Announcing The Community Music Therapy Team!

We are thrilled to announce today… this very last day of #MTAdvocacy Month… the launch of our Community Music Therapy Team!

 We provide equal access to the fine arts and opportunities for self advocacy through facilitating SensoryFriendly Concerts.

• We are advocates for PRESUMING COMPETENCE of anyone on the autism spectrum.
• We are passionate about acknowledging and celebrating the musical giftedness that is so often seen in autism – not by exploiting that talent like the media does, but simply by providing avenues for self advocacy through music performance in SensoryFriendly Concerts.
• Through these public events we are developing research in Community Music Therapy, which is an exciting new innovation of the Music Therapy field.
• We are leading society by example in how to provide respectful public accommodations for people on the spectrum, as well as others with neurological and sensory processing issues.

You can check out who is on “The Community Music Therapy Team” by clicking anywhere in this sentence, or by clicking on “About Us” and scrolling down to “The CoMT Team.” 

Every one of these accomplished and progressive-thinking music therapists has contacted CJ in the past year, inquiring about SensoryFriendly Concerts and Neurodiversity. We have formed a “tribe” of sorts, working together in grassroots fashion to advocate for Neurodiversity and Community Music Therapy, through facilitating SensoryFriendly Concerts on a national level.

If you are a credentialed music therapist and would like to join us in this project, you can contact us here.

If you’re interested in having a SensoryFriendly Concert in YOUR local community, and would like to volunteer to help make that happen, we’d love to hear from you! Please email us at themusicalautist@gmail.com. We will work with you to find your nearest MT-BC and help to make it happen!  Another way you can learn more is by subscribing to our newsletter at the bottom of this page.

In honor of Music Therapy Advocacy Month, we’d like to leave you with the following statement:

Since 2005, the American Music Therapy Association and the Certification Board for Music Therapists have collaborated on a State Recognition Operational Plan. The primary purpose of this plan is to get music therapy and our MT-BC credential recognized by individual states so that citizens can more easily access our services. The AMTA Government Relations staff and CBMT Regulatory Affairs staff provide guidance and technical support to state task forces throughout the country as they work towards state recognition. To date, their work has resulted in over 35 active state task forces, 2 licensure bills passed in 2011, 1 licensure bill passed in 2012, and an estimated 7 bills being filed in 2013 that seek to create either title protection or a licensure for music therapy. This month, our focus is on YOU and on getting you excited about advocacy.

This time next year, I wonder how many SensoryFriendly Concerts we can do in the month of January, to advocate for music therapy services on the state level? How awesome would it be, to invite our state legislators to a SensoryFriendly Concert to meet their local MT-BCs?  (: