The Lived Experience of Young Deaf Musicians

“Doesn't matter whether you're deaf or you're hearing
as long as you're a musician, you're a musician”. 

Central to Audiovisability’s mission is improving music education for deaf musicians but to do this we first needed to understand what their experience actually is.

Anecdotally we have been told that deaf children have been excluded from music classes and rarely do they have access to music lessons in the home, but formal research has been lacking. Many music and deaf organisations work in silos and it is hard to find information which accurately describes what is happening within the classroom.

With this in mind we made a small grants application to The Ovingdean Foundation to conduct a small research project covering East London, Essex, and Kent. This fund was subsequently enhanced by a contribution from Sound of Intent. 

Interviews were conducted online, with BSL interpretation, and lasted approximately 1 hour. 33 questions were asked and the results were collated and analysed. We are very proud to share our findings in this published report.

We are sharing this research in the hope that it will encourage education providers and audiologists to consider the needs of deaf musicians in their work. Please feel free to download, but we ask that you kindly cite us if used.