In 2015, Walled City Music, Drake Music and St. Magnus International Festival received funding from the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation to develop a pilot participatory project using ‘inclusive creativity’ as its driving principle.
The project brought together musicians and composers to research participant-led routes into collaborative music making.
Under the direction of professor Frank Lyons of Ulster University, an ensemble of disabled and non-disabled artists met regularly to improvise and compose music together, using assistive music technology (AMT) and more conventional musical instruments. This ensemble became Acoustronic.
Based in Derry/Londonderry and partnered with Ulster University, Inclusive Creativity is about using new creative technologies to allow disabled and non-disabled musicians to perform together on a level playing field.
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A specially-commissioned piece from Lyons, NonZeroSum, features twenty-minutes of carefully crafted music-making performing on electronic instruments and a traditional string quartet.
The tailored compositions tie-in with the musicians’ Ableton and Apple hardware, and as part of their academic research, they continue to develop instruments and software to enable a level playing field in performance for those with special educational needs.
Following a successful and well-attended performance at London’s Rich Mix on Tuesday 5th September, the group will perform next on 1st November at University College Dublin.
The concert will feature a number of new works developed by Postgraduate students at Ulster University especially for Acoustronic.
For more information about the project and the Rich Mix performance, visit http://www.inclusivecreativity.com/
