Women leading EDI in Music Education

Jessy McCabe - (A-Level Music Campaigner)

Jessy McCabe is currently a secondary school teacher working in special educational needs in Oxford. Her interest in inequity in music education began as an A-level student when she launched a national petition to ensure the inclusion of female composers on the Edexcel A-level Music syllabus. She was named one of the BBC’s 100 Women in 2015 and was included in the motion of a parliamentary debate on the inclusion of feminism in the A-level Politics syllabus triggered by a subsequent petition launched by June Eric-Udorie. She has spoken at a variety of events on the topic, including the WOW Festival, the Oxford Lieder Festival, and Oxford University Music Faculty’s Decolonising the Curricula workshop. After completing her Music degree and Education MSc at the University of Oxford, she completed the Teach First programme as a trainee Music teacher during the pandemic, before her most recent move into becoming a SEND Teacher.

Brenda Rattray - (Goldsmiths University)

Brenda Rattray is an international vocal coach, educator, composer, performer, author, and mother who helps people discover their authentic voices and express their truths. Her music school, Voice Expressions, guides students in grounding and connecting with themselves and others, unlocking vocal blocks, finding their true voices, and expressing themselves in the safe space she creates, through music. She lectures at Goldsmiths University and is an external examiner for Kingston University. With her empathetic and compassionate leadership Brenda inspires future leaders, she has trained musicians from the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Concert Orchestra to work in the community, and trains teachers and community musicians in a number of institutions including the Institute of Education. She also works in high security prisons, psychiatric hospitals, in rehabs with families experiencing addiction and uses music as part of a healing journey with women leaving prostitution in a bid to start a new life.

Brenda’s unique skill extends beyond the classroom, where she curates conferences and runs training workshops for the charity Sound Connections, exploring leadership with equity, empathy, compassion, and kindness; as well as using the power of inclusivity, intersectional diversity, and representation to bring communities together. Working as a trainer for Women’s Aid, Brenda taught a ‘Keys to Freedom’ course to women experiencing domestic violence; for which she achieved an Excellence in Education Award.

Her book The Joy of Singing is published by Faber Music.

Davina Vencatasamy - (Music Psychotherapist at HMP Grendon and Springhill, Associate Lecturer at University of Derby and Director of Drum and Brass CIC)

Davina is a qualified and practicing music therapist of 17 years. She has worked in a wide range of fields including children and adults with mental health and learning disability needs in Special Educational Needs schools and hospitals. She currently works as a Music Psychotherapist in a CAT B therapeutic community prison, working with inmates with learning disabilities. Over the past 2 years she had been a strong voice in matters of Equality, Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging in Music Therapy and led on an online event where over 200 participants were able to access the beginning of the profession’s journey into thinking more specifically about race. She is also a Director of a small arts organisation called Drum and Brass whose mission is centred around providing music-making opportunities to inner city areas where there is little or no provision in schools due to cuts. They set up the only open access youth orchestra in the city where there was no need to play an instrument to join and focussed on using ‘off-score’ music creation techniques. The orchestra has performed at The Curve theatre in Leicester and are soon due to play at De Montfort Hall. Davina continues to drive the agenda forward in both music education and music therapy to increase diversity and give access to music opportunities to everyone.

Chamari Wedamulla (Royal Birmingham Conservatoire)

Chamari Wedamulla is a researcher in music education at Royal Birmingham Conservatoire and Birmingham City University.
Having worked as a music teacher in mainstream and special needs schools in the UK and Sri Lanka, her research focuses on interdisciplinary, intercultural and inclusive music teaching practices. Chamari took part in Kingston University's, “Rose Award” winning project, "Taking Race Live", which addressed a variety of issues related to race, ethnicity and culture within HE, and is also a committee member of EDIMS (Equality, Diversity & Inclusion in Music Studies). She has expanded her HE teaching practice overseas, having started delivering online lectures and workshops on music education and special educational needs for the staff and students of Sri Lanka’s University of Visual and Performing Arts in Colombo and Christ University in Bangalore, India.

Chamari is currently working on a research project commissioned by the Arts Council England, exploring into experiences of music learning in the Midlands. Davina is a qualified and practicing music therapist of 17 years. She has worked in a wide range of fields including children and adults with mental health and learning disability needs in Special Educational Needs schools and hospitals. She currently works as a Music Psychotherapist in a CAT B therapeutic community prison, working with inmates with learning disabilities.

Over the past 2 years she had been a strong voice in matters of Equality, Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging in Music Therapy and led on an online event where over 200 participants were able to access the beginning of the profession’s journey into thinking more specifically about race. She is also a Director of a small arts organisation called Drum and Brass whose mission is centred around providing music-making opportunities to inner city areas where there is little or no provision in schools due to cuts. They set up the only open access youth orchestra in the city where there was no need to play an instrument to join and focussed on using ‘off-score’ music creation techniques. The orchestra has performed at The Curve theatre in Leicester and are soon due to play at De Montfort Hall. Davina continues to drive the agenda forward in both music education and music therapy to increase diversity and give access to music opportunities to everyone.