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Longden, William Edward (2019) Inclusive participatory design of bespoke music instruments and auxiliary access equipment, as emancipatory arts interventions advocating for equality and wellbeing. Doctoral thesis, London Metropolitan University.
This practice-based research aims to increase participation in community music making, by exploring the production and use of bespoke instruments and associated access equipment designed to meet the personal needs and preferences of disabled people, who participate as co-designers and players.
Grounded in the tradition of participatory community arts, and using emancipatory approaches, the research challenges disabling attitudes and practices that inhibit social inclusion.
Three case studies demonstrate inclusive approaches to instrument design and making, contributing to the medical humanities and social sciences, and to the fields of community music, organology, inclusive design research and disability studies.
Bespoke music instruments are significant to Arts for Wellbeing practices and to the emerging Social Prescribing agenda; the possibility of Music Instruments on Prescription is proposed.
The inclusive methods used offer therapeutic benefit to individuals and society; by facilitating pathways for participation in product design and innovation, knowledge creation and transfer, and community music making.
Bespoke Music Instruments embody social, cultural and material qualities. As agents of personal and social development they are revealed as potent material for use in object-based learning as rich containers of stories about their designers, makers and players, and about the social environments in which they are created.
Demonstrating benefits that arise through inclusive participation, the research facilitates expression of voice by disabled, non-verbal and marginalised participants whose contribution works to increase social awareness and equal rights; and toward their self-emancipation as designers and musicians.
As experts by experience, disabled participants advocate for participatory community music by demonstrating the broader personal, social, and cultural advantages that can be gained through inclusive society.
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