Karen Kyriakou is a music educator, author, composer and arranger who is passionate about music’s unique capacity to unite and inspire. She has worked with many music organisations and has been an artist-in-residence with Musica Viva Australia’s Music Education Residency Program for over ten years. She is recognised as an expert in teaching music to d/Deaf children, presenting Sound Vibrations at Melbourne Recital Centre and mentoring the Auslan Choir of the Find Your Voice Collective. In 2022 she was admitted to the Association of Music Educators (aMuse) Hall of Fame for her contribution to music education for students with disability.
But it wasn’t always so. Karen Kyriakou’s first experience teaching music to d/Deaf children at Melbourne’s Furlong Park School for Deaf Children was a leap into the unknown.
Karen Kyriakou teaching a music lesson at Furlong Park School. Photo credit: James Henry
‘There was an old music room there that nobody used, with a purpose-built sprung floors, lots of instruments that didn’t really work, and a little bit of funding,' says Karen. 'The idea was to throw a music teacher into this deaf school for six months and see what happened!’
Karen was provided with an Auslan interpreter to help communicate with the students, but she quickly realised that there weren’t the words for what she wanted to say: music vocabulary in Auslan is almost non-existent. Added to that, having someone else signing took the students’ eyes away from her to look at the signer.
‘So much about music relies on watching the leader. It’s multisensory. Then I realised that I could probably teach music without doing any talking at all, and this was a game changer. When I learned to shut up we started to develop our own communication.'
'When I learned to shut up we started to develop our own communication.’
Her early experience inspired her to seek out further resources on teaching music to the deaf. Her research led her to the work of Dr Paul Whittaker OBE, founder of UK-based organisation Music and the Deaf, whose mission since 1988 has been pushing the boundaries of what deaf people can aspire to and achieve in music. With support from the Churchill Trust, Karen embarked on a study tour to the UK. There she was invited to observe and participate in specialist music programs, Deaf Youth Ensembles and outreach programs, including the Mahler Chamber Orchestra’s, Feel the Music, where she saw professional musicians creating meaningful creative experiences for students at a Deaf School in Prague. She returned from her travels with many ideas and a determination to increase awareness of the role of music in the physical and emotional development of deaf students.
Karen Kyriakou teaching a music lesson at Furlong Park School. Photo credit: James Henry
‘It turns out that music is a very human activity that [Deaf students] absolutely enjoy being part of! Very few deaf students have zero hearing. Most can access sound at some frequency. Like their hearing peers, they have preferences over the types of instruments they want to play.
‘I run a program in line with what they would be doing at a hearing school. We start with percussion, shakers, and we practise starts and stops, dances, and hello songs. As we move through the years we start to play more drums, some melodic instruments like xylophones, recorders, ukeleles. They compose and read notation.’
The highlight of the year at Furlong Park School for Deaf Children is the end of year concert, when students dress up, tell stories and participate in Auslan choirs.
‘They’re really proud of that, and the audience loves it. It’s their own expression, their language, and it’s really special.’
‘It’s their own expression, their language, and it’s really special.’
Alongside her work at Furlong Park Karen is now in demand with a wider audience. She delivers projects and workshops with leading arts organisations such as the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, the Find Your Voice Collective and the Australian National Academy of Music, furthering awareness and opportunities for all-abilities music-making.
‘When I first arrived [at Furlong Park] I didn’t know anything about Deaf culture. It is a very strong culture with its own language and practices. I felt for the first time that I didn’t know what I was doing in the classroom. But It’s good to be in those situations. It means that you dig your heels in and do more research.
‘I’ve learnt more than the kids have in many ways’.
You can read more about Karen’s work at her website, inapiece.com.au. Find out about the Musica Viva Australia Music Education Residency Program here.