The Special Access Kit™ is a unique system designed to allow people with special needs access to the wonderful world of music and sound.
Special Needs Access Program
The Arts Centre’s Alfred Brash SoundHouse at is pleased to announce that it has secured funding to continue the SoundHouse Special Access Kit Project. Due to its ongoing nature this project will now be referred to as the Special Needs Access Program. This short film gives a glimpse of the program. A more detailed version of the film was presented at the XII World Congress of Music Therapy in Buenos Aires, Argentina in July 2008, the Re-Imagining Special Education through Arts Education and Arts Therapy Symposium in July 2008 and at the Making Links Conference in November 2008.
Special Education
Special Schools are invited to participate in the Special Needs Access Program at the Arts Centre’s Alfred Brash SoundHouse. Sessions are tailored to students’ capabilities and needs and session content aims to include your learning areas to assist in delivering your current curriculum. Activities can include music making, stories, poetry, recording, percussion playing or anything else! Students attend around six pre-booked sessions (at a heavily subsidised rate) using the Arts Centre’s facilities, including the SoundHouse Special Access Kit™. The program is best suited to 4-6 students per session however this can be negotiated. Prior to sessions commencing, staff are required to meet with the SoundHouse Music Therapist and a SoundHouse Educator. This meeting will focus on Special Access Kit training, discussing the needs and capabilities of students and the current curriculum areas staff would like included in the program. All Special Access Kit arrangements can be taken back to your school to continue working throughout the year and shared with the growing group of Special Access Kit users around the world.
Limited spaces are available. To be involved please contact Joshua Cowie or Tanya McKenna on (03) 9281 8748, joshua.cowie@theartscentre.com.au or tanya.mckenna@theartscentre.com.au
The Special Access Kit™ is a unique system designed to allow people with disabilities access to the wonderful world of music creation.
The kit consists of specialised software and a "Banana keyboard". Both components require your computer. The keyboard has 16 keys configured like an oversized piano, but curved to suit the radial movement of an arm.
It may be placed on a wheel chair or bench, and is capacitance triggered for maximum sensitivity and ease of operation. The keyboard has eight extra inputs so other types of adaptive switching, such as mercury or "Jelly Bean " switches, can be plugged in to allow full user access. Software allows each key to play whatever instrument or prerecorded sound you choose, simply and quickly. |
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