Harbourside Artist Management has a passion for disability arts and is proactive in working with artists with disability. In 2022, in collaboration with Youth Music, we launched the Disability Empowerment Programme to help increase disabled representation in the music industry both on stage and behind the scenes.
The programme brought on board an intern to Harbourside Artist Management who was empowered to bring on an artist with a disability for a one-off funded project to record an EP for official release. The programme gave the artist TU3SDAY the chance to release their EP, titled Love + Rage, which was picked up by Virgin Music for distribution and also featured on Mary Anne Hobbs Near Future feature on BBC 6 Music, amongst other press highlights.
We hope this project can be the start of an increase in the representation of disabled managers and artists in the industry, and we hope we have encouraged others to think about representation.
Our mission is to help people reach their full potential and to ensure no barriers are preventing an artist from succeeding. We believe there is work to be done to help bridge the gap between the disability arts world and the mainstream music industry, and are working towards increasing the representation of artists with disability in pop culture.
Harbourside Artist Management has a commitment to not only work with artists with disability but to help in the bigger picture of getting more people with disabilities involved in the music industry behind the scenes at all levels.
Owner Ben Price is an advocate for disability inclusion in the music industry. He is on the Board of Trustees at Attitude is Everything, a charity which helps raise awareness and increase accessibility for everyone from artists to audience members.
He also sits on the BPI’s Equity and Justice Advisory Group, an independent board of respected music industry professionals, who collectively advocate for the progression of the Equality, Diversity and Intersectional agenda across the sector and contribute to steering the BPI’s Equality, Diversity and Intersectional work for its members, award shows, events and The BRIT Trust. As a result, Ben is a member of the Voting Academy for the Brit Awards.
In 2021 Ben wrote a blog about working in the industry with a disability. It was part of an Arts Council England funded consultation into the day-to-day experiences of disabled people working in the music industry both on stage and behind the scenes. Nearly 150 people contributed to the findings which are discussed here. The results highlighted there is still work to do in making people with disabilities feel comfortable to disclose their conditions.
Ben has also written about his own experiences of working in the music industry with a disability, which you can read about here.
