INTERVIEW: Meet Tony Gurney, the DJ mastermind behind London's first accessible rave
I spoke to Tony Gurney - aka Groover The Barbarian - who, in November 2019, launched ‘Daylight’: London’s first accessible rave aimed at people with disabilities for Musique De Danse (www.musiquededanse.co.uk).
What inspired the Daylight event?
Necessity is the mother of all invention, I was looking for a J/DnB event tailored to people with extra support needs and there wasn’t one, so I thought it would be fun to have a party…
What are some of the key steps taken to make the event more accessible?
The primary thing with making the event accessible is the venue. I know I probably sound like a salesman, but they’ve made the venue (OMEARA) so it is as step free as they can manage. This means people can come in off the street and can go round the whole venue without needing to use a step. They also have three disabled toilets. So if you compare that to my own experience of going to a club with one disabled toilet that had stacks of chairs in front of it, and they refused to move them, I think it’s pretty self-explanatory why the venue is so important.
Jack, the venue manager, and I had a meeting with Tricia from the Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB) and some of their members at OMEARA so they could assess how accessible/useful the venue and event will be for their members. We got a thumbs up. I felt it would be important to have CarersUK there on the day in case a carer needed someone to chat to, and CarersUK came along, and I also invited Hart Club to host a table. Hart Club is a community based Arts Programme so it opened up other potential opportunities for our guests. I also reached out to Scope, Headway East London, Leonard Cheshire Homes, Coin Street and Abs from Disability Advice Lambeth. Abs helped people with disabilities that she is in contact with to attend, as did the RNIB. It was a real team effort.
See full interview here: https://www.musiquededanse.co.uk/post/tonygurney
