Happy New Year & Green Shoots!

Dear friends,

Season's Greetings, Happy Nollaig na mBan and Happy New Year!

Thank you for your support of me and my music, my art and all the disability change-making in the past year. There certainly were some highlights and green shoots that are worth acknowledging to gather strength and inspiration for 2024!

Highlights:

Celebrating with you the 70th Birthday of double bassist Dave Fleming to an overflowing house in Bewley's Cafe Theatre in April. As well as his playing, I was delighted to put one of Dave's poems to music and to hand over the mic to him for nuggets from his wealth of Irish Jazzlore... Dave please write a book!

Following my proposal, I was commissioned by The Ark for a very special project close to my heart - Solid, Space & Sound: to devise a multi-sensory experience for disabled children of ChildVision to experience the Ark My point is that disabled children need to be facilitated to enjoy culture on an equal basis as non-disabled children and have fun on their terms. We got to know the children and what interested them from visits to Childvision which led to an unforgettable day when 18 disabled children came on the bus into Temple Bar to visit the Ark.. I wrote a new song, Welcome to the Ark, which we sang in reception and played rhythm tag with drummer Dom Mullan across all the different surfaces through the space. Then we followed a winding vine up the stairs to where I had created an enchanted forest of all kinds of leaves, creepy crawlies, transforming boxes, a tactile storyboard of wolves and creatures (since the Wolfwalkers exhib at the time was exclusively visual). Distant low eerie sounds of forest animals came from Sean M Smith on the bass and crunching sounds of animals drawing nearer, created by Dom, prompted me to sing a beautiful haunting song by blind harpist, O Carolyn. I'd asked these very musical children to bring their instruments so we ended with a jam together in the theatre space. The children corrected my attempts at braille, and made clay creatures. No one wanted it to end! Read more.

Another highlight was our sold out Winter Jazz concert in Bewley's Cafe Theatre in December. Sorry to those on the waiting list. Next time I'll look at booking 2 dates also because it's the only accessible small music venue in Dublin.

Picasso said that "Art and Music are the guiding lights of the world. I do believe this is true. It has to be, and with all that's going on in the world, it surely behoves us as artists to strive for this in our work. So when the DLR Lexicon invited me to give a talks series and performance, I was only too happy to bring people on a journey of "Guiding Lights:'' Art and Music from Impressionism to Jazz, exploring the relationship between music and art from the lightplay of Ravel's Jeu d'Eau and Monet's Water Lilies, to Monk's In Walked Bud and the pulsing red, yellow and blues rhythm of Mondrian's Broadway Boogie Woogie. The Artists and inventors of those years lived through turbulence and atrocities of, to name a few, 1848, 1870, WW1, a pandemic and WW2, and yet they brought us much artistic transcendence, it seems to me, there's something in it for us these days. Here's a playlist I created for this course.

Disability Arts, Rights and Inclusion ... the past 4 years of writing emails, speaking to Joint Oireachtas Committees and advocating/challenging within the Arts Sector are starting to pay off. I was invited to advise throughout last year on the formulation of a major piece of research into working conditions for disabled artists in conjunction with the Irish Theatre Institute and Safe to Create, Dept of Arts Culture etc. There was extensive input from many other disabled artists throughout the process and so I'm very satisfied that in process, creation and articulation, this research is inclusive and thorough. It will be launched in the New Year and so all that's left is to hope there's a big take up to maximise the impact of its findings.

DADA work in conjunction with Safe Arts of Ireland resulted in the first ever Disabled Artists Stakeholders forum with the Dept of Arts, Culture, Sport, Media and Tourism in June. Lively discussions were had and further commitments came from the dept to work with us on tackling barriers and improving disability inclusion in the Arts. The Dept put this commitment into action, sending a representative to the new Green Paper on Disability Reform Consultation in Dublin Castle in November- this sent a real message of solidarity and allyship to the disabled artists community.

I was also invited as advisor and panelist for a Bridging the Gap with Creative Europe Desk Ireland in September which again broke new ground in its inclusive process and articulation. It attracted a full house of chronically ill and disabled artists from all over Ireland and I am very happy to observe that it seems to be leading to more innovation within the Arts Council on disability policy, advocacy an id implementation.

Read lots more on my DADA website page

Oh and a nice bit of acknowledgement of my work in an article by the UN on International Jazz Day, April 30 and again on International Day of Persons with Disabilities 2023.

There really are green shoots and I feel grateful for the progress. There is much to be heartened by and hopeful for in these shockingly cruel times worldwide... That said, the change-making work can be lonely and exhausting and for me, art/music fills the tank. So, my wish for the New Year is to keep a better balance with my music work and finally release some very-stuck-in-post-production new tracks. Please come celebrate with me when I achieve that!

So, I wish for balance in 2024. And as we live on through these terribly 'interesting times,' I extend the same wish to all of you, whatever balance is for you, whatever keeps you energised and even brings you joy, I wish that abundance of it comes your way for 2024.

Warm wishes,

Emilie

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