OHMI’s new website now live

We’re delighted to announce our new website is now live. The launch kicks off an important year for OHMI as we celebrate our tenth anniversary.
 
We see our role at OHMI very much as finding practical solutions, bringing the most suitable instruments to the adult and child musicians who most need them. We’re known for our dogged determination in this respect. If there’s an instrument out there, we will hunt it down in order to add it to our portfolio. And if it doesn’t exist yet, we’ll give instrument makers across the world the support they need to research and create the instruments in question.
 
Whilst the website has always been a useful one-stop-shop for all matters relating to music-making for people living with upper arm impairments, we’re putting more of a focus on regular and engaging content as well as resources in the following areas:
 

• Our new News and Views will include insightful articles each month. Here we’ll share the latest news on initiatives such as our Inclusive Access to Music-Making (IAMM) programme, delivered with Nottingham Music Service (NMS), Northamptonshire Music and Performing Arts (NMPAT) and Creative United, and aiming to meet the needs of physically disabled pupils with access to appropriate instruments, enabling equipment and teachers.
  
  We’ll be looking at what needs to change at Government level and in society as a whole if people living with disabilities are to be granted undifferentiated access to the instruments and equipment needed to perform music at their chosen level.

 

• Our Success Stories will chart the progress of the adults and children we’ve supported who, after all, are the people who shape OHMI’s work and overall direction. There’ll also be interesting insights into the valuable work of our competition winners and how they are bringing the most innovative instrument ideas to manufacturing reality.
  
  Our gallery includes many inspirational stories. Gareth Churchill, whose recovery from a stroke led back to a childhood love of the recorder. ​Duncan Menzies of Queen Mary University of London whose P-bROCK Digital Bagpipe Chanter is helping schoolboy Guy get a step closer to realising his dream to one day perform at the Edinburgh Tattoo.

 

• Our Shop and Instrument Hire sections present a window into the instruments that are currently available. Our next project is to look at how we might make this section of our site interactive to help match musicians to the appropriate instruments for their circumstance.

 

• Our storytelling has become more visual as we illustrate how we overcome the challenges to making instrument playing accessible, interesting facts on the broad section of society that needs OHMI’s support, how far OHMI’s money goes and on what activities, and how far we’ve already come in our first ten years in our 2011 – 2021 timeline.