In this month’s edition of the Brit Trust Diaries, we hear from Paul Hawkins, head of skills development at Attitude is Everything, the organisation that connects disabled people with the music and live event industries to improve access together.
Here, Paul Hawkins looks at UK Disability History Month and how this annual platform can be used to highlight the continuing inequities that disabled people in the music industry have to overcome…
The theme for this year’s Disability History Month, which has just started and ends December 20, is Livelihood and Employment.
The statistics around employment for disabled people are stark. Between July and September 2023 only 53.6% of disabled people were employed compared to 82.5% of non-disabled people.
Disabled people earn on average 12.7% less than non-disabled people. This does not spread evenly across impairments. For example, autistic employees earn an average of 27.9% less than non-disabled employees.
Furthermore, both Attitude Is Everything and Harbourside Management have found that around two thirds (67%) of disabled artists and professionals compromise their health and wellbeing in order to work due to a fear of disclosing their impairment.
Attitude Is Everything addresses the barriers that impact people working in the music and live events industry who are deaf, disabled, neurodivergent or have a long term physical or mental health condition. We do this for artists through our Arts Council-funded Next Stage Network and for professionals via our National Lottery-funded Beyond The Music project.
Since we began Beyond The Music in 2020, we have seen significantly more conversations about disability and neurodiversity taking place across the music and live events industry. The 2024 UK Music Diversity Report saw 25.1% of respondents report disability, neurodiversity or a long term health condition - an increase from 12.8% in 2020. (It is worth bearing in mind that this change is partly due to how the question is asked and that the figure may be distorted by the fact that respondents self-select whether to fill out the survey.)
Two key elements of our approach to improving access to the industry for disabled employees are our Accessible Employment Guide, which provides simple bite-size steps and recommendations that employers can make to improve the accessibility of their workplace, and our Future Leaders Programme, which is now in its third year.
The Future Leaders programme attempts to support disabled people to move into areas where they can succeed
Paul Hawkins
Each year we support a group of emerging disabled professionals and artists with mentoring, training and development to help develop them to be able to move into leadership roles as their careers progress.
It is far too common for attempts to diversify the industry to focus on entry-level roles rather than thinking about the roles that hold power and influence. Talented and capable disabled people with leadership potential can get caught in a paradox, where inaccessibility within entry level roles means that they either struggle to access or succeed in early career opportunities.
As a result, they lose confidence and are judged to be “failing”. But someone who does not adapt well to the role of a production runner, front of house worker or lighting assistant might have the skills to strategise, manage people and lead teams.
The Future Leaders programme attempts to support disabled people to move into areas where they can succeed. The first two years have identified some outstanding talents who have led panel discussions, developed as access consultants and proved that – when you remove the barriers – disabled people can succeed and thrive.
UK Disability History Month takes place from November 14 to December 20. Details can be found here.
