♪ Opening theme music ♪
Hello, and welcome to this episode of ArtsAbly in Conversation.
My name is Diane Kolin.
This series presents artists, academics, and project leaders who dedicate
their time and energy to a better accessibility for people with disabilities in the arts.
You can find more of these episodes on our website, artsably.com
which is spelled A-R-T-S-A-B-L-Y dot com.
♪ Theme music ♪
Today, ArtsAbly is in conversation with Rory McLeod,
Artistic and Executive Director of Xenia Concerts,
an organization that improves access to concerts
to audiences with autism and other kinds of disabilities.
For lots of music lovers,
their favorite way to experience music is live in concert.
But not everyone can access live arts events.
Sometimes there are physical, financial, social, and other barriers in the way.
From getting information to buying a ticket to accessing the venue
and enjoying the concert environment, All of these can create hurdles,
especially for neurodivergent, deaf, and disabled folks.
But it doesn't have to be that way.
At Xenia Concerts, we work hard to meet your accessibility needs
so that you can enjoy amazing live musical experiences
with incredible musicians in an environment
where your needs are met and you can be yourself.
All of our concerts are family friendly,
and we welcome neurodivergent, disabled, deaf, and hard-of-hearing attendees.
We call them adaptive concerts because they're designed to adapt to your needs.
Xenia concerts take place in wheelchair accessible venues,
set up so that you can move around freely,
take a quiet break, or even dance along to the music.
Our venue guides show you what to expect
and give you important accessibility information.
We also provide other supports like fidget toys, therapy dogs,
musical ASL interpretation, and visual aids at many of our concerts.
Whatever your needs, whatever your age, and however you express yourself,
we want you to relax and enjoy the music when you're at a Xenia concert.
As one of our guests told us,
it's an amazing experience for the whole family.
Just be yourself.
To learn more about our upcoming events
or to join our mailing list, visit xeniaconcert.com.
See you soon.
♪ Violin music ♪
The mission of Xenia Concerts is to provide
music and arts performances and presentations in an environment
that is welcoming of people who may not be able to attend
other events due to mental, financial, or physical barriers.
For example, we present sensory friendly concerts that welcome children
and families affected by autism spectrum disorder.
We also present concerts that are
accessible for people living with dementia.
Any community that self identifies as not having equal access to the arts
is a community that we want to work with to create accessible arts opportunities.
♪ Violin and piano music ♪
We take for granted, I think, the ability to just show up somewhere
and have an experience and to have an artistic evening.
And not everyone can actually do that.
I absolutely loved it.
I said to my friend, I could stay another hour and listen to this.
It was beautiful.
I was really hoping that our Sunshine seniors
would be able to forget about their problems
for an hour or so and enjoy the music, get lost in the music.
And I think that we achieved that. Everybody just looked on a level of bliss.
It is very much the big issue is no two people are alike
in terms of what the sensitivities are or how to react to them.
The set up here has been nice. Although we've never had to use it,
just knowing that there's a quiet area around the corner, for instance, is a big plus.
I think the second concert we came to, in one of the feedback forms realized
that the washrooms, for instance, have blow dryers,
which is a horror show for some of the kids going in,
they can't tolerate them.
It was mentioned in the feedback form. Next concert, and since then,
there's always been paper towels laid out. So they've been very conscious
of to some of the sensitivities of the audience
to try and mitigate a lot of the things that will bother them.
Responding to accessibility issues
that our audience members might have is really at the core of what Xenia does.
In a way, we are a specialty arts curator.
When we hear from a family or another person that
there's an aspect of our concert that is not that welcoming for them and
may not be welcoming for others as well, we fix it right away.
We're happy to do that.
That is what makes our concerts work and what makes that makes them successful.
For me as a performer,
the whole point of what I do is to connect with an audience through the music,
and I want to be able to do that with as many people as possible.
And there's so many ways to listen to music, and
it's great that we all have this formal concert setting where everyone is very quiet
and we just kind of listen in reverence.
But it's also great to just be able to move
or feel that you can say anything you want
in response or act however you want in response to the music.
And these concerts give a forum for that.
♪ String quartet music ♪
[Audience clapping]
Okay, thank you for being here today.
I'm here with Rory McLeod from Xenia Concerts.
You're the Executive Director and Artistic Director of Xenia Concerts.
That's right. Yeah.
We are a concert series that works with the neurodiversity and disability communities
to redesign concert experiences and make them more inclusive
and accessible for people who face barriers to attending typical events.
Okay, thank you. So when did Xenia concert start?
Xenia concert started back in 2014, 2015, with the Cecilia String Quartet.
They were inspired by performing in an autism friendly concert in the US,
and they decided that they wanted to bring that experience to Canada.
So initially, it was a few concerts run by a string quartet,
and their focus really was on the autism community, specifically.
And what they did that I really admire is that they spent about a year consulting
with people with lived experience, with health care experts,
with caregivers of people living with autism,
to design the most autism friendly experience they could.
So they started with a series of,
I think it was three concerts in their first year,
partnered with what is now Meridian Hall, what at the time was the Sony Center.
And it's been growing ever since.
The response was so positive to these concerts that
we now present upwards of 30 concerts per year.
And so behind the concerts, what activities do you lead in Xenia?
Yeah, so we've stayed true to that - that initial approach
of being very engaged with the communities that we work with.
And so a big part of our work is
is actually working with people with lived experience
and incorporating their suggestions,
their design recommendations into -
into what we do.
We've doubled down on that approach recently
by developing a couple of really robust frameworks for community engagement,
one of which was the ASD Youth Advisory Council, which we ran last year,
where we formed a council of five autistic youth aged 14 to 24.
And they basically ran their own meetings
to develop design recommendations and designed their own
autism friendly concert, specifically for youth of their age group.
And we'll be presenting those later this year.
The first one is on July 13th at Meridian Hall,
our first concert designed by and for autistic youth.
And the other community engagement framework
that we've developed under the leadership of our
Accessibility Coordinator, Kayla Carter, is called the Accessibility Accelerator.
And that is a co-design project in which we're working with six people
who identify as either neurodivergent or disabled or both.
And they are working together over the course of about 18 months
to discuss barriers to access in the arts, not just for audiences,
but also for arts workers, and then develop resources
and design recommendations that Xenia Concerts can
employ in our own concert designs and also share with the broader arts community.
I see.
And so there is a big team in Xenia right now.
We have four staff members, but our team extends way beyond that, of course.
So we've got a board of directors with eight very dedicated individuals.
We also partner with a lot of different community organizations.
So although our core team consists of four
staff, myself working full-time and three half-time employees, we also...
I mean, I think of our community as extending to hundreds of people, really,
including all of the attendees and the caregivers who give feedback
on their experiences, including our partners in the
Alzheimer's and Dementia space and in the
neurodiversity and disability space.
And also, of course, all the artists that we work with.
In the last...
I've been with the organization for two and a half years now,
and over that time,
I would estimate that we've worked with between 50 and 60 different musicians,
and they're a big part of our team as well, of course.
And I wanted to ask a little bit about yourself.
What is your background?
So my background, first of all,
I think it's worth mentioning that I come to this work as an ally.
I don't consider myself or don't currently identify as neurodivergent or disabled.
And although I do have a - an autoimmune disorder that is
at times disabling, I don't currently identify as disabled.
So I come at it with a background in music.
I play the viola.
And so I'm trained in classical, Western classical music tradition.
And I also have about 10,
11 years now of concert design and promotion and presenting experience.
Back in 2013, I started a series called Pocket Concerts,
which I now run with my partner in life, Emily Rho.
And the purpose of that concert series was really
to bring chamber music and small ensembles into alternative venues,
homes - mostly homes, but also offices and cafés, and places like that,
where people feel at ease and can enjoy a -
a concert in a more personal - with a more personal approach,
have the opportunity to interact directly with the artists.
We always had some food and wine at those events.
So - but I didn't really think of myself as a designer
until maybe three, four years ago when I realized,
oh, that's actually what we're doing, as we're designing experiences.
And so I take that background in concert design and production
and bring an accessibility and inclusion lens to it at Xenia Concerts.
So to help with that work, I actually did a year of studies in inclusive design
at OCAD University, still on a leave of absence from that.
And I hope to complete it at some point.
But sometimes you have to prioritize one thing over another.
And currently, Xenia Concerts is my top priority.
Okay, Thank you.
I don't know whether I missed anything in there.
I mean, I have quite a bit of experience
as a performer as well, as a violist in orchestral and chamber music settings.
So I'm quite familiar with that, especially the classical music world.
And because of that, some of the barriers and problems that exist within that world.
So you're still performing?
Yes, I do still play with the Canadian Opera Company Orchestra,
with the National Ballet Orchestra, and in chamber music settings,
and the odd gig that comes up here and there.
Okay.
I wanted to come back to Xenia.
I know you're preparing your concerts in your season.
Right now, we are way inside the season,
but can you talk about your upcoming concerts and maybe one that you want
to describe a little bit more than the others?
Sure. So the next...
Well, we have two really exciting concerts coming up.
The first one is our first concert in Vancouver,
which we're doing in partnership with the Vancouver School of Music, the VSO School of Music
and Muse West.
And that's on April seventh,
features a jazz trio of musicians who all are
on the faculty at the VSO School of Music and very active in the Vancouver community.
They're called Triology.
And we're working with them to develop a program
that's about an hour long, neurodiversity and disability friendly.
And we'll have a host of sensory supports
and accessibility aids at that concert at Pyatt Hall at the VSO School of Music
on April seventh, which is a Sunday morning.
Then our next
concert that's part of our flagship series here in Toronto at Meridian Hall
on April 27th, we're bringing in a fantastic folk singer-songwriter named Raine Hamilton.
Raine is performing with a string trio, so she herself plays guitar and violin.
She works with a cellist and a bassist.
So there'll be vocals and string trio on stage,
and also musical ASL interpretation, which at this concert will be performed
by Tamyka Bullen, a deaf musical ASL performer and poet.
So if - when we attend one of your concerts, what is the difference between a concert
that we attend at Xenia Concerts and a traditional concert in the music scene?
Well, it's funny because our hope, of course, is that gradually,
those differences will diminish, that other concert series will start
to adopt some of our practices and make their experiences more accessible.
And that's another big part of what we do.
And maybe we can get into that later in the conversation.
But at a Xenia concert, you can expect, we call them adaptive concerts.
We used to call them sensory friendly concerts,
but now that we've expanded some of our
vision of who we want to include in our approach to accessibility,
the term sensory friendly didn't quite capture everything that we do.
So, adaptive concerts because they adapt to the needs of the people that attend.
So, some of the things that we take into consideration,
obviously, the venue and physical access to the venue.
We only present at wheelchair accessible venues
with wheelchair accessible, gender-neutral bathrooms available.
But then we take accessibility
into account for every aspect of the experience.
We have what we call our sensory support table,
where we have fidget toys available.
We also have balanced cushions for those who need a little bit of extra sensory stimulation
when they're - to stay engaged.
We have weighted blankets and weighted pillows for those who need a little bit
of a calming effect when they're listening to stay engaged.
And then we think of - we incorporate accessibility into every aspect of the experience.
So freedom of movement is a big part of that.
Making sure that people know that you can get up and move around if you need to
and making space for that.
We set up the seating in such a way that we have movable chairs.
We don't have fixed seating in most of our concert venues.
And that allows us to move things around as needed and again,
adapt to the individual needs of the people who are attending.
We also set up multiple areas for people
who use mobility devices so that they have the option of sitting in the front or
in the middle or in the back as they desire so that people can determine
for themselves what their best version of that experience might be.
Those are some of the general accessibility accommodations we make.
But then we also work with the artists to make the program neurodiversity friendly.
So some of the adaptations we make up to programming are keeping the concert
shorter than a typical, especially a typical classical music concert.
Normally, you would expect
the concert to be about two hours long with an intermission,
and you have to sit quietly and stay in the same chair the whole time.
We keep our concerts -
The whole experience lasts about an hour, and we always incorporate a couple
of opportunities to move around during that time.
So it's either a guided stretch break where the musicians guide
the audience in some movement activities or a musical
selection that incorporates movement into the musical experience.
We also keep our musical selections short for the most part.
We try to vary the the mood
or the energy level in the music every five to seven minutes.
Sometimes we'll incorporate a piece that's
10 minutes long, but we make sure that that piece in itself
contains some changes in mood for those who need a little bit
of a change in stimulus in order to stay engaged.
Yeah, so that's a pretty long list, but it's not even comprehensive.
There are other things that we do, like visual description from the stage.
We have visual aids,
so a PowerPoint presentation on either side of the stage so that people
can keep the back of where they are in the program.
We provide venue guides in advance so that people know what to expect
when they come to the event and how to access the venue.
There are quite a few things that we do
just to allow people to gather the information they need before
the event so they know what to expect and make themselves comfortable,
and
during the event,
creating that flexibility, again, that adaptability so that if somebody
has a need that they need to take care of in that moment, they can do it.
But I would say the most important adaptation that we make
is letting people know that we want them there
and that their - whatever form of expression
comes naturally to them when they're listening is welcome in that space.
So we say, feel free to make noise, get up, move around or stim.
Those behaviours are welcome here, and everybody knows that.
You also mentioned that your aim
is to get these open concerts to all scenes.
And so what is your...
Do you have a specific project in mind to try to make that happen?
Yes. So we have a number of strategic initiatives
that we're working on to inform others and to share resources
that other people can use to make their own events more accessible.
A big part of that is our Artist Training program, which we developed in 2022
and have been running for a year and a half now.
We've trained at least 40 artists at this point.
And in the Artist Training Program,
which we developed in partnership with the Lotus Center
and Dr. Erin Parkes, who is their founder,
has 25 years of experience teaching teaching people
in the disability community and teaching neurodivergent learners
in the music world.
We offer this training to all of our artists,
and it includes three and a half hours
of pre-recorded webinars with information about some of the more common diagnosis
and some of the traits that they might expect to be working with,
some ways that they can adapt their programming their musical selections
to make their program neurodiversity friendly.
We talk about the social model of disability versus the medical model of disability.
We talk about the neurodiversity paradigm and try to open people's minds up to
basically changing the way they think about
barriers to access as being - not that the barriers don't exist
within the individuals that we're serving, But rather, it's the interaction
between the individual and the design of the event that creates a barrier.
So the Artist Training program is a really big part of it.
And now with the Accessibility Accelerator,
through our social media, through our blog posts, we're working on
ways to provide information and resources for other arts organizations
and artists that want to improve their accessibility practices.
So we don't know exactly what shape that will take yet
or what shapes those resources will take.
We're looking at what's out there now, what gaps need to be filled,
and how we can fill them in a way that is accessible and approachable
and adaptable to different environments and different situations.
Is that a new program, or do you already have people who are taking
these courses and these resources?
The resources -
So the Artist Training program, as I mentioned, has been up and running
for a year and a half, and we're developing new webinars.
We're currently working towards a webinar
that's specifically about dementia friendly programming.
And we're obviously collecting feedback from the artists and
suggestions for how we might improve it and improve those resources.
On the side of
advising other arts organizations, those practices are still emerging.
One thing that we're doing is we've consulted with a few organizations
and basically hired ourselves out as consultants
to help them develop venue guides and accessibility resources
just to consult on some of their current practices and how they might improve.
And of course, we also deliver workshops
and do presentations on inclusive concert design.
And those have been quite well received as well.
I see.
So thank you.
That's great information.
And of course, all that will be shared on
ArtsAbly's website so that people can have a look at all these initiatives.
I wanted to ask you a final question, which is about inspiration.
So if you had one person to think of
in terms of inspiration in your work, who would it be and why?
Yeah, it's interesting to be asked a question about inspiration
in relation to disability because I'm very well aware of this
concept of inspiration porn, which maybe you're familiar with,
the idea that, "look at what this person with a disability did, isn't it inspiring"
that they did something that would be considered pretty -
pretty typical if somebody else had done it?
So I'm very cautious around the word inspiration.
But what you're asking, of course,
is who do I see as people who are leaders in this space?
Where do I gain inspiration from?
And who are some people that are doing really great work?
I mean, aside from you, of course -
[Laughs] [Thank you!]
you are showing amazing leadership in this space through ArtsAbly and
through your own approach,
which I think is very gentle and nuanced, which I think is important.
I think of Gaitrie Killings, who we've worked with a few times.
She's an incredible musical ASL performer,
also an actor and just a leader in the deaf and hard-of-hearing community.
She's just a fantastic performer.
Even though I don't sign, I'm not fluent in ASL,
I only know, you know, how to spell my name and that sort of thing.
Watching her perform is very moving because you can
see the expression and the work and the thought and care that goes into it.
She's just a tremendous advocate for the deaf community as well.
I think of Adrian Anantawan, who's a violinist working in Boston at the moment.
He has shown amazing leadership.
He's obviously an amazing musician.
I think you might know him or know of him
through the very well-named RAMPD,
which is an organization for artists with disabilities, performing artists with disabilities.
Adrian and I went to school together for a little while,
and we connect every once in a while to talk about the work that he's doing.
He's done research on adaptive instruments.
He does a a lot of education work and a lot of equity-focused work in the music world.
So I think of Adrian as a shining example
of somebody who is working at that intersection of disability and music.
Adrian, I really admire his work.
It inspired me in some of the workshops in education and music
because he did a fantastic work on all that idea that -
Let's find ways to perform, even if - with very few mobility, we can have a computer.
Let's work with children to see how they can perform.
And this is really where I want to go.
So I really appreciate that, sharing information about Adrian.
Also, RAMPD.
So I'm a pro-member of RAMPD, and I know these -
It's a fantastic group of musicians, there are tons of opportunities for people,
I would say all around the world right now, because it's growing.
And a fantastic organization, really.
RAMPD was actually in my mind when I started running ArtsAbly,
because they are doing exactly that.
They are promoting accessibility in the arts.
They are trying to get performers on stage.
And,
and yes, Gaitrie, also.
It's fantastic work, what she's doing, too.
So, yeah, thank you for sharing that.
Yes. I also want to mention one person who we met recently,
whose name is Ben Lunn, and he's a composer who lives in Glasgow
who's working through an organization called Drake Music Scotland.
They also have a network of disabled artists
living in the UK called the Disability Artist Network.
I don't know whether you're familiar with them. Very familiar.
Okay. So we just met with him a couple of weeks ago.
He connected with us, and we're talking about how we might support each other
and potentially collaborate down the road.
But it's just great to see the leadership that Ben is showing in that space in the UK,
and that he's got a, you know, global view of how their work might be
incorporated into, or taken elsewhere outside of the UK.
Those international connections are starting to form,
and that's really exciting to see.
It's very easy to get stuck in your bubble.
Yes. Yes.
Drake Music is also doing fantastic work in terms of new technologies,
and they are doing - they are really trying to connect
musicians with possibilities of building instruments and of adapting.
And they have some workshops that they run with lots of people.
And these are models.
We can see that as, wow,
this could be applied in a fun way with a lot of different
people and with a lot of different organizations.
So I hope you can have a great partnership with them.
It would be great.
Yeah, I hope so, too.
And as we talk, I'm still thinking of more people.
There's David Bobier, who runs an organization called VibraFusionLab,
and they work with vibro tactile technology.
They're doing some really exciting research.
And Jesse Stewart, who lives in Ottawa, and he's a percussionist
and a professor at the university, at Carleton University,
is doing some pretty great research in terms of adaptive instruments
and adapting performances for people with various forms of disability
and people in the dementia community.
Lots of people doing great work. Lots of people out there.
And the other thing I would say that's been really exciting is that
as we grow and we develop relationships with new artists,
it's been interesting to have conversations with artists who will say,
Yeah, I really connect with this work because I'm autistic.
It might not be in their biography.
And, you know, there are issues of stigma,
and you would never expect somebody to disclose a disability
without having thought about it themselves and made that decision.
But it's been interesting to learn
that some of the people that we're working with are neurodivergent
or have a disability that they just don't talk about publicly.
Yeah, so I think it'll be interesting to see as we -
as we continue to do this work, hopefully, some of that stigma will start to fall away.
People will start to feel more comfortable
talking about invisible disabilities, invisible forms of disability or neurodivergence,
so that we can become more comfortable
talking about it, which I think is a big part of this process.
Well, thank you so much for your time. My pleasure.
Yeah. And I'm really looking forward to all your projects.
Good luck with everything. Thank you.
Yeah. There's a lot going on at all times.
And as you know, there's a lot of work to do.
We were just talking about that before we turned our microphones on.
There's a lot of work to do, but it's definitely exciting to see
the growing interest in accessibility and the growing commitment,
especially among artists, I think, who have an experience
that opens their eyes to what a concert could be or what a musical experience could be.
That's exciting to see.
Thank you. Well, thank you.
♪ Closing theme music ♪