As part of the wider Inclusive Access to Music Making (IAMM) initiative, Creative United has partnered with a coalition of musical experts, innovation partners and academics to launch the IAMM Hackathon.
The coalition includes:
- OHMI Trust, which campaigns to enable people with disabilities to take part in music making
- Plexal, an innovation centre and workspace
- Hobs 3D, a 3D solutions company
- University College London(UCL)
The IAMM Hackathon will see virtual teams, including disabled and non-disabled musicians, instrument-makers, designers, manufacturers, technologists, inventors, innovators, music teachers, academics and students, being asked to address a specific set of innovation challenges that currently limit opportunities for disabled people to play and produce music.
These innovation challenges include the supply of adaptive musical instruments in schools, improving on the design of existing one-handed wind instruments and exploring the potential of virtual music making environments.
The virtual teams will have four months to develop innovations and solutions to these challenges before sharing their findings at a major event to be held on Saturday 3 October 2020.
Applications to join a team are open until 17 July 2020.
Mary-Alice Stack, Chief Executive at Creative United, said:
‘Making adaptive instruments and equipment both accessible and affordable for disabled players is an objective that Creative United has been focussed on for a number of years now as part of our work as an Arts Council-funded Sector Support Organisation.
‘We are hugely excited to be collaborating with so many brilliant designers, musicians, technologists, academics and creative thinkers who have already come forward to help us address the specific challenges that we will be focussing on over the next three months, enabling us to move a step closer to our goal for a more inclusive and accessible music industry.’
The IAMM Hackathon is the latest in a series of projects and programmes under the IAMM initiative, including the establishment of the Take it Away Consortium and the Guide to Buying Adaptive Musical Instruments.
