Dina Bassile: Changing the landscape of live music

Acknowledgment of country 00:00

... to acknowledge the traditional owners of the lands on which we record this podcast, The Gadigal People. This is their land, never seated, always sacred and pay respects to the elders past present and emerging of this place.

Speaker 1 00:16

Coming up on Remarkable Insights...

Speaker 2 00:19

Something in me goes, We're providing the bare minimum and it's not a standard across the board in the industry and that's really sad.

Speaker 1 00:27

How accessible is live music? Welcome to Remarkable Insights. I'm Viv Mullen and today we're diving into the accessibility of live entertainment and the music industry with Dina Bassile of Tibi Access. Dina, thank you so much for joining me for an episode of Remarkable Insights. If we could start, would you mind introducing yourself and any key things about how you choose to identify that you would like the audience to know?

Speaker 2 00:51

Thank you so much for having me. I am Dina. I am a person with lived experience of disability and I am an access consultant for the creative industries, which I love. It's my favourite thing in the world right now.

Speaker 1 01:06

Incredible. And your mission, which has become more of a, I suppose the backbones of the company you founded, is really to increase accessibility, inclusion and equity of live music industry space. Can you speak to that journey and where you're up to with that now?

Speaker 2 01:24

Yeah. So we do everything creative industry. So not just live music, but we work with venues. We work with artists. We work with visual artists, everything kind of under the creative industries umbrella. Like I mentioned earlier, I am a person with lived experience myself, but I also have a background in creative industry. So many months ago, I did a degree in entertainment business management and I did everything sort of within the creative industries and the music industry that you could do. And I didn't really find what I loved. And someone said to me, you need to find the gap in the industry and you need to fill it. And for me, it was a little bit of a light bulb moment in that I'm a person with lived experience myself.

I've been in the music and arts industry since, you know, I can remember I've been attending events since I was, you know, a young girl and I've experienced firsthand the lack of accessibility. And that was the gap in the industry that I wanted to fill. And that was sort of the start of Tibi.

Speaker 1 02:28

And for people listening, Tibi stands for Tibi Access. And for people who might not have experience necessarily with some of these barriers that you're trying to remove, can you shine a light on either some common accessibility barriers or experiences that you had that are really sort of giving you the fuel to drive change in this space?

Speaker 2 02:49

Yeah, it's a really good question because there's sort of two parts to accessibility. There's your hardware, which are your ramps and your rails in your bathrooms, but then there's the software, which is your attitudinal barriers and, you know, customer service information online. So for me, my barriers are mostly when it comes to physical access, but then finding the information for me to know if a space is accessible, to know if there's an accessible bathroom was really, really difficult. Sort of the general knowledge that I needed or I needed to find was really hard to find. And then finding someone to contact. Typically, if say, for example, an event was held at a venue, often music venues operate at night.

So when I'm calling and it's nighttime and it's busy, they often can't hear me and can't give me the right information. So often I'd go to events hoping that it was accessible. And there would be the occasion where it wasn't accessible and I've wasted my time. I've wasted my money. I've gotten ready to an event that I can't access, which, you know, when it happens multiple times, it can shoot you down a little bit. But as I've grown and, you know, met other people, I've seen other barriers that, you know, OK, for other people as well. When, you know, there aren't captions available or Auslan interpreters available or the lighting isn't sufficient or there's no sensory space for people as well.

Speaker 1 04:21

What is the role of innovation and tech with what you're doing now to try and remove those sorts of barriers?

Speaker 2 04:28

Tech is so cool, like there's so much, you know, change that's happening I guess in technology and in this space as well - so you know, we have things like Bindi Maps which are a really cool piece of technology for people who are blind or low vision where Bindi Maps can step into any space, set up some beacons and then these beacons will guide a person who has the Bindi Maps app to their specific location - so if you're in say a festival, for example when you want to go to the merch desk, you can use that app to verbally direct to you kind of like Apple Maps or you know, Google Maps, verbally guide you... in you know, in 200 metres turn left or turn right, to guide someone in this space to feel independent to be able to navigate it. 

One of my favorite pieces of technology at the moment are Haptic Vests - so they're vests that are used primarily by people who are deaf and hard of hearing and their vests vibrate along with the bass of music you can also connect some of the vests to I guess the music your audio techs will work really closely with you so that when it's like hi-hats it might vibrate on your wrists, and when it's bass you'll feel it in your chest, and when it's other instruments you'll feel it in your ankle... so it's like this full immersive incredible experience.

Speaker 1 05:51

And I think I might be skirting. I just realised I missed the biggest event, not the biggest, but one of the most recent ones is working with the Eras Tour with Taylor Swift. I mean, firstly, what is it like to land that job?

Speaker 2 06:04

When I received that email I initially thought it was spam. I really didn't think that it was legitimate, but like it was, I can tell you now, it was very real and it was very surreal, it was such an amazing experience and we had just the most incredible feedback for us to take away those access barriers for them and for them to just purely enjoy her and enjoy her music was like, the best gift. Accessibility is a journey and it doesn't happen overnight, and I think that everyone who worked on this tour has learnt a whole bunch of things in terms of how we can improve things and what we can do to improve things. 

And I think technology can play a massive part into ensuring that the right information gets across patrons' tickets so that they are getting the right seats and their access requirements are being met from the get go so that they don't have to advocate from the time that they enter to say hey this isn't right and I need this fixed.

Speaker 1 07:16

I mean, coming out of like such an incredible experience with the Eras tour and you truly did an incredible job. Do you have like a highlight of something that you put in place that was an accessibility feature that is something that just sort of is a highlight? Do you have an example of an experience someone had?

Speaker 2 07:36

Yeah, I mean, something that we implemented into the show was social stories. So, social stories are a step-by-step guide of what to expect, so they're used quite a bit by the neurodiverse community or someone with an intellectual disability. Obviously stepping into any event or any space is easier as crowded as a Taylor Swift tour can be really overwhelming, there's lots of sensory elements that are happening. And so when we create the social stories, it's a step-by-step instruction of like what questions you might be asked so that people are not too overwhelmed. They go, I know someone's going to come to me and maybe offer me a friendship bracelet because I've read it in a social story or security are going to ask me to lift my arms up. They don't have to take that extra time to process it because they've already processed a free event.

Something like this, again, is like this quick and easy kind of low-hanging fruit accessibility feature that we created. We put on the website and it kind of went viral and people were just so overwhelmed and so over the moon because we just created this one thing. And I think something with this tour that I found is that it's been so heartwarming and so beautiful, the feedback that we've had. But at the same time, I kind of sit there and I go, I've had these, you know, patrons and parents calling me in tears going, I can't believe it sounds like this exists and it's so amazing.

But then something in me goes, we're providing the bare minimum and it's not a standard across the board in the industry and that's really sad because people are so overwhelmed by us just going, Hey, we'll meet you at the gate and we'll help you get to your seats and we'll make sure that you feel safe and supported. And that changes the whole game for some people.

Speaker 1 09:35

Incredible. And we love to end these conversations by asking our guests to leave people with a remarkable insight. Based on the work you're doing, is there anything you would like people to continue to think about after this episode?

Speaker 2 09:48

I really want people to just remember that accessibility is not this big and scary thing, that it is accessible for everyone and everyone can do it. Whether, you know, you bring in an accessible toilet to your space for the first time, or you create a social story, or you do some disability awareness training, it's a journey. And as a business, you know, when you start a new financial year, you budget, when you go, I want to put this much money into marketing, I want to put this much money into, you know, making the space, upgrading my space, try to start putting aside some money for, you know, your accessibility. Maybe this year you'll do some disability awareness training for your staff, and next year you'll have a website audit or whatever it's going to be.

Speaker 1 10:38

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