UK Music is calling on music industry leaders to ensure disabled people and people with long term health conditions can realise their dreams by removing potential barriers to job opportunities.
The call comes as UK Music published new findings from its Workforce Diversity Survey that reveal one in five disabled people in the music industry has faced discrimination at work.
Building on UK Music’s Diversity Report published last October, this newly released data comes from UK Music’s 2020 Diversity Survey of more than 3,558 people.
The key findings of the UK Music Workforce Diversity Survey 2020 related to disabled people working in the music industry are:
• 12% – one in eight of those who responded to the survey – said they had a disability or long-term health condition.
• 76% of those with a disability or long-term condition said their employers had made reasonable adjustments for their disability or condition.
• However, 24% – almost one in four – said that their company or organisation they worked for had not made reasonable adjustments.
• Of those who said they had a disability or long-term health condition, almost one in five people (18%) said they had faced discrimination because of their disability.
• More than half (54%) of those with a disability or long-term condition said they had also faced discrimination on the grounds of age, gender, or socio-economic background.
UK Music is encouraging music industry organisations to look at how they can better support disabled people and people with long term health conditions at work.
These include challenging discrimination, educating staff, listening to employees with a disability or long-term health condition and implementing measures to support them.
UK Music would like an industry toolkit to be developed that would help organisations do more to improve opportunities for disabled people.