separate from the structures of everyday life that I might find more difficult.’ He says that music is a respite from his feelings of being overwhelmed by the world. This escapism comes from composing but also ‘when you’re performing, you can exist in your own internal world, just you and the music.’
Lydia Lewis
Lydia Lewis is a final year English undergraduate with a special interest in music and musicians. She is also completing an internship at SEN Magazine.
Email: [email protected]
