A film I made for Drake Music that tells the story of the Kellycaster. The Kellycaster is a guitar made by John Kelly with Charles Matthews, Jon Dickinson and myself. It is a leading example of accessible design and a flagship from the DMLab programme I set up and ran at Drake Music until August 2018.

From 2012 until 2018 I ran the DMLab project at Drake Music, an experimental programme I set up where we prototyped new, accessible instruments for disabled musicians. Bridging the gap between musicians and makers, technologists, coders and developers, our aim was to pioneer new accessible music technology.

With monthly hack meets, intensive hack-a-thons and long-term support for the development of new instruments, I coordinated and worked alongside technologists, disabled musicians and instrument designers. examples included working with Kris Halpin in the development of the MiMu glove control system, supporting and working on John Kelly’s idea for the ‘Kellycaster’, a fully functional guitar-based instrument that has opened up new areas of John’s performance practice and prototyping and commissioning a new conducting baton for James Rose.

I continue to work on accessible musical instrument design as a freelancer. I am currently working with Drake Music to develop new instruments for Orchlab, The Amber Trust alongside Adam Ockelford to develop a new musical instrument, as well as working alongside Kris Halpin in his work as Artistic Director for Music at Sense.