The MusiCol Ability Project is a community outreach program headed by professor of music education, Dr. Amanda Draper. The goals of this project include establishing a space for children with disabilities to interact with creative music making and cultivate ability-oriented experiences and collaborations that reduce stigmas and ableist beliefs associated with people with disabilities. Additionally, Draper stated that she hopes to establish a long-term collaborative learning lab in which Indiana University staff and students “can work together with people with disabilities on innovative designs, practices, and research that centers the voices and needs of musicians with disabilities and empowers them to be creative contributors to the arts.”
Draper spent the first phase of her project recruiting students from throughout the Jacobs School of Music to act as instructors and assistants in the weekly class, which includes community children ages 4 – 9. All participants, instructors, children, and parents participate in high-energy music-making activities tailored to be fully accessible to all participants regardless of their needs. These activities include drum circles, singing, dancing, playing instruments, using body percussion, and more. All instructors work to allow for appropriate communication with students including but not limited to differentiated questioning, processing time, physical delivery of words, visual considerations, sound sensitivity considerations, and integration sign language as needed.
This 10-week program has attracted several community members and an overwhelming number of IU students who wish to assist in the classroom as the program continues to grow. For more information on this project or if you have a child who wishes to join, please contact Dr. Amanda Draper at ardraper@iu.edu.
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