Ep 8 Dean Beadle Part 1

The release of this episode, November the 15th, coincides with
European Music Therapy Day. The focus this year is on ‘Hearing
Your Voice’. Appropriately, this is the first interview in
this series with a music therapy service user. 


Dean Beadle has toured the UK for a number of years sharing his
experiences of life as an autistic person. He has also spoken in
Denmark, Belgium, Guernsey and Ireland as well as undertaking
four annual seminar tours of Australia and New Zealand. Through
his humorous and insightful speeches Dean outlines his positive
outlook on his diagnosis. You can see a clip of Dean in 2011 on
YouTube. Dean had music therapy as a child in SE London with
music therapist Judith Nockolds, which he talks about in part two
of this interview, out next month. 


Part one has a focus on perceptions of autism, including Dean’s
own feelings about his diagnosis, and some of the challenges he
faced as a child coming to terms with various aspects of his
identity. He also draws interesting parallels between autism in a
social context and other social issues such as gay rights.