Inclusive Music Therapy.

As always, obligatory "sorry it's been so long since the last post" at the top. I just really don't use this blog much any more 😅 but I had something that I wanted to ramble for a bit on that's going to go longer than a social media post can take, so here we are!

For those who aren't aware, to provide some backstory before we get into the meat of it - for the past two years (that is, 2024/25) I've been studying music therapy. It's something that I decided to study for a few reasons - partly because I'd been looking for work for quite some time already without success, and so I looked into what options there were for training up in various areas, and ended up settling on music therapy. I already have the music skills and experience, plus a couple of units of psychology; and listening, caring and empathy are all pretty second nature to me. It seemed like there was certainly demand for this sort of thing, if the trend of psychiatrists, psychologists and the like having massive waiting lists was anything to go by.

But now it's done, and five months post-study and......no job. During the course, there were multiple suggestions that this was indeed a growing field, with people having long waitlists of clients. Unfortunately, it seems like many RMTs (registered music therapists) are working solo, either setting up their own thing or working by themselves in a multi-disciplinary team. Centres with multiple RMTs do exist, but they're few and far between - and not many hiring opportunities have popped up (unless I wanted to have a commute down to Wollongong, or a move up to Newcastle or interstate; there's also been some jobs that are just kids, but I'm not really wanting to do that).

As part of the course, we were encouraged to think about the sort of practice that we'd like to do. I had a pretty solid idea from the start, and it only solidified further over the course of learning and developing more. You see, there's lots of neurodivergent RMTs out there, and plenty that are working with autistic and ADHD clients. A large percentage of those are working more with kids than adults, so there is still some room and demand there for a more adult-focussed neurodivergent RMT I think - but that's not as much what I was interested in. Because you see, there's almost no trans RMTs in Australia. I can name a couple off the top of my head? But to the best of my knowledge there aren't any operating in NSW or the Greater Sydney area that are focussed on trans and queer clients. And so I decided that's what I wanted to do - as a queer and trans RMT, work with queer and trans clients. Not, like, exclusively? Like I could still see people that didn't fall into those buckets. But I wanted that to be my focus, my main target audience as such.

Because I really wanted songwriting to be a key part of the work that I do, and I wanted to be able to have conversation and discussion with my clients, work through issues, that sort of thing - I wasn't as interested in working with kids. I really wanted to be working with teens and young adults for the most part, from a more mental/emotional health standpoint. Like, still trying to work from a holistic standpoint and thinking about how other aspects of health are affected, because that's something that's really important. Towards the end of the course, I also did a project looking at using music therapy for religious trauma, and I would be interested in incorporating that as well.

The dream would be that this would eventually be a centre itself, employing multiple RMTs, each with their own area of inclusivity that they're passionate about - perhaps particular forms of disability, or working with migrants or First Nations people - this is what I would love to see happen. And I came up with a simple name for it: Inclusive Music Therapy.

But I didn't want to start here. Partly because I wanted to get some more experience; for various reasons the placements that I ended up doing meant that I didn't really work with many teen or young adult clients, and if that's what I wanted to be the core of who I was working with, I wanted more experience there. And partly because that would mean both starting in a new industry, and starting a new business, both at the same time. When I'm someone who has zero business sense. So I was hoping to start off in a centre, get some experience, some mentoring, before starting up my own thing.

While I started looking for that, I was on JobSeeker, and started a Self-Employment Assistance course to satisfy the mutual obligation requirements. It was just a couple of days a week online, but it walked you through setting up your own business. And of course, I was using Inclusive Music Therapy as the idea for it; so it meant that the idea got developed a fair bit more. The course involved doing things like putting a budget together, a website, social media page, a business plan - it was fairly comprehensive. To be fair, I had already been working on a website, so much of that part was already done! But putting together the other bits and pieces helped me to get an idea of how doable it might be. The answer - sort of.

Money is always the tricky bit. The rough budget I drafted up (using a fair bit of guesswork, but it gives me a ballpark) suggested that if I started off doing 16 sessions a month, and most months was able to increase the number of sessions I was doing by two, and had about $1000 there saved as an initial investment into the business, I'd be breaking even about a year or so after I started. I'm going by number of sessions, by the way, rather than number of clients, because clients won't necessarily have the same regularity of sessions. Some might do weekly, others fortnightly, or monthly, or even every three weeks. So I'm measuring off number of sessions per month. The figure that I'm using for cost is based off the current NDIA price measure for music therapy - the maximum that an RMT can charge for a one-hour session for an NDIS participant is $156.16, so I did some rounding to make things simpler and put it at $155.

And now the course is finished - and I still don't have work. I've been applying to things (both music therapy and otherwise), but nothing that's gotten me an interview. It's hard to know if being autistic, ADHD, queer, non-binary and trans are part of that (I always include that in my cover letter), because most of the time you hear nothing back at all, and never really any specific feedback. But it's starting to feel that way at points. That I'm getting lumped into the too-hard basket. But I want to be working somewhere where they see these things as a plus, not a liability. But yeah. Not having work kinda sucks sometimes.

So now, I'm more seriously considering the possibility of starting up my own music therapy business. I've gotten more of the tools to be able to do it from a business perspective, so it feels somewhat less daunting in that sense. And encouragement from others has led me to be less worried about not having as much experience as I would like with teens/young adults specifically in this area, since I can apply it across from other areas. But the thing that's going to make it doable is having enough clients to start.

I think that the demand is there. There just aren't a lot of mental health services for queer and trans people available, and many of them are already struggling with the amount of people trying to access them. And there isn't an RMT in the Greater Sydney area working in this space currently; so theoretically at least, there's quite a large number of potential clients. It's just a question of whether I can actually reach them. I don't really have a lot of money that I can put into advertising and marketing before I even get things started; but perhaps I have enough to start getting the word out, and seeing if I garner enough interest.

One thing I can do is make the website that I've been working on public. It still definitely needs a bit of fine-tuning, but perhaps it will help me to get some potential clients and be able to see if this is something that could actually work. Also just like, feel free to comment if you know people (or are people!) who would be interested, or share this with those who might be.

Before I finish up, if you hadn't figured out, that's the logo at the top! Yes, I designed a logo for it. It's pretty simple - it's a piano that's using the colours from the progress pride flag for the different keys. It just works out with how the different keys and letters and colours line up, and I'm quite happy with it, for a logo done by someone who is not a graphic designer 😅 I'm sure someone else could make it a bit neater or cleaner or crisper, but it's fit for purpose at this point.

But yes! Inclusive Music Therapy. If there's enough interest - maybe I could actually make this happen. It will be a lot of work to get off the ground, and there's probably still a bunch of business stuff that I'll need to wrap my head around; but I'd love to have the opportunity to try.

Wake Up, Dead People - the Knives are Out

 I'm back! First post of the year. Took me a while. Everyone and their dog has probably seen Wake Up, Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery by now, but if you haven't, this post is going to be at least in part a review of that movie. While I won't be going into spoilers as such as part of this post (or that's the intent, anyway), if you'd prefer to go in blind, I guess find something else to read? Ths short version is: it's very good, and you should watch it. Anyway. I do say in part only, though, because part of why I wanted to write this is actually more of a reflection than a review. So we'll see how that goes.

Wake Up, Dead Man is now the third instalment in the Knives Out - what do we call it? Series? Franchise? Universe? - that feature our now-familiar detective friend, Benoit Blanc. After the success of both the original movie as well as Glass Onion, expectations were high with this third movie. As before, it's loaded with an absolutely star-studded cast, and people playing in some roles that it feels like they can really ham it up in, and have a lot of fun with it. It feels very much in the vein of an old Hercule Poirot vibe, though Benoit Blanc has a bit of a different feel to him than Poirot does. But still, plenty of drama!

This time, the setting is a small little Catholic church in upstate New York, currently led by Monsignor Wicks. However, our viewpoint is mostly from a fresh face to the church - Father Jud, recently assigned after an altercation with another priest who had spoken out of line. And the difference between these two could not be more stark: in Father Jud we see a gentleness and grace, whereas in Wicks we see brashness and retribution; in Jud we have a man who is humble and listens, but in Wicks we see ego talking at people. Joining them are the regulars at the church - the alcoholic doctor, recently separated; the author living in isolation; the groundskeeper, just doing his job; the lawyer and adoptive mother; the adopted son, recently returned from a stint in politics and now trying to make it big online; and Martha, the one who keeps it all together and does just about everything.

Somehow, in the middle of the Good Friday service, Wicks is killed - seemingly without anyone laying a hand on him. The police are grasping at straws, and so in strolls Benoit Blanc, who immediately enlists the help of Father Jud to get a more intimate knowledge of the case. And what a case it is, with twists and turns a plenty; but I'll let you watch the movie to discover those for yourself. If you can't tell by now, I think it was done very well once again, and I've already watched it twice over. It's a great film.

But I think part of what makes it such a great film, interestingly enough, is the focus on religion. Because I think it feels very timely; as did much of the rhetoric in Glass Onion. In the character of Monsignor Wicks, we see a lot of the worst of what religion can be (though there has been worse, I would argue) these days - a religion that fights against the world, builds big stone walls to keep everyone out, and judges harshly. A religion that is - hopefully obviously - rather antithetical to all that Jesus taught. But, to counteract this, we have the character of Father Jud, representing much of what the best of what religion can be - accepting, loving, listening, welcoming, caring, being there for people, wanting the best for people.

Unfortunately, there are all too many churches run by people not that far off from the character of Wicks. Perhaps not as egotistical or pointed as he was (though there are certainly examples of that as well); but many who see their role as being a fighter against the world, a protector of the true believers against the dark world that they see out there today. And part of the difficulty is that the world does feel very dark these days, and often feels like it keeps getting darker - and I think that can very well be true regardless of where you're looking from, or what you think that darkness is. But, as Jesus demonstrated, you do not hide away when the world is dark; you go out into it, and be light. You put the lamp on a lampstand, you be the city on a hill, the salt of the earth.

These days, I don't know where I'm at with religion any more. I haven't been to church in a long time, and I don't know if there really are any around that I would feel at home with. At one point I attempted to get a bit of a community going around this idea of those at the fringes of faith, but it sputtered out fairly quickly. But I do think we need more that take that example from Father Jud - and from Jesus. To be open and welcoming, rather than condemning and hostile. To be love, and light. Not an ivory tower.